Congratulations niblue, great picture giving the feeling of speed (albeit at a lowly pace of 55 mph (come over here for good speed on the Autobahn (according to Jeremy Clarkson the only reason that Germany exists)). And you know now what we all expect in terms of speedy delivery of the judgement
Lilly you have set a new standard, especially considering the number of entries this time round. Thanks for judging this, it was a tough one to judge not only because of the number of entries.

These competitions are getting more fun every week. Can't wait for the next one niblue!

Daring Neptune


*istD, Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro @ 300, 1/350 s, A11, ISO 200

<satire>
These scaffoldings are perfectly all right when you wear the proper PPE (personal protective equipment). In this case you need to wear the Asian safety shoes "flip-flop" that give superior grip on bamboo. I'm sure that on this building site all health and safety regulations were properly observed.
</satire>

Nice shot Lilly, I have marvelled at this type of scaffolding in India quite a few times. It is quite frightening to imagine working on one of those, even for me, who has electric outlets in the bathroom and sticks real wax candles on the Christmas tree (two of the things my English colleagues in Southampton couldn't believe at first).
This doesn't mean, of course, that I think this bamboo scaffolding is particularly safe.

Prieni

I see. Yes, the crop is more understandable now that one sees the whole picture. You made the right decision here to get rid of the greenery.

Thanks for showing that,
Prieni

Not much industry going in this part of the world, so wind farming has got a good share of industry in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

*istD, FA 10-17mm @ 10 mm, 1/500 s, A16, ISO 200.

And thanks to you little devil I won't be able to enjoy them anymore because I will always wonder if I would have liked them better with bigger DOF.

I will stick a note on my camera to "aperture-bracket" shots...

Prieni

P.S.: Sorry about your bare walls... Next time it's sunny I will go down again and take some more shots.

Thanks for looking and voicing your opinions.

Yes, the first two have quite a shallow DOF and this was intentional (had to go to 1/2000 s on one of them). Should have made some with smaller aperture as well, just to see if I like them better. My suspicion is, though, that I prefer them the way they are. (But now, of course, I will never know for sure.)

On the issue of debris I did consider cloning it out but then decided against it.

Prieni

Since I don't have to submit an entry for the competition this week I had some spare time to work up some shots from 2 weeks ago. It was a very hefty breeze going and it took two days until I got all the sand out of my ears, hair etc. (and yes, I did use the shower but it didn't help immediately). The lens made a bit of a crunching noise but nothing too bad and it's back to normal now...

All with *istD and Sigma 105/2.8 EX DG Macro (didn't want to change lenses)

Well, Picasa only has one star to give.
However, you could create new albums "One Star", "Two Stars", "Three Stars" (or "Crap", "SoSo", "Brilliant" and when looking through the pics you could right click and "Add to album" accordingly. A bit more bothersome but I think a workaround.

Prieni

I also use Picasa, nice application I think.
Matt, when using the "collections" you can get an additional hierarchy layer (and I only thought of that when I read your post). I have a similar problem, having the raw files in one folder and the TIFs from Silkypix in another one beneath.

Now I tried the following. I moved the folder "August 2007" to a new collection, named "2007~August". Then I can move the folder "TIF" to the collection 2007, "sub-"collection August. So everything August, raw, TIFF, processed can sit in this "sub-"collection.
The important bit is the tilde (~) in the collection name.