Call me the judge...at least in a local photo contest

The guys over at The Foothill City Blog are running a photo contest. Real prizes, discounts for entering and other details can be found at their "Take a Shot at City Hall" post that ran earlier this week. Obviously the preference would be a Foothill City, LA Metro or So Cal city hall since that is where we are located. It doesn't mean that you can't send your best shot of the city hall from Crumbling Dust Wyoming if you think its a powerful enough image.

Briefly, if it is a picture of city hall or a portion there of it is eligible for entry into the contest. Upload your entry to flickr and add it to The Foothill Cities group with the tag "cityhallcontest" and you are in. You need to have it done by 8/1 for judging in the contest. The top group will be selected from a readers vote.

The photo is done with my new "point and squirt" a Casio Exilim EX-Z100. Quite a nice 10.1 Megapixel pocket camera. Its limitations didn't take much to find. Little contrast control, drops both shadow and highlight detail quickly, not so good color gradation, overall pretty good saturation and sharpness. Definitely a handy toy to have when I just meander about rather than lug the big camera and stuff out all the time. Such a deal too...$199 at Costco this week with coupon, I remember my first digicam not even 8 years ago was 1.3 megapixel and cost $240 as a reconditioned. Big changes in price and huge leaps in overall quality as the technology improved.

This image is an Alexander Rose, an English Rose that is a favorite in my garden. I love the simple single rose and when it repeat blooms it becomes a star. (Many are singles are so close to the wild rogosa's they only bloom once in early summer so this is a special treat).

I shot it with the new Casio while testing its limitations and abilities. I post processed in the orton style with CS2 then ran the final image through Virtual Phtographer for the saturated warmth of Kodachrome and contrast of a Cibachrome.

Now get out there and shoot city hall and enter the contest so I have something to do!