Those eyes are definately caused by having a light source close to the camera lens (that would be the camera's built-in flash). An interesting experiment that you can perform to demonstrate this phenomenon goes like this: Get a cat and a flashlight in the same dark place.. well, not exactly the same place -- the cat should be eight or ten or more feet away, and the flashlight should be in your hand. When you hold the flashlight against your temple (so it's right next to your eye), and illuminate the cat (especially a CAT, or other nocturnal creature) with it, then when the cat looks your way, you will notice this very pronounced effect. If you move the flashlight a very short distance from your eye, it goes away. One should also remember this technique if you hear a noise in the night -- hold the light to your temple (or next to your pistol, if you're looking down the sights -- is it OK if I say that? ..do I have to check the "Violence" button?), and you can't miss the glow of any eyes that are looking at you. Just a few inches to the side, and nuthin!

Hardwick: Whadd'ya mean, "When I get Back"! Don't they have INTERNET there?

Dudes: "he's" wearing a bow! That's a snow lady. Being that the bow is almost ALL she's wearing, I guess it's good that Jordy checked the "nudity" warning.

Alpha: Are you suggesting unsharp AFTER .JPG-conversion? My advice to many has been "don't do ANYTHING after JPG'ing -- especially unsharp!" (well, now that I think about it, I guess increasing saturation or shifting the hue afterward is even WORSE) I also remind'm not to use too big of a 'radius' number for unsharp -- I most often use .67, even on a fairly large image (maybe up to 800X600, I mean). I see brazen over-use of unsharp all over the place these days (catalogs and newspapers and such), but on the same token, I think a descrete amount is MANDATORY after resampling. APF: That's a beautiful subject for the study, but I think it needs more depth of field, whatever it takes -- I mean these view camera freaks (I wish I were one) are running f/32 all the time, and taking, like, eighteen second exposures! Merry Christmas!

Hey -- another thing, Hardwick: What's with these 'circular' polorizers? I've read that they're the only kind that will work with certain auto-focus systems (or was that exposure metering systems?), but what I'm wondering is this; does being 'circular' mean that you don't have to adjust the angle of polarization for each shot, like the one I have?

I've read everywhere that as a general rule, you're not supposed to cut a frame in half with a horizon -- they say you should put the horizon one third of the way from the top, or a third from the bottom. It's a tough call on these, though -- make them water-heavy, or sky-heavy. I don't know about that rule....

Sad SACKS? Don't you mean "Sad Saps"?

OK -- If it were my shot, here's the problem that I'd have with it: I see this piece of leaf at center-right with a beautiful, rich, realistic texture. Then there's the gold ribbon, with such smooth transitions between the white reflections and the gold -- and I really like how the ribbon terminates in a white highlight like that. But what's with the RED leaves? They seem comparably flat -- the color looks 'posterized', doesn't it? Now that I think about it -- this has happened to me before. When I'm working with a highly saturated color like that, and use 'levels' out of Photoshop, that'll happen from sliding the 'highlight' slider down too far. ...A beautiful shot, though. I'm using it as my windows desktop background right now!

Nov. 5th, 2001 - 3:30am local time, near Beechwood WI USA
Fuji 400 Superia film, Yashinon lens at f/2.8, 7sec exposure.