Fortnightly Competition no # 12: Your best shot ever.

Not my "Best Shot Ever" but probably my most pleasing from the last two weeks.

[IMG]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd37/hefty1969/competition%20stuff/IMGP6109.jpg[/IMG]

K10D | Zeiss Pancolar 50mm | f/4 | 1/45sec | ISO400

RAW conversion exactly "as shot" without sharpening, contrast, etc adjustments. No cropping either!

Red Kite trying to steal something from another bird of prey




Camera: Pentax K20D
Exposure: 1/2000
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Taken: 20th March 2009 at 15:57
Again, probably not by best shot ever, but the best from the last two weeks

Robert.

Best in the last week, maybe...




Converted from RAW, resized and untouched.
*istDS with 50mm f1.7 Pentax-F, ISO 1600, 1/160 @ f2.8
taken on March 27th

Competition is now closed. So load up your guns, sharpen your knifes and prepare for sheer evil paying you a visit. Results will be posted asap.

Martin.

Oh Dear

I wonder who the winner will be, luckely Martin has a lot of experience with judging. I wouldn't want to stand in his shoe with this kind of diversity.

Sorry I didn't upload one, I just got some time now for the photos I shot yesterday. Better luck next time

Good luck with judging.

He doesn't scare me....much


I can always exorcise his evil

Did he say asap or a slap!! Oh Lummy!!!

Well.........here I am, facing the challenge of judging this competition. A competition with a twist. I dumped the gauntlet right between you in a attempt to attract as much attention as possible. Well.....attention was given, but not as suspected. 4 pages of discussion in the comment section against nearly one and a half page of pictures.I have been accused of coming up with a cunning plan, leaving you with the impossible task of for filling this rounds theme. Namely: Take your best shot!

Leaving everyone free in picking his/her personal favourite subject and have a go with that.And looking at the entries I can only conclude that each of you, took the extra mile to produce something extra ordinary. So I am a bit confused here. Why didn't more people enter. Was it the fear of the unknown, the way I would pass judgement or the inability to handle the freedom of choice. We will never know. Someone predicted a massive avalanche of bird pictures. Looking at our gallery, you might indeed expect that.Wow....3 bird pictures in total, while the first one actually shouldn't be categorized like that.

Anyway.....I don't know if this fortnightly format is going to survive the future. It will, If I can help it. I still find it a great pleasure to produce something special, for the occasion. It keeps you sharp, forces you to rethink your options and above all, provides a lot of fun. Talking of fun, enough with the foreplay. Here are the results. And....please remember. Only one man's honest opinion is given, so it shouldn't be considered: The Holy Grail !!

Tony-O; Approaching Stork:
Well, this is a wonderful kick - off from this round. You captured the bird at the right moment. You can see the quality of the 21 LTD here.
The picture is tack sharp and full of detail. The abandoned stone factory ? must bee a joy to explore with the camera. One thing puzzles me.
Why did you decide on the monochrome ? I can imagine the clear blue sky and earth brow tones of the building. This with perhaps a hint of red
from the beak of the stork. Would the sky be a bit more dramatic, with some clouds to add to the scene. Than I would have understood your choice.
Now I am not sure. But....overall it is a nice example of a bird adapting to its environment. Well done.

Bob and his Pentax: Hawk Moth:
And there you are, with a beautiful subject in front of you, almost posing for you by sitting absolutely still. (1/13 sec at F6,3)
But the glass spoils it for me. Now there is a softness over the picture that takes down the quality of the DA* used here.
This kind of pictures aren't savable by sharpening it up, because it will show. And that is to bad. I can understand why you took the shot,
You did everything else by the book.The composition is great, and also the diagonal placement of the tree branch.
Even the background blur behind the tree shows a beautiful bokeh. But the main subject needs to be pin sharp.
And that........simply wasn't possible knowing the conditions. To bad.

Paulyrichard: Cloud Busting:
A beautiful subject under great conditions. It is sharp were it should be (showing the quality of the lens used) and the converging lines
work in a great manner to the strength of the picture. I am not sure if the mono conversion adds to the picture or not. The fluffy clouds
are in the best possible position, but for them to really work they could have been a bit more lighter. You went a great way in preserving detail
but overall I think it lacks a bit contrast to really jump at the viewer. Other than that, well done.

