IT is so awesome to be included with such a wonderful group of artists!

Wow, it was a surprise to see my photo up there with the week's picks. Truly honored to be picked with the other wonderful photographs.

Neither, actually.  It was very deformed and somewhat slug eaten, so it went into the composter.

Thanks for the input guys. Zacko - Since I'm pretty new to using Photoshop, to problem with the custom palettes won't be much of an issue for me know, but thanks for the heads up when I start using them. gwfa - I love your Nina images. It's hard to tell that you had to de-noise the image. I may have some other questions for you about how you shoot. As you can tell by my most recent galley postings, I'm starting to do some similiar type photography. girsempa - Thanks for the link and the reviews were an interesting read. TwoPynts - Thanks. Good to know that Neat Image has not caused problems on the Mac. Still is going to be a hard decision.

Attached Link: Alien Bees

Attached Link: Graphic Artists Guild Handbook

I'm glad this is back. I'm surprised at how many times I've overlooked the phenomenal images presented in LWIG. I'm honored one of mine is included this week. Or, would that be last week?

I'll just echo what TwoPynts and Onslow said. The crop I did was to eliminate the brown in the background on the right of the image and the pale green plant on the left. My eye kept needlessly wandering to those areas and tried to put the focus back on the hopper, while trying to maintain the sense of scale in your shot. I think TwoPynts vertical crop is a much better choice to focus on the hopper and what it is doing.

Since my film camera is a Pentax K1000 that is slowly dying (everytime I pick it up, I seem to loose a random shutter speed, everything taken at that shutter speed results in a black image), usability with another camera is moot. The links and suggestions have been most helpful. I'm going to have to spend some time on the fredmiranda site.

Alas, the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens is still a bit out of my price range. I was wondering about the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 Image Stabilized USM SLR Lens. The reviews seem to indicate that it a decent lens, close but not quite L-series quality. Are there any Sigma or Tamaron lenses that would be comparable to the Canon L-series lenses? The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens also looks like a decent lens to have around. I'd just like to have some options. I'm going to see if there is a camera shop that is willing to let me try out the lenses on my camera and compare images before I buy. Thanks for the suggestions thus far.