Hi Elaine
Catch up time for me again!
Spiral .... Staircase, Love this one what a cracking spiral (would double up well for silhouette
) some fantastic patterns going on there, really nice....and its highlighted well with that lovely blue sea behind! What a pity it can no longer be used.
Silhouette .... think its going to be the Iron railings.... the little boat stands out against all the highlights in the water, but the water seems a little overpowering. The railings give a nice clean cut silhouette. No3 is very nice right up my street just wondering if the horizon is a tad off from the shirt bit we see. Like this so I'm going for No3 golden light on the water silhouette of the yacht
Animal.... No3 again for me pity you just lost the tail but nicely focused, very nice detail, texture and colour. Love the expression on the lizards face
Medicine .... Like the idea you have gone to the trouble of finding an Aloe Vera plant to use as the backdrop. Turn to alcohol if all else fails
. Focus spot on, nice composition.
Proverb..... I'm going to go with red sky at night sailors delight ( as I was one ). But like the shot best great light on the water. Bit of a funny greenish halo around the sun though. Also like the composition in 2, nice light. I think the text is important in this context. BTW little circle of flare directly above the R in red in case you hadn't spotted it
Pale.... Nice shot, shame on the shop for charging you full price! At least you saved most of the day with some shrewd PP well done well recovered! Fits the theme well and nicely recovered
Tear .... Good idea fits the theme, think the conversion was a good move as the Harsh light probably would have killed the colour .
And.... Mr Turtles back, still looking happy!
Word.... Think the wood grain is fine, no problem there, nice bold colour. Think I might have just toned down the spine of the first book just a tad, I'd just run down the spine with a burn brush in PS. Nice shot and like the layout and composition.
Support .... I like to help the poor old bees too. Fished one out of our pond he dried out and flew off. And I kick them out of my workshop else they get caught up in the spider webs and I have saved some plucking them out of the webs, much to the spiders disgust.
Like all these shots but my favourite is No3 great close up, lovely detail, nice DOF.
Religious.... Nice concept, makes a very effective picture. Very difficult and a lot of work for you. One technique that might have helped you select all those coins and set up a black background is using a luminosity mask, in a nutshell that is making a selection in the image based on the light values. So with all those bright coins you could have probably selected them all and held them on a layer and set a background of black.
Basically you use the channels palette and create a mask for each level of brightness so lights right through to darks, so essentially you can pick out all the light areas ( or dark ) and make a quick selection based on that. If you feel that way inclined just google luminosity masks, just another PS tool! Really helpful sometimes!
Nice Work
All the best Steve