DSS#52 Unofficial Feedback Thread (Digital Alphabet Soup)

bf2015

So, here is the official gallery to give your C&C for DSS#52

Gallery Here...

Once more into the fray. This unofficial feedback thread is a catch-all of sorts, lets make it happen

Anyway, let's start feedback on DSS #52!!




This thread is:

• a place to post a list of your top ten favorites. (be heard, and let everyone know what images moved you.)
• a place to post your "the making of my image"
• a place to ask someone "how did they do that?"(for us all to see )

Feedback is an important part of the photographic process. While those selected as finalists get feedback from the judges and those who vote, others are never quite sure where they stand. So share your thoughts both in this thread and with comments in the actual gallery. Constructive criticism should always be welcome.

It's easy to post thumbnails (with help from our Moderator).

With the image selected in the gallery, copy its URL from your browser, add "-Th.jpg" to the end, delete the jumble of numbers and letters preceding the hashtag (#), change "gallery" to "photos" and that's it.

Example

Change this url

http://challenges.smugmug.com/Other/DSS-44/11173146_XPbWE#784726765_MXFDd

To this (minus the space in the IMG tags)

http://challenges.smugmug.com/photos/784726765_MXFDd-Th.jpg

Happy Feedbacking

nightpixels

Done with commenting under every single entry. I had a super tough time coming up with my top 10. It basically came down to some silly nitpicking just like it always does. It was an honor to be a judge in this round. Thank you!

slpollett

Thank you for taking time to comment on each entry. That means a lot to me.

Sherry

ps: I'll decide my favorites & post them tonight once I'm home from work.

kidzmom

Thanks so much Allen for your detailed feedback and commentary. I went through and read every single comment Very helpful and insightful.

This round sure got the creative juices flowing. Loved so many of the entries---even to make a list 15 would be hard!

A few favs this round:



Great work to EVERYONE! I could have easily picked 10 more!

Kelly

SeascapeS

My favorites, and yes, it was hard! I chose these based on the criteria, quality, creativity and aesthetics.


Kdotaylor - Music


ghinson - Saint


MikeK - Stone


Kidzmom - Kidz


Swelldays - Greed


tinamarie52 - Utensil


Angela Davis - Tool


lizzard_nyc - Woman


Kevxman - Tramp


quark - Engineer

I hope this works - it didn't the last time I tried it.
(didn't work again...don't know what I'm doing wrong)

Fun competition everyone. I am here with some wonderful talents!

tinamarie52

Allen...thanks for the honest and thoughtful comments that you left for each image. It is very helpful to go through and read each one. Lots to learn. Thanks for choosing mine in your top 10.

Kelly and Seascapes...thanks for including UTENSIL as a favorite.

I could choose way more than 10, so I'll just meniton my top favs:
mikek-Stone
Kidsmom- Kids
Oldtown- California
divamum- garden
zoomn- play
quark- engineer
photobug-country

Thanks Sean for another challenging and fun round!

Chris

tinamarie52

one more thing...
One more thing.......

Does everyone now walk around seeing letters everywhere they look?rofl

Chris

SeascapeS

Thanks, Sean - for fixing me again.

SandiZ

WhatSheSaw

tinamarie52 wrote: »

One more thing.......

Does everyone now walk around seeing letters everywhere they look?rofl

Chris

I am trying to figure out how I can spell Emergence or Innocence in ants!

travelways

I'd like to thank you so much to Allen for taking his time to post comments on all entries, mine included.

This is so useful to understand what we did good or wrong, and actually keep us going further.

Thank you so much to those who posted comments on my original entry - I tried to improve the levels,
so I changed it in the last minute. Also thank you to those who considered mine among their favorites

There were so many nice and creative images this round - I inserted my comments directly in the contest.

me_minihaha

WhatSheSaw wrote: »

I am trying to figure out how I can spell Emergence or Innocence in ants!

OH MY GOSH I was thinking about ants too!! I thought if you pour sugar to spell something by ant hill would it work? to funny

WhatSheSaw

me_minihaha wrote: »

OH MY GOSH I was thinking about ants too!! I thought if you pour sugar to spell something by ant hill would it work? to funny

Ha! Great minds! I was thinking honey. And I think no matter where you pour it, the ants will find it.

me_minihaha

There are so many creative people here, it is awesome to see what everyone comes up with. I sometimes get a bit jealous but in a good way, because I aspire to have a good eye and great composition and talent to boot! Here are my top 10 favorites and let me say it was hard to pick just 10!!!!! By the way everywhere I look "I see letters!"

ghinson - saint
kdotayor - music
tinamarie52 - utensil
divamum - garden
dahn8 - light
whatshesaw - leaves
kidzmom - kids
mikek - stone
quark - engineer
tlvorda - adventurous

Flyinggina

Unfortunately, I will not have the time to comment on all the pictures before the voting finishes but I wanted to say that I am totally blown away by the entires this round. The creativity and artistic talent is simply marvelous.

Kudos to all of you who entered. bow I am in awe.

And cheers for Sherstone who came up with such an inspirational topic.

Virginia

The Curious Camel

feedback
I have left my comments on my top ten.

I'll try to get more done through the week if I can.

This was a challenge for me. I think we just don't realized how difficult it can be when
you have so many wonderful images to choose from.

Congrats to you all.

peace always, gail

travelways

Thank you so much Gail for including me into the top 10 favorites

And yes, Virginia is so right about this so inspirational theme!

