Congratulations to Wcherba on a worthy winner of the photo contest! An attractive subject, a muted background (which many other photos lacked), and good colour.

However, there is room for improvement. For one, the flowers at the bottom have been cut off. Also, the bird is very central, which is not usually recommended, it is better to put the subject around one third of the way across the image. This could have been done by cropping the picture on the right, which would remove some rather untidy branches and simplify the image.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle!

pikaia said:Congratulations to Wcherba on a worthy winner of the photo contest! An attractive subject, a muted background (which many other photos lacked), and good colour.

However, there is room for improvement. For one, the flowers at the bottom have been cut off. Also, the bird is very central, which is not usually recommended, it is better to put the subject around one third of the way across the image. This could have been done by cropping the picture on the right, which would remove some rather untidy branches and simplify the image.

Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle!

In a juried event, the very most critical element is to know your judges.

Who is to say that were your suggestions followed, the outcome would have been similar...let alone better?

The results are what they are - including the vote margin.

And, really...an usolicited, public critique of the winning photo seems petty to me. If I ran the circus, this kind of thing would happen in treemail if it happened at all.

Congratulations, Wcherba! Great shot.

That said... pikaia, you had some really outstanding submissions. Really wonderful stuff. I'm impressed with both your talent and skills that you exhibit in your photos.

(afterthought edit - one of the quirks of this contest is that the shots are auto-cropped to a square out of the middle...making it, effectively, two photos. The square-crop (in very small screen real estate) must be compelling enough on its own to garner votes. Sadly, some people don't look at the whole shot as the photographer intended/cropped to. And it also must be compelling enough to earn a click so that the whole photo will be seen. With nearly 4,000 entries, have to guess that few, if any, voters looked at every photo in its entirety when voting.

What I mean by that is that for this contest (and not broader art), perhaps the bird dead center in the thumbnail was the right call. The results seem to indicate that might be more than a random assertion.)

Thank you for your congratulations. I appreciate the critique, and I know that there is always room for improvement. Since this was my first time in any kind of photo contest I couldn't have been more excited to think that there were others who liked my photo, as there most certainly were some beautiful ones!

Having no concern for anonymity regarding my vote, I have to say that I loved the picture in question and voted for it without any hesitation.

As Asa said, ' Who is to say that were your [pikaia's] suggestions followed, the outcome would have been similar...let alone better? '

And I agree that pikaia and Wcherba both had outstanding photographs. As did Asa.

tx_flower_child said:Having no concern for anonymity regarding my vote, I have to say that I loved the picture in question and voted for it without any hesitation.

As Asa said, ' Who is to say that were your [pikaia's] suggestions followed, the outcome would have been similar...let alone better? '

And I agree that pikaia and Wcherba both had outstanding photographs. As did Asa.

Although I have a rudimentary awareness of good photo composition, I have yet to get a hummingbird to stick around long enough to get it in the viewfinder at all, much less where I really want it.
Congratulations, Wcherba!

I know what you mean. On the other hand, try crows on a wire. Once they line up, they just sit and stare and creep people out. Or initiate a lot of debates about why they do it.