I'd like to thank you all for participating, nice to see so many entries.
Keep in mind that these critique comments are just my opinion. Take them for what they are worth...
First of all, I was surprised nobody corrected for the perspective distortion. It's the first step I take when PPing architectural shots, and even in images like this where it's fairly subtle it makes a major difference in the end result. The K7's files are incredibly robust, and can take an amazing amount of distortion correction - I think of it as a miniature view camera for that reason.
bbluesman: I like the blue tint and the slightly yellowed sky, but the shadows are too blocked up for my taste. With a bit of shadow detail this would have scored high.
Tamia: Black and white at it's most elemental. I'm not crazy about the crop - with this strong contrast the chimney and two rooftop pipes are overly distracting, and I think this treatment would work better without them.
jmschrei: This is a pretty nice black and white. It has the feel of a platinum print. A few points off for a slight haloing in the sky, and a couple inches cropped off the left side wouldn't hurt, but overall I like this one.
song_hm: Very interesting treatment. I like the color and the overall feel of it. There's some posterization in the sky, and the smoke on top of the garage roof is rather ugly, but I like it for the most part.
TOUGEFC: An HDR look from a single RAW, very nicely done with one exception - the haloing in the sky. Points off for that, especially since this is such an easy sky to mask out. The rest is excellent though.
icywarm: Nice crop. A bit too much saturation for my taste, and I'd like to see more detail in the shadows.
Ash: I don't think cropping that close to the chimney works well, and I'd like to see the white point bumped up a little - it's a bit dull. Colors seem a bit off as well.
jimH: I wasn't sure I liked the soft hazy effect on a hard cornered building, but it's been growing on me. I'd like to see the foreground lightened up a bit though.
EricT: Interesting crop. I think it works pretty well overall, but I don't like the vignette - it's a bit to heavy handed where it shows up, but the biggest problem with it is it's not consistent all the way around the image, which makes it very distracting.
landscaped1: Nice try, but I'm afraid it just doesn't all pull together. The purple driveway seems particularly out of place.
ramseybuckeye: This one I think is too busy and confused to work as an abstract, and it's too busy and confused to NOT be an abstract, so basically it's just not working for me. I hope that wasn't too harsh...
ozlizard: You really nailed the lighting in this composite, not an easy thing to get right. The smoke (which looks like it's coming out of the hat) is a bit distracting, and I'd like to see a bit cropped off the left side, but overall an excellent entry.
atupdate: This made me smile. A somewhat primitive composite, but fun. Some more work on the flame, and it's effect on the building would be nice. Nice crop.
Fries: From your description I realize the dark foreground was an artistic choice, but I think it goes a bit too far, and I would have liked to have seen a little shadow detail down there and on the end of the building.
jimH asked to see my own version, so here's a link to that:
Community General on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
I've always been curious what the original poster of these challenges did with their own images, so maybe we can make it standard practice to show them at the end? Anybody think that's a good idea?
And the winners of Challenge #26 are:
Third place: jmschrei
Second place: TOUGEFC
First Place: ozlizard