Hey folks (and relax Rod, I am in a different time zone than most of you guys)!

Big thanks to all of you for selecting my picy and all the comments and congrats. Did not expect this, really! It was the first time since end of September that I really was able to use my R1 for more than 5 minutes. Actually I was on the road getting to visit a photo exhibition - The Roma Journeys [link]. Really good stuff, I know that some of you really would like it.

Another big thank to Brent for this wonderful theme and the great job in hosting. Great to see all the discussion. I also have learned a lot, though I am still not sure whether I should contemplate on the fact that a duotone image with black as one tone also could be called monochrome. :-)


Ok then, will kick of the next challenge soon. Still not sure whether it should be a free topic like "Quad-tone-images" or more specific like "Ants passing streets on a sunny day".

@Ernest: Feel free to pass along your 700 anytime! I may keep it as a backup for my R1/V3!
@jp: I had a nice watertower for you, but did not have time to process it! :-)

Cmon Franky stop milking the audience & lets get this fing rolling a:-)

Well done Frank, wonderful shot...funnily enough always do associate you with trees, as I have seen some great ones that you have taken :-)

Brent, I think this was a wonderful learning curve, and great support from everyone! You did an excellent hosting job.

Touche, RK, and LOL. But only in 4 time zones.

Great challenge & a great learning curve. Frank, Well done. Again you prove it is the camera, not the man that takes the best shot ;-). All the high end DSLR folks are looking for an R1, I am tossing my A700 & will now only shoot my "Old" R1 LOL, if Jill will let me.

There were great entries & wonderful to see how all embraced the theme. 10/10 Brent.

Rod, thats a great idea. Maybe we need "Pending" gallery to post the almost made it.
Doug, we elect the leader of the free world in one day!

The 2 day voting period is OK but I'd also like to see a set start and end time to the challenges - just pick a time zone and start at midnight and end the challenge at midnight of the second voting day. I know the floating times are to accommodate winners from different time zones but it's really not necessary. Most other challenges have set days and it works just fine.

I like your idea Rod. We could post them in the DPR thread and keep it on page 1. ;-)

Maybe we need something to do while the voting is taking place. I would like to see the picys challengers took for the challenge & didn't post.

I hear you RK but I think the 2 days is about right since 1 day would likely reduce our number of voters. But I'm feeling ya. The gap between challenges feels really long sometimes. Especially since I made this my exclusive challenge hang out.

Congrats Franky! It was a very good challenge with lots of great entries and yours was one of my favorites - very artistic!

I'll have to agree with Zakiedawg on voting , I don't have a rigid voting system either and voted on a lot of entries this round as there were many deserving images. Great job on the duotones everyone and thanks Brent for great hosting even though you were so busy! :-)

After reading over the messages again and thinking it over I might change my voting strategy. 5 for my favorite, 4 for second, 3 for third, 2 for fourth, and 1 for 16 honorable mentions.

I would rather see the voting period shortened a bit, from 2 days to 1. Allow voting for entries during the challenge duration, fine tune it after challenge ends. Also there seems to be a time creep between challenges, maybe there should be a hard challenge end time irrespective of when the challenge was started.

I agree that if everyone were to spread the points thin and give several deserving images a mere point we might still achieve the same result. But... Giving 1 point to thirty different images is essentially picking your favorite 1/3rd of the images in a 90 image gallery. Somehow being the most common selection of everyone's collective 1/3rd favorite list looses some luster versus being a most common top 6 even though the results are the same. -------

So let's exaggerate the formula and say we were allowed 45 points to give. Now you can pick your favorite half of the images if you choose. This would make for a closer race. Now lets give 60 points, a point to 2/3rds. See where I'm going? The more points we give the more it becomes picking your LEAST favorite. (Like I said, exaggerate.)

I'd tend to agree with John too - I don't think how many points you give, or how small the points spread over a larger number of shots it may be - the winner will rise to the top from overlap due to the largest consensus of people that picked the shot as worthy of a point or more. As for me, I do not use any system whatsoever - I vote entirely based on what I see in each competition, and how deserving each and every entry may be of points. If there are a few excellent entries that stand above a mediocre field, I'll give lots of points to those few entries. If there are lots of excellent entries, I'll thin out the points to spread them among a larger number of photos in smaller amounts. To me, a good shot meeting the challenge theme deserves a point or more - to limit myself to a certain few photos to give all the points to wouldn't be fair to those other excellent entries, and moreover wouldn't be true to myself. In this challenge, I don't know the exact number of photos I voted on, but I do know there were a lot more with 1 or 2 points this time than the last challenge, because of the number of very good entries.

Congratulations Franky!. And thank you Brent!. You were very busy at work but you did a great job as a host anyway :-)

Congratulations Franky and thanks Brent for great hosting.

I think I am in agreement with John; if everyone gave thirty one point votes the results would likely be the same as a vote where everyone gave six five point votes. The best image would still get the most votes from all participants as a whole.

