Be Excellent To Each Other

TAKES A BOW

More later if anyone is interested as the model in the shot wants a walk right now!

Bloody safari making me post twice...

Yeah, yeah, blame the browser!

Well done, DBSnappa!
Well done everyone - everyone got some points in this contest, all entries were top-notch, and it was sooooo close

My original entry was this one, which is the same pic but in black and white. I didn't actually enter it because a) I didn't want to do another b/w picture and b) I thought the washing in the background added to the photo, I really quite liked it. I agree 100% with what you say, my wife said exactly the same thing, but for some reason I like it that way. What I would love to do is kind of have my cake and eat it - make the thorn stand out more but keep the contrast in the background but I have no idea how to achieve that.

I'm trying to get out of the habit because I love b/w photography so much, and I didn't enter this for the same reason. As soon as I saw the challenge theme I knew I didn't have to wander far - I'd just cut a load of hawthorn down and was going to attack the holly bush next.

IIRC, I voted for the dog because it is a great "moment" picture, I think he actually looks quite cuddly despite the teeth. Liked the knife in wood as an idea, and I think my third vote was for the pyramid of foam.

Well done, DBSnappa*, and the runners up

Mine was No.9, and was taken in a secluded spot by the canal in Chester. There's a Knife, Fork, Spoon and stack of cups & saucers, all carved out of wood.

Strange that it came under a bit of flack, I thought. I see photos as entirely the photographer's work. After all, he/she has to take the 3D world and work out the best way to present that in a 2D format, with the best light, best focal points etc. I don't see photographing a sculpture as cheating. But never mind!


*your avatar was a dead giveaway, by the way. And so was the EXIF data you left in the pic Well done, chap

I don't think that there is a thing wrong with photographing sculpture, for the exact reasons you have laid out.

Your picture got my 3 points by the way, Nynfortoo.

Thank you, Mimi

I can't believe how close it was this round though. I got battered.

I came last.

Go me!

Malc

She Her name is Izzy, she's a border collie with a bit of husky or something in here, I forget now. No doubt DBSnappa will explain later. She's a great dog.

It reminded me a lot of a place in Caerleon, Fwrrwm (some pics of their work there), where they do a lot of that sort of wood carving.

I don't see it as cheating either, for the reasons you have mentioned. I nearly (but didn't I'm afraid) voted for yours, but others pipped it at the post for me.

On the other hand I think it's easy to take a very simple snapshot of a great subject, with little effort, and get a good pic -- that sort of pic isn't cheating but would be unlikely to get my vote. That's just my personal preference though, and I wouldn't criticise anyone who did vote for it.

No entry from me this time, I really struggled with the theme and didn't have much time to go out and look for subjects. I shall attempt to do better next time!

Don't worry.. I'm entering the next one - I'll fight you for last place.

I keep forgetting there are so many g33ks in this forum - it never occurred to me remove the EXIF data to the point where I was going to explain how I took the picture

Ooh, you got MY two point vote though, Malc. I was going to do a lemon with pins sticking out of it, but i didn't, but voted for yours because I thought it was ace.

Oh, and to the person who said I shouldn't have used a table, I didn't. It's the floor in my back living room. (I think it was layed the day before, possibly 2 days before)

Malc

Hah. I went so far as to remove the EXIF data from display on the gallery pages (on the grounds it might be a bit of a hint, e.g., I'm guessing you're the only one on here taking competition pics with a camera that cost more than I paid for my last three cars!) but clearly nynfortoo went snooping like a snoopy snoopster

Hehe, I didn't think it was displayed. Honestly, you lot!

I think they are all due a spanking now Mimi.

Ah, revenge, is it?



Hah. Still, explain away. There's more to a photo than the technical details!

Also: I only looked at the EXIF data this morning, so it didn't impact (hah!) on my vote. I figured DBSnappa would be the one here with a D2x.

Not intentional but it still tastes sweet! Mwah hah hah!

I want to know how he wound Izzy up so much...

Izzi is easy to wind up - she's always been very shouty whenever we first get out of the house. I simply held a stick above the lens - she always barks like a mad thing if she sees you holding a stick.

As for the picture, well, as snoopster nynfortoo spotted it was shot on a Nikon D2x in Shutter priority mode, locked at 1/250s - the aperture was F4.2 (yay for electronic lenses and they're infinite aperture variables!) on a Nikkor 28-70mm F2.8 - it was at 70mm (bearing in mind the sensor isn't full frame, so the lens actually gets bumped by about 50% in focal length - so think just over 100mm focal length in real terms). The camera is very fast in both fps (about 5.5 in Continuous High speed mode, which it was in, natch) and focusing speed. I wasn't looking through the viewfinder as she was leaping around me so much - I just shot about 110 frames in about five minutes or so - I kept getting buffer over-run as I was shooting raw which are 20MB a pop - so every 15-20 shots I was having to wait for the camera to write to card. I think I got about 8-10 shots I liked, and as is often the case when editing in a hurry, I actually prefer some of the other pictures now!