Prieni: Western Mole:
And this is found right at your home town? Some guys have all the luck. But somehow....I know luck hasn't got anything to do with it.
Being there at the right time is key here. And for that, you have to pre-visualise a particular scene beforehand and make sure you are all set up
when Mother Nature starts with her light show. This can only be achieved by getting dirt on your boots. And then.....sometimes you are lucky.
Compositional there is almost nothing to fault here. Everything you see belongs there. The longer you look, the more you discover.
Notice the person at the end of the pier? The perfect star shaped light of the light house. Or the way the fence on the left is perfectly
aligned with the horizon. And the colours. They don't need any extra mentioning. One minor point, to consider. Try cropping off the far left side
of the picture, so that the construction with the person and wind vane roughly fall within the rule of thirds. It will balance the shot better, I think.
Other than that. A picture that deserves its place in a fine art gallery.

Father Ted: Horse portrait:
If only.......that ISO setting. You mentioned it already. And you are right. Ain't it typical? Lovely weather conditions, a beautiful and willing subject.
Nice light and most important. You are there with a camera. It would have been a great shot. But now it is to noisy for me.
This shot only works in colour, when it is noise free and with all the detail you can get out of the file. If I was you, and I had to work with this picture I would have tried to turn the disadvantage (noise) into your favour. How??? Convert it to black and white, burn in the dark parts, add a lot of contrast and to finish it off, add extra noise with the size of golf balls. Try it out. You will be surprised.

Belinda B: Glass abstract:
This is what I like about macro lenses. The ability to pick out detail from things you normally wouldn't notice. And this picture is a perfect example. The reflections, the shapes and the metallic look ,,,,,,all put together in a kaleidoscopic form. It keeps you wondering were you are looking at. It has everything it needs. Sharpness, form and interest. Everyone who loves modern art, would love this hanging on his wall. Printed big and nicely framed. Well done!

Hyram: Trick of the light:
Well....,this surely is a reflection. And a very good one too. You must have polished the bonnet really good. It acts like a real mirror.
I like the contrast of the reflected wall with the cool blue colour of the car. The only thing that puts me down is the real world wall besides the car. Somehow it takes away my view from the bonnet. And that a shame. Wasn't there the possibility to exclude it from the frame? Maybe by moving to a different standpoint? Or would that have killed the reflection. I don't know. I really want to like this shot, but the background wall just spoils it for me. Sorry.

Galoot: Talbot classic:
This is a lovely picture John. And knowing it only took you 1/10 th of a second to take it, you shouldn't moan about : giving you only two weeks.
I think it was rather generous of me. A classic beauty, a great viewpoint and the lovely silver and gold colour mixture of tones.
There isn't much to fault here. If I would nit-pick, I could suggest some creative PS to get rid of the car on the left. That would make this
picture even better. Other than that. A great job, very well executed.

Pschlute: A man with his dog??
This has a very calm, relaxing atmosphere over it. Lovely earth coloured tones and a beautiful background bokeh in the woods.
It gives a feeling of loneliness and mystery at the same time. As if you don't know what is waiting there for that man.
He obviously is one with nature, and really tuned in with his surroundings. Is it a dog, following him in his footsteps, or am I seeing things that don't exist. The only thing I am not sure of, is the square format, you used. Cropping off the lowest part just half way beneath the man, improves the shot a bit. Nevertheless, a wonderful picture.

Dr. Mhuni: Little A playing:
This is a lovely capture. You must have steady hands. Even with SR on. I really like the atmosphere you managed to get here.
The dark surroundings, the colour purple (no pun intended) of her dress and the sheer concentration visible on her face.
But....., I wonder if it was possible to get a bit lower. In a way her face would be a bit more visible She seems so preoccupied with her game,
that she probably wouldn't notice you, performing a Houdini act to capture her expression in the full.

