The photos in this P52 were all a pleasure to see, and I enjoyed going back to them several times to see each person's interpretations of the theme. Congratulations Matt for a worthy win. Beautiful colors and sharpness there. Congratulations to Saltwater Images and Mehrdad/Mtux and TimPGH, too, for your very appealing shots. Thanks for judging and commenting, Scomatic. I know you've been very busy this week, and it can't have made your life easier to do the judging.
Tess, I really liked Tripper Dawg's photo. The reflections in his lovely eyes were super, almost as if you were seeing right through to the soul, as if the dog is reflecting a part of the land which is home.
Helena, your photo was one of my favorites, especially given how you had to shoot that photo while balancing on a knife edge (
), and it certainly a relevant entry in this week's contest. I think that it shares some of the same feeling as Tess' photo of her dog's eyes reflecting the surroundings. Yours ties the building to the landscape, an organic whole. I do hope you'll continue to participate in the P52 challenges. It's wonderful to see what photos you bring to the forum from your part of the world.
Some Thoughts on the Project 52 Challenges
Because we have to shoot the theme in the stipulated time frame, it's made more difficult, which adds to the challenge and provokes creativity. So I think that in some respects the P52 challenge is tougher than the Weekly Contest, when we can go through our archives for just the right image to suit the theme. These are generally the photos we can shoot in our normal day to day lives, not pictures we take on vacations to extraordinary places. So I think that makes the images for P52 even more impressive, in a way, because they're shot under more restrictive conditions.
Similarly, the P52 challenge in some ways demands a bit more from the judge, an opportunity to stretch his or her own abilities, because in most cases the judge didn't choose the theme of the week and might not have a familiarity or experience of the theme. That makes judging a learning experience as well, since it requires trying to see how that photographer saw the image, and what it was they were trying to convey.
Overall, then, the P52 challenges are a great learning experience for all who participate, whether as the photographer or the judge.