Animal Rising - My competition entry

[pippin88]

This shot was created using the ole bucket of water.

On the last day of the first round I filled up a bucket of water, grabbed a dropper and my rocketair and started playing. Camera was setup on my tripod with Sigma 105 Macro on the front and light pretty much exclusively provided by the SB800.

So I proceeded to take hundreds of shots of water drops hitting the surface, waves and swirling created by air from the rocket blower and so forth.

When processing I came across this image and immediately went 'wow', which is not something that has happened to me with many of my images, if any.

Comments appreciated.

[Alpha_7]

As I said in the other thread, and in the comments I really liked this shot, infact it was one of my favourites in Round 1. It certainly made me go, wow how did they do that. I really like the sharpness and the waters colour is gorgeous, made me think it was a swimming pool. With both this shot and Matt(Rokkstars) I was a little concerned for the D70's incase they got wet. As I said earlier it didn't quiet get full marks from me, as I thought 1 or 2 other shots captured movement better, but it was still Top 5 (which I'm sure none of my shots will make) so I'd very pleased if I had taken it. I hope you didn't take any of the comments to heart, if your happy with the shot that's all that should matter.

[sirhc55]

Nick - I kept on looking at this image over and over - why because I liked it and it was fascinating - like something out of Stargate

[pippin88]

Craig - I took you comments as honest - certainly not criticising and took no offence. I can see your point of view and it was something I thought about after entering it.

Chris - that is exactly why I liked it, and also why I kept the caption simple. To keep people coming back and finding different things in the image. Of the people who've viewed the image (outside this forum) most found a different type of animal - dog, pig, cockatoo, seal etc. which is what I hoped to encourage.

[wendellt]

Bloody freakin amazing
my head nearly exploded when you mentioned you were playing with air/water to get this astounding image of a dog

well done.

[Alpha_7]

Hmmm, I can see the Cockatoo now

Craig - I took you comments as honest - certainly not criticising and took no offence.

Glad you didn't take offensive, I think everyone tried very hard in this challenge and the results show, I think all entrants deserve honest feedback in return for their hard work.

Wendell - what sort of dog can you see ?

[stubbsy]

Nick

As I said in my comments in the challenge area I was very impressed with the shot (just personally didn't see it as movement.) FOr me it reminded me of the "alive" water in the James Cameron movie The Abyss.

I think this would be superb nice and large and hangning on a wall somewhere.

[tarotastic]

Awesome shot. Really does look like like a cockatoo coming out of the water.

[owen]

I saw a baby elephant, with a short trunk. Terrific shot.

[leek]

A great shot Nick...

I imagined that it was of a larger scale than implied by the tools that you used... As I said in my comment on the voting page... I love the little highlight from the flash...

[pippin88]

Thanks for all the comments everybody.

Guess I jumped the gun and got dissapointed and assumed everyone thought it lacked movement, but I now realise that the comments section only went up quite shortly before I viewed it.

Peter - Like Craig's opinion, I didn't take it as criticism, just as your opinion, which is a large part of the challenge in these comps - getting your message, theme and the feel of your image over to a wide audience.

Craig - A sad dog is what I mainly see, like a big lab or something. The dark bit above the major flash highlight being the eye, the upper left dark bit being the nose, and the left dark bit being the jowls / mouth. Then the ears are the large dark area diagonally down and right from the flash highlight.

[thaddeus]

pippin88,

This was my favourite photo in the competition - a truly stunning mix of art and science!

Therefore you are the winner of "Thaddeus' Choice" and I am happy to take you on a photographic helicopter flight around Sydney. Hopefully you'll be able to get some more stunning shots!

Please PM me for detailed arrangements.

[kipper]

Absolutely fabulous Nick. Keep up the good work. I don't necessarily get the time to see everything that comes by this forum. So it's good when a few people bump things up I second Peter's thoughts too.....this is very Abyss!

[pippin88]

Big thanks to thaddeus for the prize - I'm really looking forward to it.

Thanks Kipper. I also find it hard to keep up with all the posts these days - I miss many good images.

[avkomp]

I actually had this shot as my favourite from the comp also.
my g/f also picked this as her favourite.

Well done.

Steve