PXL Shots

The dog looks as if the cat has a bad smell And the cat is grinning as she knows the dog won't leave. Perfect story telling.

Those aren't gladiators at all They resemble ancient Roman staff officers, as indicated by the helmets and feathers. Centurios had the feathers square and privates didn't have any feathers at all. The short sword (gladius) was also used by gladiators, but that's the only similarity here. Still a nice couple.

Sharpening: I found 100% - 0.8 px - 0 a 'maximum' setting for pictures of about 1280 x 900, a tad wider (1.2 px) for 3000 x 2000 pics (w/out any pre sharpening in camera)

As I said: no doubt you got it right. I can only refer to what it _looks like_, and that maybe different from what you _know_ it was. But that's always the same with photography, telling a convincing story with a single shot.

Probably one of the best entries ever.

iirc, it was cropped much tighter BC -- which I liked better. Anyway, still great stones.

Looking on the hires it's clear that softness is in sync with floor and wires, and some of the dirt 'sticks' into the shadow convincingly, so ...

@kyricom: this is a warning. stop your rant, it is not welcome here. This entry is approved by moderation and if you don't like it, you're free to leave, as Mistermonty has said not long ago.

Folks, get real: if you take a macro lens to shoot a small detail of some texture, it's the same kind of magnification which appears here. Basically, it's just another lens pointing into the night sky and that's about it. This contestant is lucky enough to have a big gear to shoot stars in a "macro sense" and there's no need to twist the rules to "space or sky" -- looking into the sky with a regular lens is just a wide shot of the same scene. The photo has to be judged on photographical merits anyway.

looks as if they have rushed into a dead end at the barbed wire

Just in case: we reviewed the changes and came to the conclusion it is perfectly complying with the contest guidelines and rules.

Ah! Cool! Njah - hot! Anyway: wonderfully set up.

sorry, can't help, the puppy looks frozen ...

Regarding this picture: it's amazing how purposefully the sprayers have taken care of the signs and numbers on the wagon -- they didn't intend to disturb the owner's business but instead make the thing look better than rusty brown. I wonder if they've been invited to spray there? However, from my observations I would suppose it wasn't vandalism but I also doubt it could be considered art. It's more decoration and thus it can be considered 'artificial' / handicraft.

grabbing picture, awesome and intense.

I'd say this is one of the best c-on-c entries so far. Very well set up, with the exception of the light behind you… you can get rid of those reflections by using a sheet of semi transparent paper or plastic, making a hole where you put the lens through, and shoot this way. If the sheet is big enough, it will diffuse the reflections nicely. But again, this is one of the best entries so far and noise is -- well, noise. It used to happen with HP5 Ilford film as well and we were all crazy for that grain only ten years ago. Congrats, wonderful concept.

awesome perspective.

Great. Very effective. Awesome.

veery well seen -- however, I think cropping away the black at the right will improve the visual impact tremendously.

Wonderful entry.

This is a cool take on the theme -- love the level horizon against the tilted window. Very well seen.

wonderful, airy, to the point.

pretty good lighting setup.

A very nice specimen for this contest, and a good attempt for a calm background.

wonderful -- my son was taken away with this picture and I have to second. That dark center gives the white petals a nice airy feeling, like a curtain. A very nice an different view.

I like the detail and the lighting, but maybe the best is the black center which makes it appear as being a hole. Awesome.

give it a better background, take care of the lighting and it would be a screamer.

very well seen. To make it a graphical delight, some attention should be paid to the orientation / wave like pattern which seems to build. Great entry.

Oh, you're on private comments I think it could look a lot better with a more creative pov and/or lighting. Right now it's just flat on the wall which isn't that 'wow-ish' at all.

Geez, I think a beer can is by no means out of place in the vicinity of artists -- or work of art, for that matter. The painters and sculptors I use to know simply can't work w/out a tray of beer at hand

unlucky shot -- those wires run straight into the bride's back and head… the clutter to the right (van, fence, tree) is really distracting. Cropping off everything from the guy's shoulder to the right will also get rid of that disturbing reflection of those white pants. Nice pose, but the picture will need hours in photoshop to match the pose.

Sweet pose -- straightening the 'horizon' (that paved path) and cropping slightly tighter (to loose the branch on the top right and the building in left) shouldn't hurt, though.

As beautiful the dress may be, this picture suffers from all the rather careless detail -- which is way out of the photog's reach, but nonetheless distracts from the subject: way too hard flash washes out all the detail on the dress, quite a lot of noise and JPG artifacts in the shadows, lots of blur and halo from sharpening, the reflection on the priest's eye glasses, the almost shocked look of the girl right to the bride, the fan on the left, that bent knee on the lower left and of course those two reckless video folks on the right.

folks, you should see the glare around my head shooting. This is a wonderful shot of another godlike photographer and (at least to me) it tells the story that 'photography is writing with light'. Forget about those "autoexposure rules" when looking at a creative take, pleeeeeeaze.

ROTFLMAO. A photographic joke, perfectly told.

wonderful mood -- cropping way closer would intensify the picture a lot

A is for Awesome

If it _looks_ like floating, I wouldn't care how it was created. The proof of the pudding ... 

Awesome sculpture.

one of the few pics I would hang in my place.

ah, finally, a black object. Thanks. One hint, though: adjusting the curves (setting the black and the white point as well as adjusting white balance) makes it an even more impressive picture.