nose
by skewsme

Comment:
Great capture of the fountain display at Millennium Park!

Ratty
by SaraR

Comment:
This reminds me of a pet rat I had named Blue (it was a "blue" rat). Such a great pet; it'd eat things out of my hand without biting me even once. It's too bad they don't live very long. You captured the hair and eyes perfectly, but the background is a little grainy.

The Strid
by SaraR

Comment:
This looks like a Bear_Music shot! The sky is a little blown out though. It sounds like you might have benefited from a polarizing or some kind of gradient filter to lower the exposure a bit.

The Wind Gently Blows
by SaraR

Comment:
The background bokeh has a dreamy quality. I think if the leaves just to the left of the center ones were sharp this would have scored much higher.

Cold and Wet
by SaraR

Comment:
There's a lot happening in this shot. Given your conditions, I might have tried to pick out something that'd line up in the narrow DOF, like the brown grassy thing behind the right flower looking thing (I'm bad at botany). The large blurred flower looking thing on the left demands attention with its color, but ends up being just a distraction.

Imposing
by SaraR

Comment:
Very sharp, great contrast and leading lines, no wonder you picked this for a "best of" entry!

Coming in to land
by SaraR

Comment:
The clipped wing doesn't bother me too much; it almost makes the bird look like he's a little closer. The second one in the background doesn't intersect with the first at all, and is framed nicely by the subject's wing. Unfortunately, the bird and the water are both washed shades of gray. With advanced editing, you could give the water a slight blue tint, making both birds jump out a bit.

The harbour
by SaraR

Comment:
The colors are bright and bold, but I found the hard shadows on the middle boat distracting, and the buildings in the background blended in to the subjects giving a cluttered appearance. Looking with my "crop hands", I might have picked the bottom of the two right boats with their reflections, using the reflection itself as the subject.

Free as a Bird
by SaraR

Comment:
Sheesh, did the voters here want you to place a reflector board under the seagull to give some fill light? This is a great panning shot. The boat-like thing on the right is a little weird, but not that distracting. The colors look a little flat; maybe a bump in saturation or a poke of the curves adjustment would make this picture pop more.

The Boxing Match
by SaraR

Comment:
This is one of my favorites! The position of the warriors against the wide tree in the background just balances the shot perfectly.