Beauty and the snail

If it was anyone else I'd wonder if maybe the snail shell had been glued to the flower just for the photo. But having seen your work and read many of your comments I'm sure you would not do such a thing. We don't have many large snails in Seattle, just small fragile ones.

Shawn, this snail was definitely alive! They were all over these flowers and I thought that was unusual. They are very tiny, about 1/2" across. No snails were harmed in the taking of this photo. :)

A unique capture Kim.The snail looks like "he" is part of the plant!

Beautiful capture, Kim. A hard climbing for the tiny snail. I like the the DOF, too, it enhances the solitary climbing.

Not sure of the category for snails. Comments welcome. Thanks!

What is this world coming to, killer snails on the loose. Oh the humanity. I like it.

This is one of my favorites...I love the composition with the soft plain background, and the lines in the snail within the simple line of the flower.

Nicely presented Kim, all of the colors work perfectly.

What file format do you shot for the contest? I realise that folks can't manipulate or due much of any post processing so I'm wondering. If a person shots in jpeg format and has all of the settings made in the camera prior to the shot, that's acceptable, correct?

They are VERY particular, Dave. You must submit the RAW file, a TIF file from that RAW file where you may crop and slightly adjust, but not sharpen, and a JPG that may be sharpened. They want the RAW file to see how much you've cropped and adjusted, the TIF for publication and the JPG to judge from.

A...wild flower with very lovely tone in beautiful composition. Best regards.

Under those constraints of submitting RAW, TIF and JPG images it would be damn near impossible for a person to cheat and use software to help out an image! Based upon my skills as a photographer I'd never have a chance to succeed with these rules. You are much more skilled than I am for even considering to enter such a contest. Good Luck, and I do think you have the ability to Win, Place or Show!

Shawn, I was a little leery about entering such a contest because sometimes what you do in PS can really bring out an image, but it's a good challenge for a photographer to undertake. It has the effect of making you really consider your composition, lighting, etc., before you hit the shutter release. You can crop up to 20% and adjust slightly, but any more than that and your image will be disqualified. It's over in 2 weeks (Jun 30), images submitted by mid July and then the awards ceremony is in Sept, so we will have awhile to wait and see how we do. We have covered 32 classes out of 53, so not bad. If we can just get the darn deer, we'll add another class. I thought they would be the easiest category, not the hardest!! We also still need frogs and some water birds, so we'll concentrate there this weekend.

 

Thanks for visiting, everyone!

Interesting and original shot Kim, beautiful !!

 

Regards

An unusual and interesting capture. Wish the flower were a little sharper. Nice composition and bokeh.

Original and aesthetic shot,Kim. Very good composition,exposure and DOF. I feel the organizers of the contest are doing the correct thing to weed out ps photographers from the genuine and good photographers. The other day I came to know of a photographer,who has no camera but has a beautiful portfolio done with ps:-)Wishing you all the best.

Superb! love this one Kim...excellent captured!!!

Thanks, everyone. Contest is almost over. It's been rainy a lot here today, so not sure we'll get out this weekend much!!! I'm still hoping for a couple more categories, like frogs and deer!!!

This one is simply beautiful. . . one of my all time favorites of yours. . . I hope you win that contest. .