Hey everybody. Thanks for the wonderful Holiday photos.
Tough to judge, but here are my favorites...

Honorable mention: Great capture by And. Beautiful Skin tones and good composition.


3rd place...mtnbear hug. I really liked this photo, and don't know if this is a true reflection photo, or if it was photoshopped, but I like it none the less. Your mom and her hubby are beautiful people.


2nd place...Schmikey...This is just a great photo. I had a really hard time deciding between this one and the winner. This photo has just great sharpness and composition. The lighting is great too. Super photo...


And the winner is....Peter Zack.
The dichotomy in this shot was striking. A beatiful and unique interpretation of the theme. I would love to hear the story of where this photo was taken. Congratulations. I pass the baton for the next contest on to you. Bravo Pete!

[and]

Thanks for the mention and congrats to the winner. The clarity, sharpness, crispness... of shmikeys shot intrigued me from the moment i saw it, PP, if any, seems subtle too, leading me to beleive there wasnt a lot of usm

[Fritz]

Great choices! Congrats to the winners.

[Peter Zack]

I have to agree Andreas. I liked his shot as well. The colour and setup was great for this shot.
There were many very good entries this week and I'm honoured to be chosen. Great work everyone. Thanks very much. Now I'll have to come up with a new contest choice, this will take a little thought. I'll post something tonight.

I was also thinking we might go for 2 weeks since many of us will be very busy over this period. What does everyone think? Ending around Jan 2nd or so?

As for the shot. It was taken in down town Charlottetown in front of Province house. The memorial is for WW I, II and I think Korea. We had our Remembrance day ceremony and a wreath seems to be left behind (It's on November 11th in Canada and similar to Memorial day in the US and other similar WW remembrances elsewhere). Normally the wreaths are there for a week or so and then taken down. So that caught my eye.

Charlottetown is a beautiful and historic place and I was looking for some interesting Christmas stuff to shoot in my new home town while my wife was Christmas shopping. Nothing was jumping out that day so I decided to do a little street shooting. The sun was setting and the sun runs right up Grafton st (Trans Canada Hwy on the map) and was hitting the pillars on the building.

I was originally shooting this with the intent of making it a B&W but for this the colour version seemed better in some ways. The scene just struck me that at this time of year many of us celebrate family and peace. This combination seemed to jump out that some families have a much tougher time during this period and Christmas might not be so much fun.

I nearly got myself killed to take the shot. I was on the sidewalk but couldn't get the 2 main elements to line up right and be tight to each other. So I walked out in the middle of University Ave and of course sunset time is also "rush hour" (which is a joke here if you live in a big city). So the traffic was going both ways and I'm standing in the middle of the road snapping shots (hoping a cop didn't arrive). I tried a wider lens up close but the 2 structures are about 50 meters apart and it didn't look right. The longer lens (F SMC 70-210 f4-5.6) was able to compress the elements and get the composition I wanted.

Thanks for the vote. these are great competitions.


The black box on the map is the Province house building and the red is the memorial.

[schmikey]

My first placing in the top 3 - I'm am deeply honoured! The photo I entered was taken after our first snow in Toronto - which was also my first attempt at using my K100 in the winter. BTW I did not do any PP - this image is 'right out of the camera!"
Thanks again and congrats to the Winner and other 'placers'!

[daacon]

Congrats to all, especially the winners! First contest I missed in a while - did not have any Xmas Theme I liked (taken with my Pentax as this will be my first xmas with it) but I will after Christmas !

And Congrats to Peter for the photograph and story behind it ! Rush hour in Charlottetown (which I have been in many years ago) vs. rush hour in the Bay Area , California let’s say (which I have experienced more than once, most recently last month) do indeed conjure up different images.

Great idea on the two week contest - it will be a busy time for a lot of us. While we will have pictures a plenty - the time to process and post will be rare and better spent with friends and family I suspect.

[Peter Zack]

Thanks Dave. The new contest will run for 2 weeks and is here:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/mini-challenges-games/16749-weekly-challe...tml#post136740

[mtnbearhug]

3rd place...mtnbear hug. I really liked this photo, and don't know if this is a true reflection photo, or if it was photoshopped, but I like it none the less. Your mom and her hubby are beautiful people.

My goodness what nice Christmas present.. Thank you very much Fletcherkane..

I haven't been able to check in for awhile and wanted to see who won last weeks comp and see what this weeks was and wow... .. Thank you... Thank you....

The picture is not a reflection... it is manufactured... It is actually 4 different pictures layered into one. My mom makes the globes and wanted to use them as a picture for her cards this year.. so.. I thought it would be neat if her and her hubby's pic was inside the globe. Little did I know the how hard it would be to do such a thing.. lol The things we do for our parents..

To start I took some pictures of some greenery... and I already had the pic of my mom and the globe. so I cut my mom out and put her on the greenery background. then cut that out so it would fit in into bulb which I already had cut out and layered on the other greenery.. .. and then put them all together..

Congrats to all the winners!!!!! and to the judge..

Thank you again.. it means more than you know!! I am glad you enjoyed it most of all!!!

Kim