Under the Bridges of Venice

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I agree. But the group leader took and published a very similar shot - www.flickr.com/photos/fotocourses/52460345522 - and I deferred to his judgement.

He also took these: www.flickr.com/photos/fotocourses/52461396853 and www.flickr.com/photos/fotocourses/52460866761. I'd been to Venice several times before but this was my first ride on a gondola.

I would barely have recognised you now you're grown up.

I'm not too keen on your leader's shot either, but it's better balanced than yours, because it doesn't have the post and rope in the way, and it has that semicircular ripple in the foreground. I presume his was taken after yours? Is there any reason for why you both cropped the top of the bridge so tightly above the ornamentation?

The post and rope aren't in the way; they're part of the composition, and provide a bottom edge to the frame.

I don't know if he took his before or after me. Mine hasn't got that ripple but the leftmost boat in it is less intrusive.

Yes there is. The subject is the view through the bridge and is framed by it. Anything above the bridge would be a distraction.
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I'm waiting for you to rubbish my "Venetian Flag" picture, which I'd initially rejected, but with a gondola and gondolier added is IMHO quite pleasing.

If that's part of the composition, it doesn't work very well, as it makes the picture rather skewed. But you were right about rejecting the flag picture. It has that dingy spongy effect (wish you'd tell me what it's called) which makes it quite displeasing.

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To you, perhaps. It isn't "spongy" - definition is good, and as for "dingy" (that's a gondola, not a dingy), for a picture taken under a very overcast sky, which without the processing would certainly be very flat and dull, the painterly lighting effect does make something out of it, which to my eye IS pleasing.

I use those words because I don't know the proper name for this special effect.
So perhaps you would care to enlighten me?

It's a preset in Photomatix called "Painterly". Lightroom and other RAW developers probably have something similar. It turns (otherwise non-) pictures, taken in overcast conditions, particularly ones that include water, into painterly ones, as it says on the tin.

Sorry, l don't agree. It isn't skewed because it doesn't attempt to be a symmetrical composition.

In my opinion, it makes pictures look dingy and horrible: not just yours, but anyone's.

Quite apart from the skewed composition, one has to do a double-take to see what the distant subject is supposed to be, as it doesn't at first glance look like a bridge, but some red thing sticking out of the back of a boat. The whole picture is just a complete mess, whilst your leader's does at least have some balance to it.

But you got your "one good one" with this:
www.ipernity.com/doc/286827/51645474

I agree that is isn't a great picture, and for that reason it was scraped as an afterthought off the bottom of the barrel. But as one of a set of pictures it was worth uploading, if nothing else to provide variety.

And in my opinion it does the opposite, so we'll have to agree to differ on that.

I would be interested to see the original.

If you prefer this to the processed version, then chacun a son gout.

Oh, infinitely better! The processed one is quite hideous.

Eine Postkarte.