I can't say I see a lot of logic in asking people how they vote in a poll when I expect the way they vote will depend entirely on the content of any given gallery. This challenge I voted for more images than I usually do because I thought there were a lot of very high quality entries that deserved some credit- next round I could vote on fewer though I hope we will have another very strong showing by all participants.

With the bigger population of pictures and voters, I think you can get a winner if you spread out 30 one-pointers. My 30 is not the same as another's 30. In fact, if you took 5 people voting spreading 30 points around 90 pics I think you would have about 10 - 15 that all 5 people picked. Now add 10 more voters doing the same and I think you have a distribution with a winner at the top. Now if only a few altered their style to be more like Doug's or even mine then you don't have a problem with a ranking. So how people want to spread their 30 around can be as narrow or specific as they want and I don't see a problem with the amount of people and entries we have here.

First, let me say congratulations to Franky!!!
Later I will expound on the voting poll.

Congratulations Frank! Yours was an excellent image well deserving of the win.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Duotones challenge! It was great to see participation here at the peeper continue to rise.
Looking forward to hearing the new topic when you wake to the good news and have a moment Frank :-)
Here's a link to the results thread at DPR-
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=33865205

The way I do it is I go through and pick all the ones I like up to 30 since it is so hard to see them all for comparison purposes. Then I immediately go to the "my picks" gallery which will fit on one page and start tossing ones. For the last two votes I was down to around 20 by then. I reassign the points I got back to the ones remaining that stood out. Then I carefully study to see if I can pick a top five. It may mean I have to throw out a few more to get more points to assign to the top five. Then it gets hard as I need to throw a couple more out to make way for a top one and 2 second places. Thus I have a tiered arrangement: 1st 2nd 3rd and contenders. I think this time I was near 13 altogether. This sounds more complicated that it is because of the neat "my picks" gallery that keeps every thing together.

I mostly vote as Doug describes by homing in the the best of the best if it's possible. Excellent winning shot Franky & a big well done to Dougy who didn't have enough faith in his great duotone of the mutt.
Everyone deserves a pat on the back for submitting some really creative picys making this duotone challenge a ripper a. Mind you I don't want to see another duotone for a while:-) Great topic Brent, well done mate.

Way to win one for the Sony folks Franky. Outstanding shot and very deserving. -Doug

The Penny Poll: There are only 13 minutes remaining to vote so I'm only slightly premature... Even though there were 30 points to hand out, I voted for only 6 different entries giving each a maximum 5 points. I feel that spreading my votes thin isn't fair to the artists that I sweated out to determine best of the best. As hard as it is, I prefer to force myself to maximum award only the very best which in this case was EXTREMELY difficult but giving 30 photographs 1 point each doesn't exactly pick a winner.

Well Franky, maybe I should take your lead and skip a few weeks of shooting and then maybe I'd come up with some elegant entries too - yours this time showed such careful thought to detail and are so beautiful. I'd love to see the rest.

Wonderful challenge Brent! I still have 3 or 4 more shots in my files for this. It was the first time after several weeks that I went out for shooting.

Penny, voting was really tough, but I was able to nail it down to 10 picks. :-)

So can we take a poll (maybe not til voting is over in case anyone objects) - how many images did you vote for with all of your thirty points?
I narrowed it down to 16. I really wanted to pick more but was conflicted by the thought that the point of voting is sort of lost by giving so many pictures so few points.

So glad to hear some have enjoyed duotones. Should have known more about them before picking the topic- but it's been fun learning :-)
That looks like a pretty crappy contest to me Martin ;-) Probably right up my alley- might submit. Yes that image looks exactly like yours, ha ha. I like your shot a lot though and your gallery layout looks great.
On my move, yes I am literally moving just twelve feet up. I have been living for a while in a 100 year old house that was originally a duplex and then two smaller units were added in back in around the '30s. I have been in the lower front unit which because of being on a hillside offers a decent view of downtown, Mt. Rainier and Elliot Bay (save for a few utility wires). The unit I am moving into is the same as the one I have been in (though nobody living above it) but has an additional small room (to be called the "Lightroom") with french doors that open onto a private balcony that Kiki (the balcony Queen) might approve of. It is really big (roughly 3 X 12 meters) and covered on top but open on three sides with the city and bay view (almost no wires in the way). I will be watching the fireworks shooting off the top of the Space Needle (which is just a few blocks away) on New Years from this balcony :-) I move all my larger furniture tomorrow night and still haven't figured out whether it is worth packing boxes when I can probably just bring stuff up a piece at a time? I'll be glad when it is all done though!

Pictures Kiki, pictures! Sometimes, even when you're married, you have to hire people! ;-)

Martin - what a funny contest. I have pictures I've taken in various loos but nothing as impressive as the picture in 1st place - that is definitely a winner! LOL!