Well, I completed my voting and it took a good hour. I use a system for judging which seems to work quite well for me.
I first do a methodical 'scan' sorting the entries by -
a) Images that evoke the competition theme.
b) Composition and aesthetic quality.
c) Technical merit.
This gives me a 'wheat from the chaff' list
I do a further grading (a,b and c) on each, from the above list. This gives me a quick final list that I can refer back to. Thus I am able to include/exclude the top images to make my final decision. (hope all that makes sense)
Using the above, I found the following for this competition -
Third place (c): 20 entries
Second place (b): 18 entries
First place (a): 10 entries
It was still difficult choice from those top ten