I hope you’ve enjoyed it all, it was my First competition and the First time being a Judge so hopefully everything went quite right ^^;
Now to the judging, I’m not going to chit chat so if I sound short to the point then you got that right
I’ll open all the photos in a separate screen so it will be only your photo on the screen with a grey border if the photo is too small to fill the screen and the monitor is just calibrated so got those point covered.



Elscotto - The Hang Out
It clearly shows how normal this kind of sight has become, sad if you think about it.
The composition is perfect, the colours are good even the exposure… I’m trying to find something where I could say something bad about but I’m unable to find something so great job!
There is one point though there is no EXIF data!!!

Bforbes – Pollution
Sorry Barrie but I find your photo to deviate too much from the theme but what the hell right, I’ll just evaluate it.
One of the biggest problem with your photo is that it lacks a point of focus, you don’t know where to look however the photo is interesting, certainly if it is alone on the screen. The patterns and the colours in the photo become visible then and it looks pretty nice but still too busy for me.

GlynM - Farnborough Landscape
I so wished you had a bigger version of this one, I think the size really doesn’t do it judgment.
Composition is always quite hard but you’ve done a great job, the white (cleaning?) truck on the runway gives the interest the foreground needs to balance things out and the tower is also placed precisely right in the frame. The only sad thing about the composition is the grey weather.
All in all a very good photo, I only wished you had cropped or cloned out the bright yellow sign on the far left but that’s the only bad thing.

i-Berg - Park View Towers
I see you’ve been busy here also with the post-processing I saw with your other photos, I really liked it there but with this photo it’s not so great. The problem is that it makes the photo feel soft & old and it just doesn’t feel right with this photo, I would rather have seen the opposite. Some little dark vignette to emphasis the focus on the towers and let the photo speak for himself because there is this great contrast between men and nature in this photo which doesn’t come out as much as you could have.

dougf8 - Newlyn Fishing Port
I see some great things in this photo and you took a great risk with the fence and it might have worked very well if it wasn’t for the strange curve in the fence, I wonder if you could correct that without making it look fake? Now for some good things because if you look past the fence the old scaffold and the boat on the left give you some framing so that when you look further the attention really comes on the landscape, you’ve my compliments for leading my eyes so well.

JudithAnn - Smoking on the Mountian
It looks very strange, it makes you wonder what’s going on. It makes it mysteries but I wonder how the photo would have been if you saw a bit more off the industry, still a stunning shot. I really like how the mountains (for us Dutch something larger than an hump is a mountain) give you this natural framing around the industry part of the photo if we don’t include the road. Once again it’s very hard to say something that might have being able to be improved, great shot Judith.
Next time include the EXIF data!!!

Dr. Mhuni - Tea Factory, Sri Lankan highlands
I almost got the title wrong
Dr. Mhuni next time just ask if no one has any problems with reposting it because of this reason, I think many would not mind because now the photo doesn’t look so great. It looks oversharped since you got the halos and the highlights in the plants on the foreground looks very big and harsh, I think a softer photo would have been far better even if you would reduce the details. Besides the obvious fault I really like the photo though, the composition is very nice because the only really bright thing in your shot is the tea factory so it’s very clear where to focus is and the colours are very nice.

Mikew – untitled
Mike you knew I was easy with the theme, it’s okay with me.
Your photo is a great B&W conversion, I think it would look only half as good in colour. I really like the balance in your photo, because the barbwire is infocus it gives it the power to balance itself against the two big silos in the background. I’m also very pleased with the grey weather for once because it gives you this soft light and the flat one grey toned sky which make the photo look very simple and that’s also one of his powers. Great shot Mike, I’m glad you entered it.

davidtrout - Stairway to Heaven
Don’t worry either it’s fits in my scope of the theme and you won’t get points for things that aren’t in the photo.
Quite a strange composition but it works well for me. I wonder if it would have been better in monochrome or not to give the photo more contrast, what do you think David? I really like the little details you can see on the building(?), all those nuts and bolts and I like the fact that the angle of the stairs comes back on the right. Nicely done.

Jo - Fish factory at New Quay, Pembrokeshire (and yes, it did smell!)
For the ones that can’t find the photo link
Jo very nice shot and I’m glad you could enter this one since it’s so problematic for you.
I wonder if you could have aimed the camera more to the right so that you lose some of the big grey buildings on the left and placing more of the interesting stuff on the left rule of third line, it now gets overpowered in my honest opinion. The boldly coloured stuff in the centre does pull the attention back to that but not enough to my taste.

TOZZA27 - ........"this all used to be fields !! "
Sad how things can change so much certainly because it’s right infront of your doorstep.
I whised you had waited for some blue skies because the photo looks very grey now but you live in Britain after all. Somehow though the grey does emphasis the little colour that’s in your photo though and I’m glad the yellow you see in the building can be found back in the flower.
I wanted to say something about the shadow on the right bottom corner but I can’t anymore but the more I look at the overall photo the better it become, strange really…
You’ve no EXIF data in the photo you know!!!

cardiff_gareth - Porthkerry Viaduct
Gareth, what a stunning shot. The monochrome really works well and the composition is very nice, because you aimed your camera up while you were standing close to them they look huge. I’m not so fond on the halo though, did you use HDR treatment on it or something like that?
For the rest there it’s hard to say something bad about it
You don’t have any EXIF in your photo!!!




Wow finally done, it took more time than I thought. I wanted to did some judging yesterday but I couldn’t.

what is the rule about EXIF!
I want to be quite harsh to be honest, I think it’s quite clear what EXIF is but I don’t want to go against what’s customary here. Can anyone give me some details?

I was planning to make a temporary ranking but I can’t, I don’t want to disappoint anyone…
Sorry guys and gals for keeping you in excitement even longer.

Sorry all, but something came up and I'm just back.

I'm now going to judge so give me some time.

Already thank you for you patience.

Richard I ain't sure about that one, they almost never announced a camera at Photokina I believe.

There is also zenfolio, I believe you can make private maps there that require a password to enter.

This Martin's site. http://martinlochmans.zenfolio.com/
I believe you will always keep Zenfolio in the webadress though...

I think there comes a new model around 2 to 2 1/2 year after the old one so it could be at the end of this year or the beginning of the next.

UV filters don't have much use anymore because the lens coatings and the filter in front of the sensor already cuts UV light so you might be better of not adding another piece of glass but that's something for you to decide.

As for the PL, I use it all the time, with a bit of an overcast you can sometimes get some blue back in the skies if ur lucky but a PL removes the greyness even better than any UV filter... that's why I don't understand the filter combo really...

Here is a good read http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-lens-filters.htm

If you think about using UV filters as protection then read this as well http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-feb-05.shtml

I know guys and that's an old shot and already cleaned it multiple times with an arctic butterfly

Even better

It depends on the image and the output size, if you've a lot of detail you hardly notice the noise but if you have a "flat" surface of one tone you see it quite well.

Here is a shot at iso100 unedited also with the K10D.
link
When you look at the part that's in focus you don't see any noise but when you look out the part that are out of focus you see the noise quite well.

It's preciesly the same, it only says Samsung on the badge instead of Pentax