Thank you people and thank you John for your words and the information about the firewall.

Congrats, Franky. I just love your visual mind. I love yours too, Daniel, and, as usual, your hosting was great.

Ivan, it's a good idea. Getting feedback from the voting is useful to us anyway it happens. On the other hand, you have to find satisfaction inside yourself. My "Whiter Shade of Pale" is dead last in the voting, but the process of thinking it up and making it was actually much more worthwhile than the process involved in making my higher placed photo. Of the two, I'm more proud of "Pale", even though the voters rejected it.

Daniel, www.beatfiltering.com can get you around the Great Firewall. So many sites are being blocked lately that it has taken a lot of the fun out of looking at photos. Flickr, pbase, youtube, really about half of all the photos posted have to be put through a process before I can see them. Rod, I think that it's all art, anyway. If you take out something from a background in post, is that very different from putting something in?

Well done Franky on winning & to Daniel as well for keeping up from China. Franky can you tell us how the picy was made, isit a graphic or a photo?:-)

BTW, I fogot to thank my twin brother Michael J. for appearing in the shot!

Hi girls and boys! You are killing me softly ... with your votes! Never expected this outcome. Too many strong entries. But ok! I did not deserve to win simply for the reason that I did not have time to contribute much, except from the images ...
Anyway, THANKS a lot to you all and to Daniel for this!!! New topic will be up soon!

Congratulations Franky2005 for winning this challenge and to all the contestants for their job too.
Alopa, thank you very much for your special mention and for hosting the challenge.

Congrats Frankie, worthy winner. You have come up with some interesting ideas for challenges in the past & look forward to #32.

Thanks Daniel for hosting #31 so well - you must be used to it by now.

I have just also done my own survey, and nine out of the first fifteen pic's were Sony cameras :-)

Congrats Frank & all the other winners & entrants. Again I got my tail kicked by my good lady,I am proud of her. I look forward to Franks theme.

Congratulations Franky, well deserved. Daniel an excellent challenge and great fun. Thanks.

I had a little bit of fun this morning and played around with the results. Since I got two of my pics in the top 5 (and the other 2 reasonably placed), I was wondering how I came out in terms of overall points, and found out that I have the lead there :-). This made me think that it would be a good thing if the challenges would not only reward the best single picture, but also consistency of quality across all pictures that people post (is it better to post 1 great pic and then 3 lousy ones, or 4 very good ones?). This would encourage people to strive for quality throughout their entries, and would also create another way of winning. I am not sure whether this is even doable given the way the site is engineered and how much code modification that would require, let alone the impact on the rules etc...but I am just throwing the idea out there to see what people think. -Ivan

[link] Re Alopas comment...

Congrats Franky. Yours was an outstanding picture with a superb creative edge. It deserved to win! -Ivan

Franky mate I'm in China right now and I couldn´t access to imageshack host for putting your shot there (I noticed that there are many unreachable websites from China). So I had to put the link that points to the gallery instead of showing directly your image in the thread at Sony Talk Forum. I'm sorry mate!.

I just have checked the winner shot exif information and I was surprised to find out he is a Sony guy...Franky mate congratulations!. A very creative shot indeed!. From 2° to 5° place we had a very tight votation, so congratulations to the placekeepers Ivan, RK, Penny, Ron and mainly to Surlatina, a "fresh" member of the pixelpeep crew.
People I want to thank you for participating in this challenge where we had many great entries. I hope you have enjoyed C31 as I did, and I give for sure that Franky is going to give us a great C32. Just keep waiting and be ready for the new topic!!!.

Congrats Fankie and thanks Daniel. Looking forward to a new challenge.

Have a great time in Paris Penny, and please say bonjour for me to my home town! Hope you get wonderful pictures there (how could you not?). -Ivan

Penny at Paris :) Enjoy and Tommy too

Have a wonderful time Penny medear & I want to see a picy of Tommy in a beret:-)

I want to say thank you now to Daniel (before the challenge/voting ends) for this topic which I think worked out really well (even though I had my doubts at the beginning). I really enjoyed hearing some new (and even the old) tunes along with viewing some great photos!
Although I'll be away for the next couple of weeks I expect to keep in touch. We should not be divorced from the internet entirely but it may be sporadic so... tata... next time we talk I'll be in Paris!!! (keeping my fingers crossed about the weather).

Penny, mothers day is well confusing for me. Every year I have the same probs. Where I come from (where my mother lives) is the same as in US. But in UK (where my mother was brought up) its different. So, I decided to celebrate it on both dates.

Wow!!!. Zeke has voted, wellcome mate!!!. I hope you have come back to stay and join the next challenge...

Voting period has started. Good luck for all of you!!!.

Thank you Rod & Penny. I had to take a quick shot and could not frame it that well. But they group really looked interesting. A good song to go with it is probably the one by Floyd Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict

Chris Rea - Road to Hell [link]

Debi you need the opposite title to John's REM song so you can post this picy to the gallery. I luvit too. Are these the same guys who were wearing uniforms in the last challenge? (just joking - but they do get time off, right?).

Daylight savings time started here today. We have had so much rain though and it's so gloomy outside that it doesn't make much difference because the sun isn't shining anyway.
In Europe, evidently, daylight saving goes into effect on Mar 27th (so we get to do it twice this year).
Tomorrow is my last day at work before we leave for two weeks!

Mother's Day? I think that's in May.

Howmanywordswasthat?

Luvit - That's one word:-)