DaveU

I can almost feel his pain poor bugger ... if you're not careful you'll be as miserable as me soon Dave.

I loved that building last time you used it and still do. Just thinking that the "guys" legs need a hint of shadow to anchor him down into that sandscape though.

It's a fine idea Jan but with stuff like this you've really got to make it as realistic as possible. It's no good the casual viewer glancing and thinking "that's clever" .... you've got to convince the more critical viewer to sit back and think "that's clever". The shadow is wrong as a real shadow would run obliquely away from the object following the direction of the light source until it strikes the wall, then it would run vertically up the wall. So you need to select the shadow from where it strikes the wall and use the distort tool to pull it upright. Fiddly but worth it to convince the eye. Old Granny U was a stickler for attention to detail when she did her digital manips

Yeah the cutting out on the left most hand is a little crude but I don't care ....love the imagination and colour-fest.

Certainly catches the eye Pete ..... nicely put together and good to see the original components. The texture overlay works well and gives a nice painterly look to the sky. Just thinking it perhaps needs another element .... maybe some birds wheeling away in the sky just to finish it off?

High impact shot Nick and definitely mean and moody. Fine mono conversion and the sky really does add to the mood. I'd love to see another version with you stood a little more to the left so as to get those wheels on more of an oblique angle.

IMO HDR is better suited to interiors. The problem here is that the tone-mapping has sucked a lot of contrast out of the sky and introduced halo artifacts around the tree branches. Landscapes for me are better done with ND grads or by merging two exposures, one for sky and one for land.

As a photograph it's quite "ordinary", sort of family snap rather than fine art. Which is fine.

What lifts this pic and attracts my attention is the beauty and poise of that young lady and the lovely colour of her hair. She's very photogenic and worth taking a little more time and effort with. Find a more neutral and less distracting background, get in a bit closer and play with more artistic crops. She's worth it

She's a fab model and I do so like that dreamy background. Better for me with a touch more space beneath her tootsies though?

Love the model/makeup, background wallpaper and lighting. Not totally convinced about the PS work to stick the two bodies together though. Others may disagree but I'd rather see two separate shots, one with the skull and one with the roses. All that said, it's refreshingly different and a fine first upload. Welcome to the madhouse

Textures and tones are lovely, as is the light picking out the broken fence-posts and seed heads of the grasses. I'm not totally convinced about your crop though as I feel that the image doesn't have the visual impact that it could or even should have. Maybe worth playing with a tighter crop to position the fence posts more off-centre and make them more of a focal point.

Works for me, and with any manip you're never going to convince all of the people all of the time. Maybe a bit more work required to bed the figure convincingly into the scene but more importantly it's clever and creative, two attributes which are becoming rather rare on EPZ these days.

I like it Linda, and considering that you've not done much of this sort of work before then it's a damned fine start. Just a couple of minor niggles if I may ..... I'd personally reduce the opacity of the Spitfire more in line with the opacity of the rest of the background. It's maybe just a little too "solid" at the moment and competing for attention with the guy? Secondly it looks like you've left the texture overlay on his face which gives the appearance that he's wearing a weird mask. Maybe better to reduce the opacity of the texture overlay on his face or mask it out altogether? Personal opinion of course as there's no rights or wrongs in this game.

And good to meet you yesterday ..... thanks for the ham

HDR and interiors are just made for each other, like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton or bacon and eggs.

I think that most people when they start off with HDR adopt a fairly heavy hand on the tone-mapping controls and end up with something way OTT for many people's taste. With time they usually become more restrained and go for a more natural looking result.

So this for me is over-processed but that said I like the saturated colours, the viewpoint and the bags of detail. I'd suggest maybe correcting the verticals using the image editing program of your choice as the uprights are all over the place at the minute.

Stick with HDR and enjoy yourself .... it's a wonderful technique.

High-contrast, high quality BW conversion Nick. Very eye-catching.

Maybe worth spending some time with the clone tool though as those white flecks on the guy's jersey and the blackboard are an irritation.

Welcome to EPZ Kathryn and what a mighty fine image to start with. The figure is quite stunning .... haunting almost.

For perfection then I'd suggest you need a little more space to the right of the girl and maybe a touch more below her feet. She just looks a little too crammed in to the corner for comfort.

Looking forward very much to seeing more of your work though ........

Ugly but interesting ..... the reflection of the girl adds a nice twist too.

Odd objects with texture overlays really can make for intriguing images as we've seen quite a lot from Chase recently. What I'm not too keen on here though Pete is the luminous green colour of the background and those splashes of brighter green in the shadow areas. Just doesn't seem to suit the subject matter to me.

Have you thought of a contrasty BW conversion along the lines of my quick mod?

It's a well though out shot, and the "sugar rain" is most effective. Possibly worth tweaking this with a subtle S-curve adjustment layer in the photo-editor of your choice, just to bump up the contrast and saturate the reds and greens a little more. Maybe not quite as pin-sharp on the strawberry itself as it could be though.

I like it though .....

I like this type of shot with people portrayed in their "working" environments. You really do need to spend a bit of time tidying this up though .... looks like it could do with a fair bit of CCW rotation and perhaps a little use of a distort tool to get those uprights upright. Worth spending a little more time on it to polish it off nicely IMO.

It's an attractive looking image, and that bright splash of red in the thumbnail draws the viewer in. Better for me if you'd moved to your left and got the bus on an oblique angle to see a touch more of the side.

You might want to look at the lady with the basket as she looks slightly pasted on, maybe even floating above the ground. Compare the contact shadows where the bus tyres touch the ground with the lack of shadows under her feet.

My but I'm niggling for England today

Quote: How would you go about improving the day to night look?

Not altogether sure Jon as it's not something I've ever tried. The reason I niggled is the inconsistency of the light. It's very dark, almost black, in the top right quarter and quite murky on the RHS where the two ladies and the figures beyond are going down the hill. And yet it's really quite bright in the rest of the image. The streetlights although "lit" aren't contributing any atmosphere to the scene ..... I'd expect to see some pools of light with a fall-off of light away from the lamps.

You could maybe try creating a new layer, filling with a dark blue and setting layer blend mode to multiply. Then reduce the layer opacity till you get the "night-time" look you like, and finesse it by masking out some of the opacity over the lamps to create the impression that they're shining through the darkness.

Just some thoughts seeing as how you asked