Love the colours of those foxgloves, Liam. Is it me or are the foxgloves up there a better colour than our southern ones?

Excellent pictures on that website, Prieni. Thanks for sharing the discovery!

Michael,

It would help if you could point us at one of these mystery pictures.

Sounds like an HDR image to me, but you discount tone mapping (which is part of the process of creating an HDR image)

Northerndj, do a search on this forum for "Monitor calibration", you'll find that there has been quite a lengthy discussion on the why and how of it all! It is worth it though, as you will have confidence that other people will be able to see your pictures the same way that you do, and vice versa. Some of us use dedicated hardware (Huey pantone in my case) to check our monitors regularly (But then I do have a high geek score http://www.innergeek.us/geek.html)

I think the focus on pic 1 is a bit soft and the colour rather over saturated for my taste. 2 & 3 I'd have cropped tighter on the flowers, and 3 I'd have brightened up half a stop. The geraniums in 3 are my fave.

Oh wow! Quite a bumper entry, and I'm sure my choices are going to upset some people, but it's my decision so it doesn't have to be right! As the pictures were posted over the course of the week, I agonised mightily over several different shots.

I'll follow John's lead and run through the pictures in the order they were posted. Apologies if I am not as perceptive a John, but I am new to this judging lark!

---------------------

Johnriley When I saw this I did wonder if anyone else would even try and enter the competition this week! Lovely use of the diagonals and a nice way to combine two images to capture the scene. Really good example of using editing software to tell a story. Second Place

amoringello Good use of a limited palette of colours and shallow dof. I must admit something like this sprang into my own mind when I came up with the subject of "Play". Maybe just a wee bit too dark?

Rodger Fooks Captures the fun of play, and I like the way the net seems to divide up the scene.

niblue Good balance between freezing the action by having the face sharp and focussed, but the slight movement blur on the feet and the arm position convey a lot of action. Not only is it a good photograph in difficult circumstances but also conveys the fun element in "play" First Place

Lee Ash Like the use of lines and diagonals in the climbing frame, fence and clouds. Is the horizon straight? Big dof. Would have liked to see it larger!

petekd I like the motion blur which gives energy to the scene and the bright colours. Just feel that the foreground on the left is a bit empty. I might have cropped in tighter on the action on the see-saw.

Prieni Like the low angle which almost makes it seem that it is a real street shot from a rooftop. I assume some PS work with a blur layer to keep the main street in "focus"?

Lilly striking colour combinations add vibrancy and energy, a very crisp image showing a lot of detail in the saxophone.

deecy captures the enjoyment of playing a musical instrument, nicely focussed on the subject's eyes.

justgetoutandride Wow, that gets your attention! I like ike the use of dof and the grain which adds to the menacing feel. Hope you don't know where I live! Commended

stevejcoe Good timing to capture child looking for wave, dynamic body position and good framing - space left for the child to surf into

bettyswolloks Witty take on "play". Do the two circles also allude to other spherical obects?

Galoot Fantastic expression, good control on dof, and the highlight shining on the head of the guitar, real or fake is a great touch. Third Place

ChrisA The grain gives an impression of energy, but the smooth black background jarred a bit

viewfinder A lot of energy in this shot. The focus on the eyes really grabs your attention. Shame there is slightly too much refection in the dog's eyes. When you get the software loaded up, you'll be burning to your hearts content! Commended

LiamDHigh speed action well caught, but seem to lose some detail in the horses.

pschlute Interesting placements of subjects in the frame, like the contrast between the straight lines on the cloth and the curves of the wheel. I might have made the ball the point of focus as that would be the "story" of the picture.

HowardJ Ah, the play's the thing! Need to keep those lines vertical and horizontal.

Don I like the expression and the pose of the girl, and the hand "caught in the act" of shrink wrapping the car. Good use of low angle to avoid problems with flash reflections. Highly Commended

confused Excellent timing to catch the ball and racquet in the right positions and the player watching the ball onto the racquet, so it looks like his coach taught him well. Great effort especially as most spectators are not in the best positions for good action shots.

--------------------

So well done to everyone, and especially Niblue. Over to you mate, for next week's competition. If the quality continues to escalate at this rate I don't envy your job! Please start two threads, one sticky for the photos and one for the comments.

OK, the subject for the competition this week is "Play", so anything thing to do with play, pastimes, games, sport etc, the field is yours.

Edit:-

John, I don't see any option to make this post a "Sticky"

Thanks for that, Dan. Q.E.D., as they say!

Only by people with a kanikon axe to grind!

Vista is causing a lot of problems for writers of 3rd party applications. The reason is that to install software you usually have to have administrative rights on the PC, however under Vista, even if you are an administrator you won't have full admin rights, and so the installer programs need routines that temporarily elevate their "privileges". A lot of older (and some current) software packages will fail because they can't do this.

The reason that M$ took this approach was to minimise the damage that a virus/trojan could do. Most viruses run under the permissions applicable to the logged-on user, so if you are an admin, the virus can do what it likes. That is no longer the case under Vista. However, it breaks a lot of existing applications. Hence Georges' comment about Vista!

Microsoft used to have a "Third Party Application Toolkit" for XP which you could download from their website and use to fool older applications into thinking that XP was Windows 95 or even 3.1! I haven't checked to see if a similar Toolkit exists for Vista. I should imagine that it does. However, from memory it wasn't easy to use and was mainly aimed at developers of 3rd party apps.

EDIT:-

I should have called it "Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit" and more info about it is here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/11/ApplicationCompatibility/default.aspx