I almost forgot to add that this was so much fun for me, even though not easy.
I was able do it only grace to my lovely husband who drove me during almost 3 days, miles and miles,
on country roads and villages in Southern Ontario, in an actually most cloudy and rainy weather...
- but I can tell it was so, so nice to hunt for these small details, looking at every country house,
yard, animals, ornaments, etc. I have quite a collection of country items now

SeascapeS

You're brave Tatiana. I'm always afraid I'll get yelled at for trespassing.

Good luck in the finals!

travelways

SeascapeS wrote: »

You're brave Tatiana. I'm always afraid I'll get yelled at for trespassing.

Good luck in the finals!

I had a telephoto, but still I had to go quite close

Good luck to you too, Sandi

... and - oh, I do see letters everywhere now too

Froch

GREAT!!!! round everyone.
Nice job commenting on each image Allen! Excellent!
In keeping with my own personal commitment, I've pasted my comments into the commentary box. I'm not sure I could say, "what great creative vision" one more time. All true though. Nice work!

Sorry my comment on my image is sooooo wordy. This may be a better place for a self-critique, but I like that it rides with the image.
Hope that's ok Sean. Let me know if I need to change that for future challenges.

P

dahn8

Thanks Allen for the comments on all the photos!

There's so many great photos here...it's hard to pick a few favorites but here are mine

ghinson - SAINT
tinamarie52 - UTENSIL
whiterice - cupcake
lizzard_nyc - "WOMAN"

kdotaylor

These were such fun to look at! I think everyone submitted a winning photo. My favorites, though, are:
SAINT
STONE
KIDS
UTENSIL
ADVENTUROUS
GARDEN
WOMAN
LEAVES
COUNTRY

divamum

I've posted comments in the gallery - what a fun round! Of course, now I see letters in just about everything.... I think I may have to do a bunch more of the just for fun (if I pick the right words, they could make excellent Christmas presents.... hmmm.... )

kdotaylor

We could now make compilation photos of the words in this last contest...for example
ADVENTUROUS WOMAN LEAVES COUNTRY

lizzard_nyc

YeSSSSS!
After my last debacle for the last challenge, I'm glad I pulled this one off .

Thanks guys for making mine a finalist.

Love the company on this round--some really creative shots.

Now to vote.

WhatSheSaw

kdotaylor wrote: »

We could now make compilation photos of the words in this last contest...for example
ADVENTUROUS WOMAN LEAVES COUNTRY

Hahahahaha! INSPIRED WOMAN LEAVES CUPCAKE!

(My new motto)

Jenn

What about ...

Inspired Woman leaves Engineer?

or

Adventurous country engineer leaves woman?

travelways

Jenn wrote: »

What about ...

Inspired Woman leaves Engineer?

or

Adventurous country engineer leaves woman?

Great

... or KIDS LOVE PAPERCLIPS

divamum

Country love leaves stone woman tramp? :hide

KevXman

How I did it – TRAMP


My comment in the gallery:

(Thanks for the comments everyone! I agree that the letters are a little dark. That was intentional. I was going for "Lady of the evening", "a dark and sorid life", etc. Obviously, 1) I didn't manage to pull it off, 2) the shots didn't lend themselves to this concept, or, 3) It's my greatest work to date and just was over everyone's head. I'm leaning towards #1. Ah well, on to the next challenge. It's been commented on in other threads so I will post my how-to on the Hue/Saturation for the red shoes in the feedback thread. Thanks again
— Kevin)

So here goes:
When trying to come up with an idea for the challenge I thought that I wanted to go B&W with some spot color so that I could work in the red shoes from the last challenge. I checked the rules to see what was and was not allowed. Got to Rule #6:
_________________________________________

6. Only basic editing is to be used in this challenge. Basic editing includes: cropping, rotation, resize, levels, curves, hue, contrast adjustment, spot or dust removal, saturation or vibrancy and sharpening. Basic editing does not include the use of filters other than noise removal if required, layers, layer masks or composite techniques. The use of adjustment layers to achieve the already mentioned things; like curves and hue, are okay to use as long as none of the adjustment layers go outside of the already defined "basic editing" criteria.
_________________________________________

This is where I saw my opening. SATURATION! That's how I'll do it. Pretty easy to do with some pre-planning. I wasn't sure what word I would end up using so I just started shooting everything that I saw. Once I realized that I had T-R-A-M-P, I grabbed the shoes and headed back to where I found my T. Made sure that there was not any red in the frame except for the shoes and snapped the shot.



When I pulled up the image in Photoshop, along with all the other normal tweaking, I created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Once there, all I did was go through all of the colors other than red and set the saturation to -100.



This got rid of all of the color except for the red shoes. I played with vibrancy a little more and called it quits. So you see, pretty easy to do and still stayed within the rules. I might have BENT the rule somewhat but I figured since I wasn't doing it to create my letter Sean would let it pass. (Thanks Sean. The word would not have had as much meaning without the shoes.)

Thanks for looking!
— Kevin

P.S. Now to figure out how to work the red shoes into an image for the Mega-Challenge.

AndMan

divamum wrote: »

Country love leaves stone woman tramp? :hide

How about:

Imagine Kids Light Country Diet Inspired Disney Cupcake Greed

travelways

divamum wrote: »

Country love leaves stone woman tramp? :hide