I still feel a little like a cheat winning this, but thanks to everyone who voted for me. I would thank my mum as well, but she had nothing to do with this

There were some very good shots in this challenge and the brief was a little tricky if you wanted to avoid the obvious blade analogues. But having said that, the ones that did were very very well done I thought - my acid test is always "would I be happy if I'd taken that?" and there were several I would have been very happy with.

Well done, DBSnappa. 2 was mine, it was taken in one of the biomes at the http://www.edenproject.com down in Cornwall, and it was well worth the visit

I voted for 11 which appealed to my sense of humour, 12 because it looks bloody dangerous and 4 because it looks more like a softy than a danger

Me too. I feel safe, as there was nothing at all wrong with my entry

Which was yours, RG?

There wasn't one. Hence nothing at all wrong with it! Except not existing. Ahem.

As mentioned elsewhere, I struggled a little with this theme, and didn't have the time this past fortnight to find a good subject.

Mine was number three, it's a pyramid board. You stand on it.

Ah, so that's what that was! Cool, striking orange.

It was the only thing I could think of that wasn't going to be a knife or something. I'm going to have to try really hard to come up with something for glass!

I googled 'pyramid board' to see what they were and couldn't find out what it was for, but I want to know why you stand on them (is it for foot massage?).

I thought it was the underside of a trainer.

(Or maybe one of the levels from Spindizzy Worlds)

Sort of, you stand on it and walk on the spot and it's a bit like having a reflexology treatment.

Ohhhh, I think I may have once been given something you are supposed to roll your feet over (nothing like this) but I just found it painful.

Congrats to DBSnappa for a tremendous winning photo, it was also my first vote. I placed the spot of blood on the floor and the spiked branch garden second and third. Congrats to all!

My photo was number 12.

It was taken at a remote sauna in the Brecon woods owned by the forestry commission, my mate Ben being a forester who works for them. It's a really cool place, like a pillbox with logs and a picnic bit and a plunge pool fed by a running stream. Anyway, the photo was taken when Ben (never terribly safety concious but has lightning reflexes and steely steadiness) started juggling the sharp axe we use to chop up the fuel, tossing it up into the air where it rotated and fell back to have the handle smack into his palm satisfyingly. He kept doing this and I had to take a photo. And that's the result - he practically looks like he using telekinesis and I did actually fool one gullible girl into thinking that it was sinister mind powers that I took the photo of. Muah ha ha.

Ta for the votes!

Incidentally, for those who were wondering, the blood in my photo (number 10) is a mixture of "Natural Red" food colouring and "Yellow" food colouring.

For some reason "Yellow" food colouring by itself is red, but it's too light to look like blood. "Natural Red" food colouring by itself is pink. Mix the two and voila. I realised after the fact that I should have taken the photo with the needle's eye visible.

Someone raised a good point about how it looks too neat, the way the needle has been placed in the pool of blood. I didn't think of that, but I think it would have hurt the photo if I'd made it look any more... chaotic.

As I said earlier I thought it looked like a publicity shot for Dexter.

Sorry, must have misunderstood your comments. The mention of being a "Viz critic" sounds negative to me for some reason, heheh.

Aye, I know what you mean there. Shame there were no nice tones or colours around the sculpture, and the wood itself was hardly beautiful, being all weathered and covered in grafiti.

The light was really soft because of the overcast sky, too, which made it look even more bland. So overall, not the best subject to actually photo.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for the current challenge, if I even get time at all — I'm going to be very busy these next two weeks, including probably spending this weekend working, ugh.

Wait - what? That's clearly Dudley!!!

By gullible, do you mean stupid?

I'd never fall for something like that.

Ahem.

Mine was number 1...one point away from glory! Ah well. Congrats to DBSnappa, a worthy winner (although I didn't vote for it myself - sorry DB, it wasn't tactical voting, honest - I had no. 5 (thorn) in top spot, no. 10 (needle) in second and no. 9 (big wooden knife sculpture thing) in third. DBSnappa's would've been my fourth, if there was a vote for fourth).

For those interested: the knife in my picture is a pruning saw and the "blood" is cochineal; the Rorschacky quality of the pooled blood is purely an accident, that's just how it ran on the kitchen floor. All I did for the spatter effects was pick up the knife and drop it back into the blood a couple of times, which seemed to work quite well. It all looks appropriately unpleasant and I apologise to anyone who was disturbed by it

I was going to vote for yours JimB, but I didn't in the end because I felt there was a little bit too much blood on it, and the shot itself could possibly have done with being "zoomed out" a bit so you could see the whole of the knife, handle and all. I think that would probably have aided the composition a bit.

Well, that and it was too similar to mine

I'm pretty sure you're right, but the handle is a fairly garish orange and green and it just didn't look right in the photo, so I cropped it to leave the blade only. I thought it looked OK when I entered it, but a couple of days later realised I'd probably overkilled on the blood. A bit of cochineal goes a long way, it seems - the little bottle (38ml according to the label) is still nearly full.