Lensbaby

Congrats go out to all those whose images were selected. There were so many great images it must have been extremely difficult to make the picks. An extra special congrats goes out to my good friend Bill Edwards who got an honorable mention nod .
Scott

Yes, a big congratulations to the many talented photographers who contributed and of course to the lucky winners. It was interesting to see what images caught the judge's eyes and how they differed from the selections I would have chosen.

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Peter

What a wonderful group of images, I really enjoyed looking at all of them. This is a book I'm looking forward to adding to my photo library.

Wow, some amazing imagery - congrats to all. I would have liked to have seen more "Lens Baby Shots" as winners such as Blue by Mehrdad Vaghefi. But judges have their reasons and its never easy.

I voted for Time is Accelerating by Erica Bartel - awesome shot!

Congrats to all - this was a wonderful collection of images to browse...

"I would have liked to have seen more "Lens Baby Shots" as winners"

I agree. It would be nice to hear some of the judges/Lensbaby justify/explain their reasons behind the winning entries as a lot of them seem way off from the criteria that the competition was pitched as (one entry seems more appropriate to a Photoshop Effects comp, and I'm baffled why the one of the dog is in there - it's not even the best pet pic submitted!).

Just glancing through the Honorable Mentions, it seems that there are better and more suitable shots in there - and definitely ones that have a distinctive Lensbaby look to them. That's nothing against the winning pics, just that they don't seem to relate to the actual contest.

(My favorites of the winners are the one on the pier and the one with the kid writing the story - great use of a 'dreamy' effect!)

I love that image of Erica's as well.

There are so many I loved in these shots. I am sure that if I were to start over that a good percentage of my final picks would have been replaced with other images in the contest.

We discussed the submission and judging process at Lensbaby World Headquarters today. One item that came up for future calls for submission is having judges comments on what and why they chose/rejected images, and having a dialogue that submitters can look in on (NPPA has done this in the past and may still do so, it was always surprising what caught the judges eyes and why) would be great if we could pull it off. Having a bigger jury would be fun for the judges too as conversation over what makes images great to each of us might be eye-opening.

-Craig

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
Heraclitus of Ephesus

First off, congratulations to all of those people who won. That is an amazing collection of images.

Second, I am the one whose image looks like a Photoshop composition (the Golden Gate Bridge photo). While I did apply a few textures and did some color alterations to that image, that is pretty much how the photo came out of the camera. One of the things I love most about my Composer is that it allows for bizarre effects like the lens distortions and strange color aberrations. Even though I have several very expensive Canon lenses, I have way more fun screwing around with the Composer.

I am very proud to be included and I am definitely happy I bought that lens last year. Cheers!