Although well meaning I do not agree with a banner image for the monthly contest! Reason? it preconditions voters as to what they should be looking for in the image they finally select. I am certain that the posting of an image, by the same name as the contest topic, by the member who selected the topic for the last months contest, before the end of the submission period, greatly influenced voters. Now do not get me wrong, I think the winner fully deserved to win. However,I think the posting of a banner is is a bad idea. On the other hand it might serve as an indication of the standard of entry that the posters should aim for. I might be the only one who has this opinion, but at least it is my opinion!

Thanks for sharing your point of view about this. I did not expect that a poster could be seen as a problem, but I understand what you mean. Same deal with movie adaptations of books that 'precondition' what people might imagine when reading the book. One thing I would like to clear up - the poster is mine. I made it as a way to improve the challenge page and to participate myself in a way to the challenge :) I will let this 'poster' up as an experiment. If the pictures at the end of the challenge are too similar, I will not do another one. Maybe I will organize a mini challenge next month to create a banner for that section instead.

Agiel, thanks for understanding! It is just something I had to get off my chest. I know it was your, and an excellent image it is. I just hope others will be as understanding as you have been.

Reluctant to post on this but here goes!! I love that poster as well, so creative but I agree with DeeVee. So many here seem to be very sensitive.Point being on the internet things can be miss-understood to a very high degree. Thanks :)

In case anybody wonders why I deleted the previous message - It was an answer to the earlier post that was deleted as well by its author and was not making sense to keep without the original.

hey if we are talking about the Big cross... I love it.. As to preconditioning people.. yaa it might... but a few times it gave me an idea to start from, kinda like the title does? I can see where it could bother someone, specially if they kinda had the same idea, personally I like them, dresses up the page :) But I can see your point Deevee, but it is all just for fun, and Agiel should have some too :)

Honestly I am not against agiel having fun, as I stated I think a well done banner can act as a guide to the standard a poster should aim for, I was just wondering if it would be fair to all concerned. It will not bother me now as I have decided that contests are not for me. I just stated my feelings on the matter. I have the choice to along with the idea, or not to, but give my resaons instead of keeping silent and bitching about it when it no longer matters.

As to me, I still like the idea of a contest poster. I think we are all very different in our works and ideas, so I don't see the danger of beeing influenced in our inspiration.