Welcome to the poll for our October Open Theme photo contest! Select the photo you think is the best from among our finalists below:

#1.


#2.


#3.


#4.


#5.


#6.


#7.


#8.


#9.


#10.


#11.


#12.


#13.


#14.


#15.

[ignath]

#12 works for me!

[rod_grant]

Great work everyone!

[Katfsh]

Are you kidding me????? They are all amazing!! Eeenie,meeenie,miny, moeee, catch a tiger by the toe...........

---------- Post added 11-16-19 at 06:08 PM ----------

I guess #2 will be my pick

[ChaZam]

Voted for #4.
Tough choice though.
Virtual tie between 3 or 4 others as well.

[Aaron28]

wow! great stuff here! very inspiring to learn more and improve!!

[luckylu]

Made my choice so difficult well done to all.

I wish we could see the EXIF. As regards the PP argument I guess it will rage on forever like any other subjective topic. My take is the less PP then the more admiring I am of the photographer, as more PP gets used the more admiring I am of the Artist.

[totsmuyco]

Great shots!!!

[José Mª Coca]

Fantastic photos, vote for # 11, but any of the selected ones are worthy representatives of the cameras with which they shot and could win the contest.

[bobphoenix]

The B&W one with the plane did not win a previous contest?

It should, especially in light of Veterans day this past week ago, and it is an exceptionally well done image! I may share it (with credit given, of course...) for the sake of many people here in Connecticut.

Many folks outside of Connecticut may not know or have heard... in August of 2019 (this last summer,) the Air Museum in Connecticut was holding their annual air show.
The feature at the end of the actual show was a fly over with an A-10 Warthog and a P-38 fighter, both escorting a "flying fortress"... Unfortunately, on the Thursday before the show, the Flying Fortress was doing "touch and go's" and giving exhibition rides to dignitaries... the plane went down, killing seven out of seventeen...

This image carries with it a powerful message. And, that is the whole purpose of a photograph... A good photograph will tell an entire story ( but leave out the ending) for the viewer to complete.

[grey goat]

Many folks outside of Connecticut may not know or have heard... in August of 2019 (this last summer,) the Air Museum in Connecticut was holding their annual air show.
The feature at the end of the actual show was a fly over with an A-10 Warthog and a P-38 fighter, both escorting a "flying fortress"... Unfortunately, on the Thursday before the show, the Flying Fortress was doing "touch and go's" and giving exhibition rides to dignitaries... the plane went down, killing seven out of seventeen...

I hadn't heard about that accident, Bob. Sad news, for sure.

Last I heard, the B-17 at Oshkosh here in Wisconsin is still flying. . . .

[Pete2815]

These photos are all outstanding. I feel guilty voting for 1 photo and not a few of the others that I really liked.

[800rate]

number 5

[Komainu]

Gorgeous photographs, good job everyone!

[neme-q]

Knap werk; schitterende beelden
Ik ga voor de sfeer in #6

Good job; beautiful images
I'm going for the atmosphere in # 6

[Erictator]

I got to see a huge print of "Moonrise over Hernandez" at a shop in Santa Fe, NM thirty years ago. Stunning photograph. The finished image has so much depth to it.

That was Adams, for sure: I expect he had visualized what he wanted to do with that scene, that negative before he even developed it. Printing was a whole other art for Adams.

---------- Post added 11-15-2019 at 10:05 PM ----------



I really don't understand why some find these images so annoyingly post-processed. Limitations in B&W? One look at that Adams print reveals otherwise. Film photographers were limited by their skills, imagination, and choices. I suppose some were limited by which drug store they dropped their film off at for developing and printing, and those same photographers would be limited by other factors in the digital realm. Luckily, Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Minor White, Wynn Bullock, and a host of other great photographers apparently didn't live anywhere near a drug store. You can bet they wouldn't set a DSLR to shoot JPGs, either.

---------- Post added 11-15-2019 at 10:18 PM ----------



Thanks, pschlute, for a voice of reason.

I'd be tempted to say, though, that many of the great B&W photographers spent considerably more time in the darkroom than in the field. Looking at a dodge-and-burn road map or blueprint for negatives of some of the great photographs, it's easy to see how they spent so much time in the darkroom. The great ones knew what they wanted, and they knew what they had to do to get it, and many of them created extensive guidelines for others to print those negatives. That may not be the only way to achieve breath-taking art, but it's certainly a valid way--at least for photographers who know what they're doing.

First off, great job everyone. I knew an OPEN theme would bring out some great work, and this batch exceeded even my expectations. Hard to pick a winner.

I concur with your sentiments. I'd take it further as I think we all have a personal "line" we set for ourselves, of what we will not cross before we consider taking a photo too far. I have zero problem with extensive PP so long as it is not presented as factual news in a newspaper/media reporting environment.

Everything else is Art. Especially so if the artist pre-visualized the final image before it was taken, then all the post process work is just an extension of the capture. If you are just going through photo's and say, gee that sucks as color, I'll try B&W and then you just start throwing spaghetti at it until you have something akin to an ink-blot test, well, even if it comes out cool, the artist has to live with knowing how it came to be. It's like winning a sporting event because of dumb luck. You are the one who has to look at the trophy, and the only person who knows its true value and knows how much work did or didn't go into it.

But take that thought now in the other direction. You stumble out of your car, rub the sleep dust out of your eye's, you whip out your mighty K-Maximus-Prime 40gigaquark camera out with the HDFAFL* 400mm F1.8 Fluorite Limited Tele, and with the camera in full Auto everything mode, you just happen to trip the shutter at something like a bald eagle posing perfectly for you on a a low branch and he takes flight just as you trip the trigger, and the flag across the street just happens to pick up its reflection in his eye. You decide you will quit while you are ahead, get back in the car and go home with a perfectly exposed, amazing shot that everyone will rant and rave over how awesome it is and in needed zero post processing, heck, it was even an out of camera JPG. So... here's this shot that took no thought, no work after the shot... is it better than a shot that was envisioned and took some PP to get it there? Hmmm...

Either way, you can't blame the viewers for liking the final outcome of either scenario.
Eric