===== From ekaiser@camden.tds.net: Cool. Nice shrubs and building. Textures need work, though ===== From bobfranke@halcyon.com: Nathan, it looks a bit rushed. I hope the new job is not taking too much of you time. The background is kind of flat; it needs something to give the feeling of depth. Nice job on the foreground ruin and plant placement. Gilles does make a nice tree. ===== From whhale@nvl.army.mil: As usual youve captured the essence of the Ruins Round. One comment though...No erosion. The blocks look perfect for being exposed for centuries. ===== From chris@bluelectrode.com: Except for the otherwise distracting title bars, great image. ===== From ddombrow@vt.edu: I guess the only suggestion I could make would be to say that the building blocks are a little too perfect. I'd like to see a little more weathering. Great image overall though. ===== From white@rational.com: Nice image. I thought the mountains looked a little flat and blended in too much with the building. ===== From marlo.steed@uleth.ca: I liked the look of this one... very realist looking...photorealism is high. ===== From mibmlr@hotmail.com: Great Image! I'd like to see the photograph. Near the bottom, the grass does not look quite right where it meets the brick road. Great Job! ===== From taymac@peaknet.net: the felling of ruins comes across bueatifully in this work. the blending of the lost and ruined temple with the plants overtakin and thriving on the once great structure..great technical work ===== From Alain.Culos@bigfoot.com: Fantastic composition. Yes, a very good submission. ===== From jouni@mikrobitti.fi: All right Nathan, you did what we expected of you. Architectural design is your game, and the structure looks fairly nice. Though I wonder, why not even the sharpest edges have cracks on them. This bothers me especially when looking at the protrusion above the doorways. I think that stone would normally crumble down in somewhat smaller chunks that it had done in your image. Is the stone is a bit too mottled, as well? I would've expected a bit more worn-out look. Plants on the foreground are cool, too bad that they suffer seriously from the 800x600 resolution. Despite the explanation you gave, the bare naked tree fits pretty badly into a green-shaded scene. Lovely background you made out of it. BTW, have to wonder why did you choose to use such prominent frames for the image. I was prepared to find the legendary 13 engraved into the stone base of some building. ;-) Having said all that, it's time to give the praise: it's definitely one of the best and most solid images this round. A good total score should propel you up the ranks again. ===== From chris_darcy@yahoo.com: Great. Composition needs a little work. The tree needs to be off to the left or probably the right. The mountains need to contrast the stone a little more. Top picture. ===== From webmaster@freegraphics.com: This is, without doubt, the best *presentation* of an image that I have seen in the IRTC. Very nicely done. ===== From StephenF@whoever.com: Nice work... the plants and tree really help the scene work. Buildings are good too, although I think the pieces of the building could use a more decayed look. Also, I personally found the border to be distracting. ===== From jaime@ctav.es: Very productive hollidays! Great architecture, as usual. Perhaps the tree is too central on the composition, but being a Giles' tree, it's not a pain. ===== From clem@dhol.org: The ruins are good, but the clipped aspect damages them and putting a bogus fake frame in the wasted space adds insult to injury. The plants are very good. The mountain texture doesn't really work. The look more like mounds of dirty sugar candy. Oddly, this seems to be the only case of "weed choked ruins" that comes to mind this round. I like that effect. The rocks in the near background are also quite good. ===== From mar@physics.usyd.edu.au: Very nicely detailed. The tree looks a bit unreal though, and the hills in the background seem somehow flat, like a painted backdrop just a metre or so behind the walls. Still, you can't argue with that foreground. ===== From sjlen@ndirect.co.uk: This is a well presented image. The bolders aren't easy to make out, they look like soil. I'm sure those mountains in the background should be more yellow and brown than gray. Real nice work with the vegetation. I'd also expect to see some rubbish here like cigarette boxes, coke can's and empty Evian bottles etc.