my up is Clive's bridge, a beautiful shot which I was going to vote for till DigiDiva added her image.
my down is DigiDivi which I voted for as I really loved the creative concept with a nice Xmas theme to it...I also loved your image in it,I thought it is what made it.

Yes my reflection was intended to add the personal touch, but as I said I wish I could have did it with the camera/tripod not on show but alas, I had no choice. But then again, it showed not only me but me doing what I love.

I think my "up" is Arthur. An excellent shot full of intense colour and really conjures up a wet day. Nothing wrong with that at all (I think).
My down is Graham's superb landscape combining depth of field with nicely muted tones and an interesting haze. Attention grabber.

and to Graham . Many thanks for the positive critique of the coin. Very encouraging.

Well Done to DigiDiva

My Ups & Downs..

Up - The remains of my festive season by John&me. Glassware is always difficult to photograph so you've done well here with the exposure to bring out the detail in the cutting. I think I might have tried a slightly lower point of view & smaller aperture to get the base in focus

Down - Tiny Spider by Tugboat. I like this shot although I find myself turning my head to the right to view it? Maybe a 90 deg anticlockwise rotation. PS like the framing

Behind the Scenes

Not quite a straight shot (very few of mine are ;) ). This is actually a 3 shot bracket boosting the vibrance & saturation in Lightroom before merging into an HDR. The only thing was, that in creating the HDR the rainbow all but disappeared... so I recreated in using the technique described in this article http://www.photoshopessentials.com/p...fects/rainbow/ playing with the size & opacity until it looked right.

thanks for the info Clive, I have played with the rainbow effect before in PS but I can't use photoshop very well so never really done anything with it, that was used to great effect, thanks for sharing, will have to try harder to use my PS. more things to put on my list of things to do this year!

I think its a great idea to do a behind the scenes post. Mine took time and patience more than any post processing skills. Mine is just the one image and all I did was use live view and magnification to auto focus on my face, ensuring the gap in the reflection of the branches was spot on. A little bit of spot removal, saturation boost and level adjustment was all I did PP. Did try B&W but it didn't work, the image lost its warmth and xmas feel.