Every month on our¯¿½ pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I¯¿½ve come to real­ize it¯¿½s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That¯¿½s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

I Got it! by Iguanasan

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

The deci­sive moment — Igua­nasan cap­tured the deci­sive moment here; 1 sec­ond ear­lier or later and this moment would be gone.

Sim­plic­ity & Story — The back­ground is unclut­tered here so this shot is not busy and there are no dis­trac­tions. This makes the uni­ver­sal story of a boy (let’s call him Stan­ley) play­ing in the water with his shoe even stronger. The story is well cap­tured and it strikes a happy chord in all of us.

Com­po­si­tion — Stanley’s pose is very inter­est­ing to look at and helps make this shot. Despite the water drops every­where, this is a clean look­ing image. I am glad we can see some of the Stanley’s face here. Although I nor­mally like to see more of a face, there are always excep­tions and this is one of them. Stanley’s pose and engage­ment in the activ­ity are uni­ver­sal enough that we don’t need to see the full face.

Expo­sure is well han­dled here and the drops look great. My only teeny nig­gle would be that the boy could be about 10% brighter to my eye.

Sharp­ness — The over­all sharp­ness is very good here. Some of the drops seem sharper than the boy to my eye but for me this still works well. The drops are an inte­gral part of the story and since Stan­ley is not look­ing at us because he is engaged in activ­ity, the sharper drops work for me.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Igua­nasan for cap­tur­ing this uni­ver­sal moment!

I¯¿½d also like to include these 2 images as hon­ourable mentions.

Some­how prickly by MoinMoin

Krimml Cas­cades — Europe’s high­est Waterfall

Every month on our¯¿½ pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I¯¿½ve come to real­ize it¯¿½s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That¯¿½s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Time for Sun­flow­ers by mibriet

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Impact — Wow, bang, kapow, this is an extremely strik­ing image and it’s a plea­sure to look at it.

Sharp­ness — Love the sharp­ness here. This is par­tially achieved through focus stack­ing (where mul­ti­ple images with dif­fer­ent focus points are blended together)

Degree of dif­fi­culty — This is no easy shot to get. mibreit waited for the right time of day to get this. Dur­ing the shoot both expo­sure AND focus were shot dif­fer­ently on mul­ti­ple frames. Then in PP these were all blended. A whole lot of love and ded­i­ca­tion went into get­ting this gor­geous image.

Colour — These colours sing. There’s also some great jux­ta­po­si­tion in the colours of the sky ver­sus the colours in the foreground.

Blend­ing — The blend­ing of the var­i­ous expo­sures (and focal points) is taste­fully done here to my eye. Some­times HDRs or DRIs are too over­done and call atten­tion to them­selves. This is not the case here for me. The greens here are the only colour that I may have toned down slightly (but they still work for me and we are in the realm of per­sonal taste at this point). If I have one nig­gle, I can still see a touch of halo­ing around some of the leaves, but I can totally live with it.

Com­po­si­tion — Very inter­est­ing ele­ments through­out the fore­ground, midground and back­ground. Although there are mul­ti­ple things to focus on, the large fore­ground left flower is extra-sharp and just slightly brighter than the other flow­ers, thus mak­ing it one of the main focal points.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS post is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again mibreit for cre­at­ing this gor­geous image!

I¯¿½d also like to include these 3 images as hon­ourable mentions.

Crum­mock Water by Richard

Tas­ma­nia — ‘The Chrurch — Port Arthur’ by Mad Aussie

Sum­mer Shower by Barefoot