[nursepatty]

Butter Fly Museum

My family farm

Family Farm

Cohocton, NY Wind Farm

[HaloGirl]

Nurse Patty, your butterfly and wind farm are way cool!

Matt, that is a crazy-looking plant. What is that and where was it taken?

[Matt]

Nurse Patty, your butterfly and wind farm are way cool!

Agreed!

Matt, that is a crazy-looking plant. What is that and where was it taken?

It's a maple tree (forget which kind) at durand eastman.

[chris270]

I believe they are Striped Maple and all over Durand Eastman Park.

[Bill_K]

[dps77]

Butter Fly Museum

My family farm

Family Farm

Cohocton, NY Wind Farm

I really like your butterfly and wind turbine photos, well seen, well executed nursepatty.
Dave

[Matt]

Great work everyone. It will be a challenge for me to come up with the BILLION DOLLAR winner. Give me a few days to review all that has been submitted. In the meantime, I'd like to hear from you. What photo is YOUR favorite and why?

[HaloGirl]

My hands-down favorite is Chris/GovMule's "Setting Up The Big Top" - I just can't stop looking at it. I love the composition, colors, focus and how these clearly inanimate characters seem to have so much interaction between them.

Other faves:
Matt's Niagara/Maid of the Mist - great composition and color, amazing clarity in the falls.
Chris/GovMule's snail - simple, but effective composition and subject, unique perspective.
Kelly's tree buds - just beautiful and great light and composition.
Chris270's pitcher & baserunner and pitcher & batter - both have very effective interaction between what is in focus and what is not, great action captures (especially with the pitcher & batter), and nice compositions.

[chris270]

I like Bill's meerkats. Its focus is on the close meerkat with the other looking the opposite way oof and the pen oof in the background.

[dps77]

I have a tie. I like the Male House Finch by Mrbirdnerd. great composition, the soft focus(DoF) of the leaves and branch frame the finch. the clear blue sky works well with red finch.
the other photo is Flower buds on the branch by Kelly. Great composition, less is more(minimalism). the 3 flower buds are backlit,they jump out from soft focus(DoF) background. Hey,Kelly you have a pattern(3 flower buds).
Dave

[Bill_K]

These are some of my favorites from this month.


http://chriscouse.smugmug.com/photos/37 ... 3ga-XL.jpg

http://chriscouse.smugmug.com/photos/50 ... FJx-XL.jpg

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8695/200 ... sizewm.jpg

http://www.joshjonesphoto.com/blog/2009 ... C_1593.JPG

http://rochesterccphotography.smugmug.c ... 2k-L-1.jpg

http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/challenge/ ... -focus.jpg

[Matt]

We have a billionaire:

HaloGirl


Why
Our eyes start at the piping in the foreground and the box. Plumbing comes to mind... a faucet perhaps... Then in the blurry background we have the husband, focused on the project at hand: the sink with disposal attached. It tells a story. In this particular case, Angel provided some background to the story: this sink is going back.

There are two several ways to focus an image. The most common way is to focus on the subject and let the rest, based on solely distance, fall into bokeh.
Focusing and pressing the shutter usually yields a focused object in the center of the frame and a blurry background- it's that simple.

Demonstrating a biased selective focus is far more difficult. To isolate one subject from another with focus can sometimes be a technical feat. To demonstrate a story or interaction between subjects in diferrent focal planes, however, is tough. (This excellent example by Chris) demonstrates this interaction. Outside of sports, I think it's very difficult to find these types of interractions. Although I didn't limit my judgement to this type of selective focus, I certainly consider it to meet the challenge.
Essentially what I was looking for was the selective focus to be a function of the photographer rather than of the lens - and I did see that in several entries.

Additionally, as a tip for everyone: I tend to favor photos that are taken for the challenge, rather than ones we pull from the coffers. For this particular challenge, getting the camera out and practicing on objects around the house (like with Angel's dolls and Bill's oranges) is a a great way to hone this skill- which is the purpose of these challenges.

These are some of my favorites from this month, although I didn't really see any here that I disagreed with.

Angel, I'll need your mailing address to mail your 100 billion to... though let me warn you it takes me forever to get to the post office because I can't stand that place.

[HaloGirl]

Totally unexpected, so many great submissions this month. Thank you.

BTW, we're expecting our replacement sink by Friday, so we'll try round two of the installation this weekend and hope everything goes well.

[backpacker]

congrads Angel

[Matt]

Oh and for those of you who aren't billionaires (in Zimbabwe) yet, I have a few more bills put away for future prizes.