beautiful

nice

Cool... if you could get a macro of that (maybe save for a different theme) there are some crazy patterns in that wood

nice

composition is nice, but the highlights are blown out and the shadows are a lil dark.. I know it's hard to balance both in a natural setting like this. If you have the capabliltiy to edit and do some dodge and burn on it, it would deffently help this image. deffently an intersting bird though, thanks for sharing

Love the capture of him looking right at you... nicely done... we also feed the hummers here at home and we have a "sentinel" hummer who will feed briefly and then fly to the wire above the feeder, or in the evergreen tree and sit, wait and watch for others that attempt to come and feed... he chases alot of other hummers away, all except 1-2 others which we assume are his "family"... to make the other happy we have added a 2nd feeder out of sight of his main resting spots, so he can't see it and the others can feed

I'm sorry author, but this image is just way too blasted or overexposed in the whites where the direct sunlight touched t. By that I mean that all relevant details in that white hot area have been washed away by the sun. If it were underexposed, there would be a chance of recovering details through raw adjustments, but there's no replacing details when they are this far gone. It's too bad your subject hadn't taken a couple more steps into the shade, or that you hadn't exposed for the brightest areas, maybe by closing down the aperture or increasing the shutter speed. Nice pose though.

And posing it may have been. I've rarely seen these creatures sitting still. This is a great capture, and to maximize the impact of it's beauty and presence, I'd suggest cropping it to have your subject fill 75% of the frame. It's nearly centered vertically and horizontally, and this wonderfully coloured bird is surrounded presently by so much uninteresting dead space. If the details are there in your original image, I think a tighter crop will increase the vote potential for this fellow. Fill the frame and your viewers will get closer to your humming bird and it's details.

Larimar is an extremely cool stone (and it's never been all that cheap). A little deeper DOF in front would be nice

One of my favorite stones to cut. They always look great and have wonderful chatoyancy

Very creative

Really nice set up with the glass drops surrounding it. Great focus, good lighting without a lot of glare reflection. Nice job!

I like the colours

A photo of a picture or painting?

A beautiful coloured bird

great colours

Whoa! Way to think outside the box for this source image! I always like these creative uses of the source. Nice job, author!

Sweet.

Being that swans are mostly white and the mist on the water already leads to decreased saturation of color, the result is nearly B&W....for the spirit of the contest, although a wonderful shot, I think the subject could have been better chosen...

Looks desaturated now.

This does not look like it has been desaturated by 70%

Lovely, I would crop a bit off the top, the bits hanging down in the middle are distracting.

Love it!

Looks nice, but I wish the top of the tree wasn't cut off

Simply mesmerizing

Lovely rocks, but a couple of suggestions, try using curves to lighten the rocks a little to bring back details in the shadows, but don't lighten the sky, a bit more detail would be great there too. Also the horizon needs straightening, and I'd crop some of the sky, at the moment the horizon is in the middle, crop so the sky take up only 1/3 of the image.

It does look pretty but cold.

I persinally would have turned the bird n not the flower

Author, I hear that Gimp(free program) has a lot of features similar to Photoshop and that, for a free program, it is very well liked.

I think your hummingbird looks pretty good, Maybe make the eye a little more defined.

ooh i never heard of that program so I cant rly even help you there with the tools to use n how and what o.o; kinda cool there's still programs out there that i never heard of that are decent enough to photoshop with

Author, if you take the humming bird on a separate layer, and duplicate it, then blend the top layer with OVERLAY or MULTIPLY, it's definition might come out better and get a bit more detail (you can also play with HIGHPASS or HDR on the top layer and contrast and brightness will help it pop more) the construction is quite nice, very pretty picture for a very difficult source

Good Luck

The bird just looks like a CBR that could have been made from any source image. There's nothing to really distinguish it as being the contest source, and it's not very well made to go with the background. It's just a lumpy hummingbird.

the bird is really nicely made but i dont think it fits well with the background . the background is way sharper, where the bird comes across very bright and really cut out. You can see corners all arround the head of the bird in high res. Also it seems theres an white kinda outline on the head and wing. on the birds back is a darker outline, the shadow you placed is not only on top of the flower but also casted on the leaf behind/slightly above the flower and everywhere inbetween those. The birds position doesnt seem right to be able to put its beak into the flower. try turn it.

In my opinion too many distractive elements for a painting picture, good luck!

Really nice photo, crisp, clean lines, good contrast and focus. I like the clarity of the wood grain in the floor and the table on the left.

Seems a bit cramped on the right side with the table edge cut off, while the left side shows empty space.

Comfy looking chair, but the angle doesn't seem quite right to me.

Great shot, wonderful angle for this shot.

Interesting idea but the pattern is too distracting.

very nice ARt Effect

They are asking "Why are you leaving?"

Good idea here! Very creative and nicely executed.

ROFL Mark...

Which stone inhibits gullibility?

Very festive, I needed that =)

i love CHRISTmas soooo much! i'm counting down the days to decorate my house! 4 more days!

Thanks for the High Res, looks so much better.

Author, suggest you remove you first comment, so you don't confuse the voters, I also suggest you tick;
Save full resolution image. It's to hard to see so many small images in this size.
Go to;
My Stuff
my contest entries
find this entry and click on ;
edit entry
Upload the corrected image (if you have changed it)
remember to tick;
Also save full resolution image.
Your image doesn't need to be enormous, anything between 2.5mg and 3.5mg is plenty big enough.
Good luck

"...25 pictures of an item of your own choice and combine it into one 5x5 image."
An "item" would make me think it needs to be one type of thing...The contest example would seem to support that. But I'm not a mod.