Me, too, Konky! It's a beautiful composition that perfectly illustrates the idea that being into MINIs is an elevated, almost spiritual experience!

 

I love the angles of 18. It allows your imagination to create the MINI that it belongs to. I wanted to reach out and touch it. It looks so alive.. smooth. Wild!

 

How does 54 have NO votes?!?!?!?!?!?

I had to vote for myself, but 54 is my second fav. . .

 

how sad.. i vote for myself too.. lol

Got to make next months contest harder.. lol

every one did such a great job!!

 

Maybe I'm just a "kid" and I don't get what all the too do is about, but the way I see it photography is all about image manipulation.

Some things I have never seen in life without using the tools of photography to manipulate reality.

manipulation with long shutterspeeds

• smoothed out flowing stream - the moving water I was looking at didn't look anything like that.
• glassy ocean - the ocean waves I was looking at are no longer present, and the pier I could only see faint hints of, is clear as day.
• blurred backgrounds that I never saw even as I was looking through the lens.
• Magnified movement effect that was never there in real life either.

aperture manipulation

• Life at F/2.8 doesn't match the reality of what I saw without my camera gear, and even at the time I had an F/22 view of the world through the lens and the camera recorded it at F/2.8. My intuition told me I would record something such as the image I took, but I never "saw" the out-of-focus background at any point either in "real life" or "through the lens".

Photography isn't that "pure" to me. There is a lot of manipulation of light and reality taking place throughout the process. Focal length selection, aperture, shutterspeed, iso, all of those bend "real life" to fit the image we are trying to construct in our mind's eye.

I know there are those that have contempt for photoshop and image manipulation it makes possible, but whether we like it or not, photography at it's core is about using tools to create an image. We are not "recording reality", we are creating a representation of what was actually going on, and that representation is manipulated.

 

I just have to say brilliant! This has to be the best bunch of images yet.

18. is technically outstanding and Minor White and Ansel Adams would have been proud of the perfect zone system use of b&w. From pure white to deep rich black.

30. is incredible. A shot of serendipitous timing with the reflection of the road lines in the car.

43. is too small and too cool! This needs to be a t-shirt!

Great images everyone!

 

and to quote Dave from earlier, interpretation of the topic depends on the person. thats what makes this contest interesting.

The topic was "black and white"...not "hey go shoot black and white photos this month"

 

Wow, What a great set of photo's. So many to look at, so many different views of B/W. My luck to enter the first time with so much better competition. Was fun, thinking in B/W though.

 

Cody, I used to have similar feelings about digital. I was dead set against it. But digital has really opened up photography to many people who never would've bothered with film. IMO film requires more technique & ability to get that great photo. Guess I've softened up my views on it some. Now to me it's just tools to work in a different medium. Pictures is pictures. Like I said creating an image that wasn't there in real life, now that just isn't kosher in my mind.

I hope you don't think I was being too hard on you. I'm just an old guy trying to make a point.

 

No, I don't mind it at all, because like I said...that's where I came from too. That class taught me a whole lot about photography, and how to actually MAKE A PICTURE, the real way. I too would love to experiment with a DSLR, but I just can't afford it. If I could, I would love it. Every time I have our family's crappy point and shoot in my hands I think "damn...I wish I had a DSLR so I could really take some good shots." I can't say I "love" digital, but I can say I love the concept of it. I love the fact that you can take a camera that has the same quality as a 35mm, shoot with different lenses, but you can take 500+ pics, instead of only 32. Plus, you can put them straight unto your computer, whereas with 35mm you have to scan them, which loses the quality of the picture.

BTW: Don't you have a DSLR?

-Cody

 

Yes Cody I do have a DSLR. I became sensitized to the chemicals in the darkroom & was having trouble with that. For me the darkroom was at least half the fun. I kept shooting film & had the negatives souped at the local lab & then scanned on a disc for me. That worked for a while until the lab started getting sloppy with their process. My negatives were being ruined. I took the plunge & bought a Canon G1....I can hear the Nikonion's screaming already...Crashton with a Canon?? It was a great digital camera that had full manual controls, just like a real camera should. I loved that camera & it helped rekindle my love affair with photography. That camera taught me a lot. Like you said taking 500 pictures with instant feed back really helps you learn fast. When DSLR's first came out they were wildly expensive so I waited for prices to fall & fall they did. I bought a year old Fuji S1 referb for not much money. I had to stay with the Nikon system, because I had much money in Nikon glass. It used a Nikon D60 body with Fuji digital guts. Sort of a franken camera. Time moved on & I graduated to a D70. Wonderful camera. Then a screaming deal was had on a D2H. Now I have found my digital niche with my D200. The only manipulation that I do with my digital negatives are slight exposure correction & cropping. Not much different that my old chemical darkroom. I find that putting nose grease on my digital negatives doesn't help.

 

Wow, it looks like it's going to be a tight one between the top three.

 

I'm totally with Dave on this. And by the way, as long as you don't take pics in RAW you are post-processing the photo in the camera.

 

Great idea!
I think one outshines everyone. I'm also partial towards sky pictures.

 

Congrats to all the photographers. What a great bunch of pictures

 

i think the fact that there are 54 to choose from, is totally awesome! and hey- there are no winners and losers here, right?

like my daddy always told me: "never vote for yourself. unless of course- there's money involved."

 

all of them look good...If I wasn't partial to my own, I would have had a hard time choosing.

