So tomorrow the 1st place winner will be announced. Man I’m excited. Just before I go through the final two winners, I’d like to discuss the selection process a bit.

It was not easy to select 15 images out of more than 10,000. In fact one may think it is impossible.

Here is how it went. Initially I went through the "pool posts" and the last few month’s pool submissions to select about 120 images that I loved.

It was not an easy process as there were many, many great images. I used a few criteria to narrow down. The first was the concept and uniqueness of the image. While that is not an absolute criteria, it served me well to weed out all the dogs/cats/trees images.

Another thing I was looking for, or at least strongly attracted to was the use of DIY methods and equipment in the image creation process. I know that using something you built is not a must for a great image, but this is what this blog’s about and I did mention it in the prizes announcement process. Now that the contest is over, you’ll find the pool in whole is more focused towards DIY images.

So I was left with about a 120 images and slowly, night after night took a few out each day. It was a long and painful process as, I assume, any other judge may have selected another group of finalists out of those 100. Picking the last few was purely a matter of taste.

In that group, there were a few photogs that had a few images in. Those were taken out, however, if images were submitter anonymously, a photog might have won two images.

I consulted on the last few round and was seeking feedback to my selection, and thus achieved the final list. It was down to 15. Now, I know I said ten when I started this, however, Chase was king enough to make some of the hard choices for me. I think this worked out well as his taste is a lot different from mine and (although he has total lighting control) he is also deep into concepts and feelings. 

Chase, for making this final choice and agreeing to part of the fun, I am grateful. 

And now to Place #2

Pinhole photography was always one of my favorite forms of photography. I mean, those guys were DIYing it right from the start.

I mean, I bet the first person to punch a hole in a shoe box did not think this fed will go so far. However, look at where pinhole stands today, when we have 20MPX cameras.

Darren C has definitely take it to an extreme.

Here’s what Chase had to say

Impressive POV image. This is far more difficult image to execute that one might think. What took the cake for me was the perfectly sharp downtube contrasted with the dramatically blurred background. It’s really hard to get both of those to happen in the same image. I’m guessing this was done on really smooth lawn with a 2+ second exposure. Nice!

Here’s what I had to say

Pinhole images are hard. Just making the camera provide a sharp image and setting the exposure right is tough. Getting a perfect blur to contrast a sharp moving pole is virtually impossible. Superb execution of a technically hard to master shot. I can not ever begin to imagine how you control the shutter on a bicycle.

Darren C, you get 2nd pick for one of the prizes. If you could
place a comment on your image with the order of prize preference it would help us speed up the process of winners/sponsors match making.

Thanks again for the great prizes and sponsors of D3A – you made this happen:

– ExplorerXT external battery pack courtesy of innovatronix

– Lensbaby Composer lens courtesy of Lensbaby

– Universal Photo Timer Kit (UPT_KIT1A) courtesy of Universal Photo Timer

– 2 (YES TWO!) PRESSLite VerteX sets courtesy of PRESSLite

– Ultimate Combo Pack for 3 Flashes courtesy of PhotoGels

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