Calmaria by Ron Beam (contest)
Comment by: Ron Beam

Thanks so much for the member recognition and compliments. One night I noticed flicks of light behind my house, so packed up my bag and tripod and walked to my favorite overlook and was greeted by this sight. Dead silent (not even a shallow after rumble!); lightning strikes about every half second; here, then there from one end of the city of Curitiba to the other. Because it looked to be right over the city, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. I learned later, the tops on these clouds were about 60,000 feet - just massive oceanic cells in combination! The southwest to northeast movement of this phenomenon lasted about an hour and a half, during which time I experimented finding the best combination of settings for clarity, through about 40 photos. This, among the best, was shot with a 60mm lens at f3.5, ISO 800, 3 secs. Shooting normal lightning, I would leave the shutter open much longer and stop down, but any more exposure time and I got too many strikes that then washed out the cloud details. So I opted for open aperature and shorter shutter.

intense by sherry skinner (critique)
Comment by: Ron Beam

I like it a lot, Sherry. The only possible thing I might try, were this my photo, would be to barely lighten the iris in the quadrient opposite the catchlight in order to lift the iris from the pupil a wee bit. Nothing to suggest a change of eye color, but even the darkest eyes (unless profoundly black) have contrast between iris and pupil. This would help "round" the shape of the eyes and add to their depth dimension. Love your processing here. The contrast works so well and yet does not overpower the subject. Good!