 

In all honesty, I think this one might be one of my favorite MINI pictures (number 17):




Whoever took it...do you have a high resolution version? I think it would look great as my desktop background .


However, I am sad to admit that I decided to vote for my own...but then again, I am happy I did because it looks like it's going to be a pretty close one that may come down to just 1 or 2 votes .

 

Thanks. When I get some time (probably mid-week), I'll put a series of desktops together. Let me know what size your desktop is and I'll be sure to make a version in that size.

 

What a great group of images! This is really difficult. I like so many of them, 16, 18, 28, 29, 35, 36, and 54! I do love 43, very cool, but I really want to see it bigger. Oh man, I need to come back later.

 

I can't help but laugh; wasn't last month or the month before when people were complaining that there wasn't enough time to shoot for the monthly contest. 55 photos [Dave shaking his head]

As to those who complain about "manipulation" of the images, whether you've taken them with a digital sensor, film camera, or even a pin hole shoe box, they have still been significantly manipulated to be developed. jpg in digicam or "auto" RAW settings in PC, wet developer settings from the photo lab and then scan of the photo or positive, or even from your garage wet darkroom using specific lighting techniques. Nobody can honestly say their photo was not "manipulated" when they realize that a machine, camera, or someone else did it for them.

Ansel Adams, arguably the master of B&W photography would spend days in the darkroom perfecting a print. That's manipulation, pure and simple. He did it because of Dave B's point in an earlier post, the film or sensors even today can not capture exactly what our eyes are capable of seeing. It's up to us the photographers to accurately convey what we saw with our eyes. We are blessed now that the common person has access to tools more powerful than Ansel had. Doesn't mean the common person will get the same results however. My personal photos may look to some as over saturated, but that's how I see the world around me; it's my interpretation. Everyone here should experiment and discover how they see with their eyes.
Don't complain about the tools for "manipulation" and instead learn them to discover your creative vision of how you see the world. That's what Ansel did with the tools available in his day. I may not be that crazy about painting in colors into a B&W photo, but is it really any less realistic than my beloved landscape water photos with silky smooth long exposure movement? I think they are both unnatural effects and it's up to the viewer to decide whether it's pleasing or not. [okay, enough, I'll get down from the soapbox and shut the heck up ]

Mark S, you may have been off the bike for awhile, but you obviously haven't forgotten how to ride so perfectly. I'll continue to get inspiration from your photos.

#16 - You obviously took great lengths to stage this shot and it was worth it. Fantastic lines; well done!

#17 (Dave B?) - Interesting, didn't' think anyone would go for the infrared looking photos here. Definitely a different unique perspective.

#19 - Too cool! Did any of the stars have colors?

#22 (Lee?) - The return of Bixby bridge.

Mario, your Mini, Konky's, and skitelluride531's are some of the nicest black Minis out there and they always look outstanding. Well done on your photo.

#28 - Really like the industrial look of this photo.

skitelluride531, don't forget the little people that helped you out. I know where you started and you truly made an Ansel style effort on your fantastic photo.

Kurt, this photo is even better than the one you posted previously. This is one of my favorite photos from this contest collection and I'm surprised it isn't doing better; only because of the quality of some competitors. You can take pride in that you're still beating me.

Konky, do you ever take a bad photo? I mean really, everything you've ever posted makes me say "WOW!". You also know PS inside and out; please continue to offer your advanced tips on occasions.

#43 - Has so much potential, but is tragically miniscule in size. Why oh why? Next time please skip the art gallery mating and let us instead marvel in your photographic genius. Please consider reposting this photo full size into the reflections thread.

#52 - One of my other favorites from this month!

I appreciate the nice comments about my photo, even though this month is humbling for me. I take consolation that one of my favorite photographer's photo (#1) is tied with mine. The photos submitted this month were fantastic and at this rate, we'll need to change the voting to "pick any three". Well done everyone!

 

Dave: you raise many good points in your post above.

Yes, that's mine. You make the second person to comment about the infrared look. It was shot in color, and I used the channel mixer to do the color to B&W conversion and bring out that effect.

Here is the original:



The original image submitted was 1800 pixels wide. Because of that I used the "medium" sized version that the forum gallery software created. I routinely do this for entries that are greater than the 800 pixel wide stipulation in the contest rules, because it is simply much easier to use the medium version than to reject large entries and chase after people over PM when the rest of their image complied with the requirements and there is an easily postable version being created automatically by the gallery software. The actual "image" appears to be close to the 800 pixel wide size, but the large thick boarder made the fullsize image unfair to post in the poll.


That is actually a possibility with the forum polling. If there is interest, and somewhat of a consensus to change the polling to allow for voting for more than one photo, I'm open to conducting the poll that way in the future.

 

. For those that don't know, Speednut definitely has helped me learn more and more about photoshop these past weeks through email. He is a wealth of information, and definitely has helped me understand a lot of the more advanced stuff in PS that can do so much to increase the look of an otherwise lacking photo (levels and curves in photoshop can work magic on a photo - Thanks for the help speednut ):

The original photo:


Another option that you guys could look in to in the future would be to hold a vote for however many days, just like this one, and then take the top 5 pictures and hold another vote between just those 5.





Oh, by the way...my screen resolution is 1680 X 1050, so if you ever get a chance to make some high res. versions of your photo, I'd love to get one .

 

Amazing # of entries. I'm going to have to give them a look over a few times to pick my favorite over mine haha.

 

All I can say is Wow!
Amazing pics everyone!