Thordell: Butterfly on flowers:
I won't punish you for the small violation of exceeding the max. pixel limit. This picture could have been perfect. The butterfly is almost complete in focus, only the left wing misses critical sharpness.You used a aperture of F6,3 at 1/200 sec. I think you could have stopped down 2 more stops leaving you a manageable 1/50 sec to freeze movement. And at the same moment getting the whole butterfly critical sharp. The blurry background certainly adds to the mood, but a slightly different viewpoint would have prevented those green leaves creeping in the frame at the top and bottom left side. This kind of detailed shots often stand out by paying attention to those little details. And these little details can also break down the picture, if they aren' t noticed at the stage of photographing.

GlynM: Blackbird:
This is a nice shot, showing a bird in it's natural environment. There is enough room around the head to breath, but some grass twigs are still a bit distracting. The eye is tack sharp and you managed to get a fair amount of detail in the feathers. And because these little creatures never show any willingness to pose for you, and thereby making your life a bit easier, you did a good job here. I would suggest to crop of a bit from the right, so the bird would be placed on a third of the picture. Now it sits dead centre and that usually isn't the best place to be, compositionally speaking. Other than that, well done.

RR: Little Billy Wind.
A beautiful place to explore, certainly around those golden hours of the day. But looking at this picture I can't help thinking that you over worked the overall mood of this picture. I don't understand the reason for expanding the HDR in this particular scene. It just doesn't seem right. I don't want to come over as a basher of new technologies but bare with me, for a moment while I explain my thoughts here. First the slight halo, visible at the edges of the mill.(result of tone mapping?) Than the uneven detail in the background scene. On the bottom left pitch black with no detail at all, to the right unnatural detail in the woods, given the place of the setting sun.If you would have waited for the sun to sink beneath the hill, and use an ND grad to even out the sky with the foreground, you would have kept enough detail in the brickwork of the mill. Without the artificial look. Call me old fashion if you want.I know new technology has it's merits, but it shouldn't be used, just for the sake of it. Sorry.

Coriander: A Wiltshire Sunset:
Any particular reason why you submitted this picture so small ?? Most of the members would like to present there picture way beyond the 800 px. limit, because presentation wise Big is usually better. And in this case I would have loved this one at least at it's full size possible. The colours are beautiful captured and it is sharp were it should be.The tree branches provide a nice frame, but I think there is to less visible at the bottom. The crop, in camera or during pp is to aggressive for my taste, and therefore giving us a incomplete picture of a otherwise great sunset. What strikes me in general and not only during competitions, is the fact a lot of members explain the shot was taken hand held. Praising the capabilities of the SR function. If they would use a tripod instead, they would have been slowed down in their picture taking process And by doing that, have the opportunity to rethink/consider their composition a bit. It would have paid off.

Hefty 1: Flowers:
Before I saw the added info, I knew this was OLd Glass being used. It has a special 3D signature recognizable for every one who is familiar with the old optics. Zeiss, Takumar, Voightlander...,they all provide that beautiful colour rendition and background blur. This is a wonderful example of the capabilities of those M42 optics in the hands of someone, knowing how to handle the limitations of the Dslr combined with screw mount lenses. I think it is indeed very pleasing to the eye, with a dreamy kind of quality. Exposure is spot on and the same cam be said for sharpness. The only minus is the way you composed the shot. The contrast between the white table ( should be there) and the dark left hand side (shouldn't be there) is to great for my taste. I tried to improve the picture by cropping it out, but there isn't enough room left to work with. To bad, because otherwise it would ended in to top region of this competition.

Rob: Red Kite attack:
What a wonderful moment to capture. Sheer brutality and opportunism at work here. I love the way, the victim takes a very defensive pose. I'll guess the bully got away with it, in grabbing a quick snack. It is one of those moments every thing must turn out well, for the photographer to produce a price winning shot. And in this case mother luck decided against you. If the Kite would have been in focus, especially his head , beak and trump , you would have a fantastic shot on your hands. I can' t blame you, or fault you for anything. Sometimes all things fall together, and more than often they don' t ! As a wildlife photographer you know in advance you can't force the players in your field of frame. And that must drive you insane, sometimes.

