Are the trees painted at the bottom, or wrapped in something? Is it for aesthetics? It definitely gives them an interesting "personality" in your photo, when combined with the effects of the wind!

The shadows on the ground, which give the impression of a back light, do not correspond with the high contrast highlights/shading on the totems which give the impression of a very strong left hand side light source. Other than that, a bit formulatic and bland, but nice. Good luck, author.

Yeah, author. Why didn't you tell that white one to get out of the way, you were taking an important picture??? LOL!
Great photo, the white eel helps the camouflage of the large one.

Very nice focus, you can see the water droplets making up the spray mist!

Really nice capture of the acrylic covers over the numbers. Wonderful magnification effect. Good job!

Great back lighting illumination of the waters!

Wonderful mood and lighting. Makes this a very dramatic image!

Isn't the standard answer-slash-excuse supposed to be, "But, it's a FANTASY...?" LOLOL!
Works for a lot worse technical entries around here by a lot higher ranked members... If the crits about discrepancies in shadows and focus sharpness was applied to EVERY entry in this contest, not just this particular one, I think it would hold about as much water.

I don't quite see how a nude female necessarily connotes "lust." While the viewer may or may not feel the emotion by looking at her, her pose is not lustful, nor are her surroundings lusty...It's a fairly modest pose, and you cannot even make out if she has an expression of "lust" on her face...

Nice, except it's crooked, and leaning down to the right. Although it's a bit blurry, if you straighten it out, it will help quite a bit.

The lighting is a bit wonky, with bright highlights on the bad girl, but nowhere else in the image...and the highlight on her skirt is not consistent with the highlights on the left hand side boot (which is different than the highlight on the right hand side boot) and her skin...
Also, the blurry section by her feet is distracting.

Very nice concept, but the technical execution leaves a bit to be desired.

Those cookies look SOOOOOooooo good! Excellent focus and color. Nice lighting!

The bristles are a little too flat, so that the individual strands are not discernible - it just looks like a solid black mass. Perhaps you could have a bit more ambient light to show the strands, or some small highlights...

Beautiful photo!

Perhaps stronger lighting on the bee would have helped. Without color, it just loses a lot of the "bee-ness," and is merely a dark fuzzy thing with wings, IMO.

What spices are they?

Really nice reflections, particularly with the ambient and reflective light sources.
The only nit pick is the tiles on the left start to lose their square shape, and become a bit rectangular. Still though, an overall great job!

Hard to even imagine the "beautiful and engaging..."

Interesting effect, but it just seems a bit lifeless in black and white, although the wing is in excellent detail.

Hilarious! Looks like a combination demolition derby and an apocalypse film all rolled into one! Nice work.

Kitties!!!
Very nice work on the faces.

Very imaginative illustration. I like the subtle lighting of the fox in the background. Well done!

Great photo. It almost looks like someone tried braiding them. The green plants growing between them add a very nice color contrast. Wonderful find!

There's a bit too much of the "HDR halo" effect around the jar, which combined with the depth of focus blur of the other objects makes this a bit hard to look at. Perhaps dropping the contrast down just a wee bit to soften the highlights would help.

Wonderful "before and after" model! Well done with the background and the hair.

I like the stipple work, but the fuzzy thing (shading?) between the edge of the nose and the eye on the right side is visually confusing.

Only if he's backing up. Perhaps you are not familiar with older locomotives, but that engine is facing the viewer, not the broken track behind it...

The image makes no sense, because you've put the "dead end' BEHIND the engine, not in front of it...Interesting idea, but it just misses the mark a bit...

A little too much lean to the right, but beautiful lighting and depth, especially the contrasting green plant on the left.

I had to look twice to see the yellow spider. How unusual!
I like it a lot, that it's eating a wasp - I don't care for them much at all - Go spider! Nom nom nom.

Wonderful capture, with great color!

The backlight doesn't work. Your subject is too dark, and is hard to make out at being an insect, it's just a stick like shape. Back light is only effective when the subject is easy to "read." If it is complicated or unusual, more ambient light is needed if you want the viewer to be able to see and appreciate it.

Beautiful capture, fantastic clarity. Fascinating "pose" by the spider, with it's legs like that. Nice work!

Ummm. So what's the ugly and what's the lovely visually, here?

Fun set up. I knew this wouldn't be the easiest of photographic challenges, but would turn out some truly entertaining compositions. Good job.

I had this idea in mind, but could not manage to make it look like anything but a bunch of pipes...You've done a wonderful job of bringing it to life and making it look magical and mystical. Wonderful depth!

Wow. That is truly beautiful between the shape and the depth. Awesome find.

Awful bright for twelve o'clock...You need to add some shadows on the princess on the side that is facing away from the strong light rays you have coming off the side of the building. She looks out of place without them.

I LOVE the light ray coming through the hand. This turned out super great. Very imaginative and well done.

A bit too yellow from the incandescent lighting, but great perspective and focus.

Thankfully it's not that easy for us to eat the food we see on TV...lol! The flash is a bit distracting, but overall, very nice photo!

Good job!

Great idea!!!
But you have a white outline around your tomatoes. Reducing the shape selection around them by 1 px, and then feathering the edge by about .03 should help

The canvas texture is too dark, so it doesn't look like "real acrylic watercolor on canvas." It just looks like too heavy a digital canvas texture.
Also the trees on the side have no texture or paint effect, so they just look like pasted on tree distortions.

It's an interesting digital technique, it just needs a bit more polishing to not look quite so artificial.

Was it the Sushi Tei restaurant? They serve their green tea ice cream like this. It's such a beautiful presentation, almost too pretty to eat! Very nice photo.

Great photo. I've never seen a snail look so attractive before. Really nice focus!

Definitely time for a re-potting, that poor baby is truly root bound! Nice shadows, but I would have liked to see more of the pot on the left, just for a better sense of composition. This composition places too much dominance on the broken large broken shards, and not enough on the roots.

VERY dramatic change. Excellent work on the lighting of her skin matching the clothes and boots. Great job.

It is a truly beautiful photo, capturing the delicate form and giving it a sense of the web spinning life it once had. Very stunning photo.

WOW! What a difference that made! MUCH much better, I'm glad I waited to vote. High score from me, you've done a wonderful job!

It's so dark and monochromatic, you can neither make out the differences between all the sources you used, nor appreciate the wide variety of different items creating the foodscape.
Carl Warner lets the food be the landscape, not hide it behind overly dark values. Perhaps lighten it up and allow some of the real color to show.