As soon as I saw Epithet Mans entry I thought that could win - Lovely shot!
Screams out Summer and a great moment.
On Sunday, I took off to a park with fountains that the kids play in and there were some wonderful shots but I didn't have my camera! sometimes I actually avoid taking it with me when I'm out with the children because I get engrossed and become really boring

re compression I meant that Fastone doesn't recompress at all if all it has done is rotate or crop the image.
This is crucial as otherwise JPEG ruins images a little more each time. Lots of people don't realise this.

sounds good, I'm going to investigate. does it recompress images if all it has done is crop or rotate them?

Never mind raws , just generally speaking Faststone viewer is an absolutely spanking bit of software. it's small, free and can do a multitude of really helpful things with images. It's a great image viewer but it's more than that

I have used PhotoShop since 1992 But I use Faststone for viewing, rotating, resising and cropping quickly. The best thing is the fact that it can do most of these things without recompressing the image This is brilliant.

I recomend it to all my clients for their images. (I make web sites amongst other things)

that's a lovely shot, lovely pool of light. Very calming. Cat lovers will love it. I just want to chase it...

yes, all a bit dark on my screen and yellow (or deeply overcast)
I like number 3 too, very comical and cute. if you are able to move the crop I would move the owl slight further into the picture. (to the left)

Thanks Gully, great work. Well done folks, my fav this week is unlocker's concrete building.
I think I misread the competion as purely 'finding the beauty etc in ugly'.
If anyone is interested in seeing the other images in this series (including some properly ugly ones) check out the photos section, I'll try and get them up today sometime.

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4mm Jumping spider - 28mm rev onto 45mm extention. around f11

Pseudo HDR is a term I wish I hadn't coined meaning getting the same effect but without resorting to 16 bit images and fancy software.

I never use this image as I was just messing with ideas and I don't think this works particularly, but it shows that if I want the woods to be light the water highlights are blown, unless I combine the two in some way.
There are lots of ways. Here, I just used PhotoShop. Proper HDR didn't work at all.

I happened to use two JPEGs but the OP's image had enough data to find the detail in all areas from the one shot.

Thanks Dan, but I was referring to George quoting me when I used the word HDR then taking a negative stance on the HDR thing (which I was never espousing) - essentially dismissing my contribution for the second time in this thread.

I have no problem with rambling off topic.

On a more positive note: if done sensitively, lifting the exposure on the bottom of the helicopter will just look like reflected light from the ground, it won't look unnatural.

Anyway, I'm supposed to have shut up