Fortnightly competition - No. 24 Menace & Foreboding

Here's mine with thanks to my friend with teh guns.




Taken 15th September
K10D
35mm f2
Two flash
Something like f11 at 180th

The menacing hour has been reached, 18:00 GMT, so competition closed.

I'll post results after 20:00 tonight.

Quite a range of images this week, from dark and menacing to disturbing.

Not all the images had the exif data intact, so I couldn't confirm date of capture. But as all Pentaxian's are honest, I'll take your word that they are all within the rules. Some even admitted wrong doing as they posted their image, this caused me huge headaches.


Tony-O
Certainly complies with the theme, dark and brooding.
The picture seems to lean to the left, I would be temped to straighten this.
The person being stalked is just out of focus and the people in the distance are even more out of focus, but this just adds to the mystery and sense of menace.

Malo1961
Fantastic image. Dusty old axe, cob-webs and blood, very dark and menacing. I hope you didn't have to open up a vein for the effect. The lighting is excellent and shows the texture in both the axe and table. Could be a poster for Hollywood's next slasher movie.

darlene
I think this is actually the most disturbing image here !
I would like to have seen it a bit larger and maybe with the background a little out of focus, it also looks very cramped the way you have presented it.

Lilly
I thought I would have seen a few images with dark menacing sky's, but not so. This one certainly stands out. Good use of different images, I wonder how many you used ? At least 3 ? The shoes are a good idea, was the person swept out to sea, or something more sinister ?

mr. mellow
What a monster of a conker. Looks more like alien seed.
I might have desaturated the green grass a bit, as it is fighting for attention with the red of the conker, and maybe darken the overall image. It is as sharp as it could be, may show a little camera shake ?

JudithAnn
Sign him up for an anger management course right away. I would have liked to have seen this image a little larger too. Good sharp image and the look on his face is well captured. I would be tempted to zoom in a bit, to the head and shoulders.

aquadan005
The image is a bit dark ( ? ) for me, especially toward the bottom. It may display better as a high contrast B&W image. You could have put someone behind the bars ?

andrewk
The slug would find this menacing, but doesn't quite work for me.

hefty1
A menace to the local fly population. Good sharp image, perhaps needs a little more brightening or contrast to lift it .

Karl
I think the bright background is a good contrast to the dark of the face, but it just looks a bit like someone sitting on the grass with a mask on, it needs a scary environment ? I think that the face looking through a window, would be very menacing and quite scary.

Belinda B.
I wondered what this was at first, with all the bright colours, I thought it might have been one of JR's. Not easy to see exactly what is going on.

mecrox
Seems to be quite a lot going on here, I think more of the hat in the foreground, with the background more out of focus would be the way to go. Good detail in the hat, but I keep looking around for something to focus on.

Dr. Mhuni
I like the way the head is appearing through it's surroundings. A little bright in places and the colours may be a bit strong.

mikew
Very menacing. Focus and depth of field are spot on. I tried leveling up the gun a bit, and cropping some of the blackness at the top of the image, added some brightness and some contrast, which seemed to improve the image for me. I think it needs less back background, which makes the gun stand out more. Maybe a little smoke coming out of the barrel ?

1st - Malo1969 - fits the theme well, wonderful lighting, good imagination

2nd - Tony-O - dark and moody - makes you wonder what's going on, looks a bit like a still from a 'Film - Noir"

3rd - darlene - I can see why you would take a picture of the T-shirt, but why did you make her stand in a bin ? And why the black bag over the head ? Don't know if I would like to be in your house at halloween.

Karl and mikew got close to a podium finish too.

Special mention to Lilly for a stunning image, and yes, the headaches are getting less.

Just my views on the set of images displayed, I'm sure you will all have your own.

Congratulations to Galoot for some speedy judging and to Martin for another great image - looking forward to the next topic

Excellent judging and a very good winning shot although I think I might have gone for Karl's pig mask but then again Martin's shot is more complete.

Mike

Thanks John, you just made me eight years younger. My wife sends you her love also.

Thanks for the first. The blood is actually "ox blood red" paint. I pondered a long time to add the blood or not. And adding perhaps some chicken feathers on the table as a slight hint.
At the end I settled for the less disturbing one.

You....of course did a wonderful job, judging this round.
I was quite taken by Lilly's entrie. Perhaps not within the rules but absolutely stunning and worth mentioning, as you did.

I will try to come up soon with the next theme.

Cheers Galoot and congrats to Martin and the others. Time for bed - Arsenal (my second team) 2-0 down.

Congratulations to Martin - a carefully crafted image.

Thank you to Galoot for a challenging competition.

With the recent media interest in the Beatles, my entry was inspired by the psychedelic images of the late 60's and was not intended to be instantly understood

Well done Galoot, sorry to be a pain in the A!

Super image Martin, I too thought it looked like a DVD horror movie cover, very realistic.

Darlene's was very disturbing, that very straightforward newsy mono conversion added some edge

My entry was 3 separate layers, the flip flops was the hard bit, learnt a few new PS techniques there, But this is what it is all about...........they ran for higher ground!

Lilly

Hi Galoot,Thanks for the sweet spot No2.Your right about the lean,didn't see it till after it had been uploaded.
Congrats to Martin,all i can say is,there must be some BIG spiders in your shed.Judging by the amount of blood and cobwebs. Tony.

Congrats to the winner, a cracking shot. Thanks for judging the comp, Galoot. A lot going on in all these pics, as those dark winter nights start to beckon closer and the wind begins to howl ...

Congrats to the winner! The judgeing is alwasy a pleasure to read

Well you see I thought the shrit wasn't enough.....so I put the person in it.... who it belonged too.... she was far to beautiful for the darkside.....sooooo grabage and hoddie head seem to fit the subjest....

We both had lots of fun

Darlene, what I found so deeply disturbing about your picture was that it made me immediately think of those Iraquis who were tortured by American soldiers.

Ken

Congrats to all the winner and as always to our judge


I guess she found a picture that really fit the bill....of the 'DARK SIDE"

Looking forward to our next assignment...as always