===== From digitalburn@totalise.co.uk: nice ===== From darwallace@earthlink.net: My light "spheres" use 6 points (+-x, +-y, +-z) but yours work well. ===== From pbourke@swin.edu.au: Extremely nice rendering although a bit light on the theme. Very appropriate wood and lighting levels. ===== From luisvaloyes@malditasea.zzn.com: excellent textures ===== From dvnss@mega.ist.utl.pt: Very believable scene! ===== From marlo.steed@uleth.ca: Nice concept... lighting was nice.... water was credible although it needed a sense of the dynamic of the situation. ===== From tony@j4tb.com: Your barrels look very real ===== From a.swan@ucl.ac.uk: Absolutely outstanding picture! I really love the water - it is very very convincing! And overall, the whole picture works together, nothing is out of place. Deserves to win! ===== From bbowen@cswnet.com: Awesome ===== From Alain.Culos@bigfoot.com: And again ;-)) as usual the image of the master ... But you're not my favourite this time round. So far it seems that Shipwreck near La Guaira by Alberto Mendoza (am_wreck.jpg) is my favourite. Yours is certainly one of the top images too, I just can't find anything to criticise, only it carries me less than Alberto's. The water bubbling is very cool. I like your imaginary ship name ;-))) Pity we don't have the ropes you promised :-) You have the top tech mark from me which you share with Shipwreck near La Guaira . Now that I voted on all pictures the initial top one came second and the top one is ... Moby Duck .. well for me anyway. I rated the top few as follows (overall ranking) : 1/ Moby Duck 2/ Shipwreck near La Guaira 3/ Atlantic Still Life 4*2/ Sinking, Le Grand Bleu 5*2/ Missing Maine, The Great Wave The others are well distanced. ===== From jrcsurvey@aol.com: Has a Joseph Conrad feel about it. The water boiling up reminds me of the blood in Travieso ===== From StephenF@whoever.com: Nice use of textures, especially on the barrels. The lighting works well, although I wonder if more light in the foreground and less in the background would have worked? ===== From sjlen@ndirect.co.uk: Fantastic. Some of that texturing is really good. It reminds me of dockside photos I've seen and the packages and barrels look just like that. ===== From delfeld@mailcity.com: Nice image. A few technical quibbles. . . the light sources are casting too clean of a line of their lanterns. This would actually be very fuzzy. I understand that you didn't use the area light because of time contraints. Could you have used two lights in each globe, a little offset? Or would the time be too great? One could have a different fade_power or fade_distance to soften the shadows. Visually, look at the lighting in terms of brightness. . . the trail comes from the bottom left corner to the center of the image, then splits two ways: one upward to the bright area at the top center, and one to the bright barrel in the center right. The only reason I mention this is because there is very little going on in the top center, and the water is barely noticable, compositionally. It does bring about the feel that the water seems almost unimportant, but that is a nice effect, since the symbolism of the water is a frightening concern, and makes the water impossible to ignore. Also, you didn't need to justify why there were no people. It worked fine as an image before that! ===== From file: I like this idea. It's almost too subtle; perhaps have something besides the barrel already floating? ===== From file: Notable for originality