Open Lines
by KaDi

Comment:
You know, it's unbelievable how anal the voters are sometimes, especially about noise. This image just leapt out of the thumbnails at me, and I wasn't disappointed when I opened it up. The composition is complex and memorable. The disappearing birds-in-flight, so precisely limited to the left edge, are fantastic in how they foreshadow/echo at the same time the birds at rest.

And this lovely thing couldn't even score a 5? Even if you ACCEPT that the noise is a flaw, surely the value of the rest of it is manifest and it deserves a 6'ish score? Sigh...

North Pillar
by Matthew

Comment:
Strange shot indeed; the way the intricate, logical bracing and trussing of the tower devolves into near-chaos from this angle is oddly compelling. Congrats on top 10!

Vertigo City
by yanko

Comment:
Nice work, Yanko! If you'd asked me, I'd have thought it would bomb as well; so what do we know? Not much! Congrats on top 10.

Ancient Rock Window to the Milky Way
by PlanetMaker

Comment:
This image certainly suits your name to a "T" :-) If you asked me to select the best image of "planet making" from the DPC archives, this might be it... I'd love to hear some details of how this was done, specifically the lighting.

Beachy Head
by marbo

Comment:
Fantastic! A primo example of how the little things mean so much; imagine the image without the people on the bluff... Scale (or perspective) is everything here! Congrats on your ribbon.

To the sky
by nico_blue

Comment:
Congrats on your blue, Mr. Nico Blue!

Bovine Burlesque
by whiteroom

Comment:
Wonderful! I'm SO glad this idiosyncratic, compelling image made it into the ribbon ranks! WTG, Lesley!

HEEELLP!!!!
by CEJ

Comment:
Hahaha! I just realized this is your lovely bride Beth! Makes me enjoy the image even more than I first did :-)

Brief Winter Thaw
by KaDi

Comment:
Wow, I never noticed this before. Lovely image! Very much to my taste.

Heidelberg castle
by Melethia

Comment:
Very nice, good to see you exploring something besides Texas :-)

Regarding HDR, here's a version where I tone mapped this one, then sandwiched the original above the tone mapping in "lighten" mode to clean up the sky and bring back the bright spots. Then gave the whole a jolt of high pass sharpening as well.



hugs, Robt.