Thanks all for giving some good input on the last set of photos verbally and by commenting on both my blog and facebook. It was great fun!! I worked some more on the photos last night and narrowed down the field to three photos. The panoramic image of the bridge and the tower is a really fun image to look at and analyze and I had a great time connecting three or four separate images to make one big pano image, but I feel it’s not strong and sharp enough to compete. I’ll probably work at it a bit more and use it elsewhere. The image of the windows and light pattern was also cut. I personally really like this one, but I’ve taken this shot in the past and used it before in a past competition. Therefore, I based the decision on feedback and received better responses on the other three. That leaves the following three images as finalists and some filtering work was done on two of them as explained below to make them stronger.

A black and white filter was put on this image to bring out the clouds a bit more and a vignetting was added to finish off the look and feel.

The original HDR of this photo in the below post used three different images with different exposures – -2, 0, and +2. That caused some of the people who were moving a lot not look like people because each shot had them in different locations. This time I used one photo to create an HDR photo and the people came out much clearer. I also played with the color a bit to make it more “old time.”

No further edits were made to this image. I tried, but I just couldn’t make it better. This image was the overall favorite in the people who responded. I love the uniqueness of this photo. This shot was taken from the outside looking through a smoky-glass window into a bar/restaurant. I love how the eye sees these scenes.

Thanks to all who gave feedback. I believe I have the final two photos I want to submit to the competition, but I would, of course, love to hear any additional feedback.