Thank Ranmali and welcome to the group and your first upload. Composition of your photo is good in my opinion. It's a general street scene, well done on this. I think for human interest such images have it difficult to be accepted in a contest. The unsharp pigeon in the front is very good. You could have cropped the image a bit in my opinion to have to 2 sitting men closer to the viewer. The colours are very soft, I would have tried maybe a black and white version with a bit more contrast.   Posted: 03/09/2026 09:48:48

Welcome to the group, Ranmali. I concur with Christian that HR images find it difficult to receive acceptances in PJD, but we keep plugging away. If you get frustrated in competition in PJD, I would like to suggest that you try entering these images in travel competitions, as there is a crossover, and what doesn't work for PJD, might work in travel, especially in the new travel star path, PTDW, where just about anything goes. I think your image tells a story that you articulated in your description and that's a major requirement for PJD, absent for travel competitions. I concur with Christian about your composition, and I'll go further to say I wouldn't crop anything, but I am bothered by the blurry pigeon. Given the settings you used that's understandable, but if you thought the pigeon was about to take flight, you could have upped your shutter speed to remove the blur, but again the pigeon may not have let it be know that it was going to take flight. I would also suggest that you compensate at -.3, as the slight underexposing makes the colors bolder. Although it looks like your image was priory exposed, the compensation would have made your colors brighter.   Posted: 03/09/2026 15:04:16

Hello Ranmali. Congratulations on joining the wide world of PJ. This is a peaceful image of life on the streets. With all the shutters closed we can only imagine this is before the chaos of the day starts. The pigeons in the foreground are a nice addition. I note in your description that you mention you 'cleaned up the debris in the street'. In Photojournalism there are strict rules about what you can and can't do to an image, and removing items (such as cloning or object removal) is NOT permitted in photojournalism (but you can remove the trash before you take the picture). It might be worth your while to have a look at the allowable/ non allowable editing rule that can be found here:
https://psaphotoworldwide.org/general/custom.asp?page=division-definitions
Scroll down until you see the editing matrix.
So given that there are allowable techniques I have tried the following on your image:
I have reduced the exposure and straightened up the verticals. I have also cropped a little to draw more attention to the men sitting on the step.
While I do agree with Christian and Alan, that this image is unkilely to be successful in a PJ - Human Interest competition, it is a lovely image of daily life and a nice start to your PJ journey.   Posted: 03/12/2026 01:39:09