That may have been caused by whatever screwed the votes up though. I’m happy with whatever happens!
I don’t think everyone has fixed their votes yet… at the time of writing, 22 voters have cast 50 votes - it should be 66.
So let’s leave it a bit and see what happens when everyone has voted. I said that we’d leave it at least 48 hours from the original closing time, which is just under 24 hours from now.
I think that @beowulff was winning when I checked, just before the polls closed - but of course it’s impossible to know at what point it all went screwy.
Is there any speculation as to what happened? I have noticed there is a poll in the “Polls Only” thread where I KNOW I voted three choices, and now it only displays one of my choices. (I am about to fix my votes in that one too.)
I flagged the poll itself to the mods, but there’s nothing conclusive in the conversation - just speculation that it’s some kind of Discourse bug.
I wondered (on no particular grounds) whether it was related to the fact that we had the maximum number of entrants for a poll increased to accommodate the photography competition, but I don’t really see why that would be the case.
Hi everyone. Sorry for the radio silence… life has been a bit busy this week.
I don’t think everyone has re-voted, since the total votes cast should be a multiple of three and they aren’t - but it’s been long enough that I think we can assume anyone that was going to revote will have done.
That being the case, I think the fairest thing to do is to declare the June competition void. I’m at the top of the leaderboard now, but I definitely wasn’t at 9pm last Monday. From memory I think @beowulff was, but I can’t be certain and anyway, we don’t know at what point the voting went screwy.
So I’m going to declare this one void, and throw the floor open for suggestions for the next topic.
Sorry!
I think Zyada was in the lead, and she should choose the next subject.
This may be trite, but I suggest "Summer "
I suggest “unexpected”.
Seconded.
I +1 this!
For those of us who eschew archive photos (or at least try to) and get out there to photograph something new…“unexpected” could be quite a challenge. (That aside, I like it).
j
Me too!
Ok, since we have an assertion that @Zyada was both in the lead when the vote went wrong and also the first to suggest something, let’s go with “Summer”.
I’ll set up a competition thread shortly.
Yay! Thank you.
So, now that this topic, “Summer” has been set, I am looking right away at three possible entries. Of course, in the coming few weeks, a chance exists that I may come up with something even better, but I was wondering what anyone else thought of those that I have in mind, so far…
As it happens, a weekly challenge on another forum, the deadline of which is going to arrive while I am writing this, was also “Summer”, but has been expanded to “Northern Summer, Southern Winter”, in recognition of the fact that when it is Summer in the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, it is Winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so confining the theme to one north-specific season would leave out participants in the south.
Unlike this contest here, the other forum requires that the picture be taken, processed, and posted within the time period covered by the challenge.
So, having not done anything about that other challenge until today, and running out of time, I set out to take pictures of the Sun. To this end, I inserted an odd accessory that I made some years ago, with a tiny pinhole aperture, into my ancient Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 zoom lens, and mounted that lens on my D3200. The bright sunlight bouncing and glaring around inside my lens managed to expose just about every speck of dust, every flaw in this lens, ultimately producing this rather interesting abstracted view of the Sun.
I suppose some day, I should seriously consider acquiring the appropriate neutral-density filters for photographing the Sun. The pinhole accessory for my Vivitar lens was a crude attempt to cut the exposure down to allow me to photograph a solar eclipse many years ago.
The other two pictures are from 02 September 2017, with less that three weeks remaining of that Summer. In late Summer of 2017, there were a bunch of wildfires that put a lot of smoke in the air, with the result that the Sun was dimmed to a point that I could photograph it directly, without any of the special equipment that I do not have. I was even able to resolve sunspots, verified as being in accordance with what is shown at Sunspot regions - Saturday, 2 September 2017 | SpaceWeatherLive.com for that day.
First, a simple, direct shot of the Sun.
Not all that interesting, really.
This one, I think, is more visually interesting. an HDR image, formed by blending two images of the same scene, at different exposures, one exposure to show the Sun, and another to show the landscape at a shadow level.
The only problem with summer is that sunrise comes damn early, but I braved a 4:30 alarm to go out & shoot it yesterday morning. Was. Not. Disappointed!
Is there a contest for this month as I didn’t see one up yet (or am I still blinded by the {sun}light?)
And, a little later than planned (sorry) the next competition thread is up.
ETA: I accidentally created the new thread title as Monthly Photo Competition #7 - July 2023 - “Summer” - it’s actually #8. I’ve self-reported and asked for it to be changed.
Si_Amigo - WOW!
I took this one the other day and it’s not interesting enough for the competition but I liked it. It was just after a storm, and everything felt freshly washed. The cloud edges were so sharp you could cut yourself on them.
I am frequently impressed by the sky.
Hey, @Dung_Beetle, where on earth did you take that photo of your little buddy? I mean, I see your buddy, and the grid it’s sitting on - and nothing else. It’s like faux reality. It has the feel of something like The Prisoner (if you know your 1960s British TV dramas).
Love it!
j