Thank you everyone for your patience- we had some issues getting these up today. I want to make a few notes, there were nearly 600 entries for this division, and most, in fact nearly all that didn't make it, were not nominated for one of the following reasons:
1. Lack of focus in the eyes. Its ok to have portraits that are not in focus or abstract, however, when the portrait intends to have the eyes in focus and they are not, it does not have the impact.
2. Animals- quite a few in here, and some were very, very good. I think between landscape/nature & macro & portraits we had a lot of images that could have appeared in any of these categories. I am considering opening a new category for them called "Animals". This is probably going to happen.
3. Nudity- There were several, several images that contained blatant nudity or overly adult typed themes. I am trying to keep this a family oriented type website, and although your images were technically sound, I just cannot post them here. I tried to do my best to keep these to a minimum.
4. Weak Facial Lighting- I would say about half of the lighted portraits (not silhouettes)were eliminated because of weak lighting, or the face in dark shadows, when the face was composed as the main subject. Sometimes we will see this in black and whites, or high contrast/artsy type shots, but many of the ones I saw had weak lighting. There are several ways to improve this, and I go into great detail on how to see good light and even shoot into the sun on my
Advanced Photography Techniques DVD.
In any event, many, many great shots! I am so inspired and motivated by your talent and great work!