Gartmore: Ballet:
When I saw this at first, I immediately thought: Ernst Haas. I have made this comparison on other occasions with your ballet work, visible in the gallery. Unfortunately for you, Ernst Haas was using negative emulsions capable of producing a much pleasing grain, as the digital noise we have to deal with, these days. Remembering previous work of you, I am a bit surprised you stayed with colour on this one. The ugly blue spots, visible on the neck of the first two girls, and also in the area of nose, eye and ear are a bit of a break down for me. I quickly converted it to monochrome and saw what I suspected. A better picture in a high grain old fashioned way is showing it's beauty. Composition wise there is nothing to fault here. I noticed you haven't done any PP here besides resizing. I would like to have the opportunity in a later stadium to have a go on the colour version, and find out what is possible to make this picture even better. Because...,let there be no misunderstanding. This is a great picture, despite the noise factor.

And all the above leaves me to those final lines. Here we go.


First Place: Prieni
Why?? As you can read in my comments, it comes as close to perfection as I could wish for. The cropping issue is stictly personal,
but besides that, it is technically and aestheticly of such a high level, it deserves the highest honour. Well done Ralf!

Second place: Galoot.
Why?? The overall tonallity of the silver and gold colours, the way you achieved symmetrie and handled the reflections. All of that shows
a great craftmansship. It is a very difficult subject. And you did a wonderful job, with this picture of a classic car. Congrats !!

Third place: Gartmore.
Why?? I wanted this one to end higher in the ranks. It could have been the overall winner, but your decisions on colour, and not doing PP
to better it, withheld me from that. But again......It is a fantastic shot and therefore it deserves to be in the top three. Big thumbs up!

Highly commended: Pschlute
Because you succeeded in creating a feeling of lonelyness and mysterie in a picture very pleasing to the eye.

Commended: Dr, Mhuni.
You captured a wonderful and moody scene here. Under difficult conditions, so well done!

Commended: Belinda B.
Great use of a macro lens in exploring all those details often not seen or notice in a everydays subject. Well done.

Well folks, this concludes my findings. Thanks everyone for entering and over to you Ralf, for another challenge to fight.


Martin.

edit: some annoying typo's.

Martin,

Thank you for setting what should have been an easy to enter competition, perhaps we are all too busy in our lives and so the number of entries suffers?

Again, excellent judging and thank you for your comments on my entry. I spent some time with a bad head trying to get the right size image uploaded but couldn't get it to work.... oh well.

I haven't got a tripod yet!!!!! So if I can't rest the camera I take a deep breath and hope for the best!!!

Well done Prieni. I knew as soon as I saw your spendid entry that it would be a hard one to beat. Excellent!



.

Well first thing to say is congratulations to Prieni,Galoot,Gartmore,all really top shots.I also liked Dr Mhuni's entry.
I'm sorry you weren't so keen on the B/W Martin,it floated my boat more than the colour version.Anyway i've posted the colour on the gallery,have a look,see what you think.
I like you am also enthusiastic about this competition,it creates a real challenge,but stretching the creative/photographic synapses can only lead to better pictures.More power to your elbow!! Tony.

Martin,

Your perceptive and erudite comments are, I am sure, appreciated greatly by us all. We can clearly see that you have have spent a great amount of time on this.

I wish, however, that I had more time to spend peparing my entry but I have 633 images from that shoot to PP by Friday. My problem with a mono version is that, no matter what I try, the cyan shadow on the girl in the foreground turns into a dark gray blob. If anyone has any ideas for a cure please let me know.

Ernst Haas! You're embarrasing me, but thank you!

Ken

That decision shows you are a bad journalist. And a good human being.

G

I second those remarks. But I also feel Martin was a bit hard on you for not doing more post-processing. However, that probably reflects my violent opposition to excessive post-processing.

If we couldn't post-process, we'd all be better photographers.

G

Well done Martin on judging a tough collection. Congrutlaions to the winners.

My personal favourites were from Dr Mhuni, Prieni and Pschlute. All very calm photos, all very beautiful and all very different.