Carolina Sanchez-Monge won the first place with 'The city from the tram' that appealed to many of us. It is very strong in composition and it makes you feel like you are there with boy and his mother(?) in the tram about to enter Centraal Station. The woman looking somewhere in the direction of travel, the tracks lead your eyes in that direction too. What does she see? And then What is the boy looking at? Carolina must have made herself invisible. Not very easy with a D700 and a wide angle! Right moment right composition. No pretentions. Beautifully executed.

The second place was for Anders Nielsen with 'Punk'. Anders went to Amsterdam for the Urban feel. "I thought it would be a cool photo - sort of "in your face" photo that might would be different than a lot of other photos submitted for the POTY. I used my Canon 350D with my 50mm lens, no flash,  and focused on him and used a low number aperture to blur the background and bring the punk as well as the labels on his jacket to the foreground. Post-processing basically consisted of blurring the background a bit, highlighting the colour of his hair to make the punk stand out even more and adding a sepia photo filter to get this grayish, rugged and smoggy (and I think urban) feeling to the photo."

The third place was for Al Borelli with '1920 Den Haag'. 1920 Al? "I really liked this image because it's clearly Den Haag, clearly modern, but to me felt distinctly 1920's". The photo was taken on a late evening in May as the sun was going down. "It already had this nice soft and yellow quality to it, though I did enhance it a bit in Lightroom and added a bit of vignetting. And enhanced the contrast.  I used a relatively small aperture (f/8) to ensure sharpness but still fast enough shutter speed to hand hold (I didn't bring my tripod)."

The fourth place was for Pete Theakston with 'The streets of Utrecht'. "Conceived on a Sunday evening as the light was fading fast and I needed a picture for the POTY. I saw all the bikes ..typically urban in NL so decided to get the parked bikes and a moving one nearby." "I was sat on the floor below the level of the bikes seat..so I could get it from a different perspective..took about 20 shots to get this one with some movement from a bike in the right place. Used normal 85 mm zoom lens...composed with the moving bike at 1/3 from the left and the parked bikes 1/3 from the right." Shutter speed of this one was 1/2s.

Fifth place for Dave Sharman with 'Bikes'. "The photo was just spontaneous. I was waiting to meet someone at Central Station to spend some time taking photos around The Hague. I was just killing time while waiting and was attracted to all the bikes." Interesting in the digital era: Dave took the photo in Black & White.

The third round of the POTY this year was about contrast. And as hoped, this was interpreted in many different ways. A lot of very good entries again. Congratulations to the winners!

First place for Carolina Sanchez-Monge with 'Contrast of Cultures'. This photo was the result of:

 First place of the fourth round for Heather Oortman-Bridge with 'String of Pearls'. This image was taken in New York last summer when the torrential rain of a very impressive' thunderstorm had subsided. "..so still crouching under my umbrella I decided to try and capture the aftermath of this unexpected sopping wet weather - with my hand held camera using a polar filter I gave it a shot, I noticed that the street-sized floor chess game that had originally been in the middle had now disappeared along with all the competitor chess-players who had been sitting at the long tables (just behind the first row of chairs). An unwelcome change of plans for the organizers, but therefore a great chance to use the raindrops along all the chairs and tables as a sparkling detail in this image, they reminded me of a strings of pearls."

To improve the contrast I pushed up de red in the original shot when changing to black and white, and made the image a little sharper."

 Heather also proves to have a steady hand: the photo was taken with a shutter speed of 1/15th of a second and a (35mm equivalent) focal length of 82 mm.

Second place for Maude Bardet with 'Kenya'. She says: "It was taken totally spontaeously from a jeep in Kenya. 
It was turned to a black and white photo using the software provided by Canon, and I experimented a bit with the contrast settings (again, spontaneously).

3rd place for Jonathan Abshire with 'An Interlaken Dream'. About his photo  he says: "My picture was taken in Interlaken, Switzerland.  We were staying there for a week and I would always go out and look at the mountains over the town and lakes. The mountains looked very interesting one day with low flying clouds and good light. I used a zoom lens at 250mm to isolate just the top of the mountain with the clouds passing by. Post processing was done in Aperture and Silver FX Pro by adding a red filter and increasing the detail in the shadows."

4th place for Anders Nielsen with 'Umbrella'. "I took it from inside my apartment using my Canon Rebel and my 50mm lens. I used manual focus to enable me to focus on the drops of water on a window but still catch the figure with the umbrella outside on the street. I thought it was cool as you kind of got two photos in one with the drops of water on the window and the figure outside both adding to the weather theme. I did some vignetting in the corners afterwards in photoshop."

5th place for Laurent-Pierre Virassamy with foggy world. His story:

"It was pure luck: no planning, coming out of a bar and there it was! Fog on the canal, in mid afternoon. 
For this shoot, I put my lens on 18mm, set the camera in aperture priority mode, used an aperture of 7.1 to have a reasonable sharp depth of field and let the camera choose the shutter speed (1/60 sec). I rarely shoot in full manual mode as I’m still learning/experiencing the different settings combination.
Morality… always go out with your camera and as much as lenses you can carry with you (in my case 18-70 and macro 105mm)."

First place for Carolina Sanchez-Monge with 'Mr. Hide'. "This photo was taken in the backyard of my house. I was trying to transmit some emotion, without showing a violent action."

Second place for Dave Sharman with 'Spiders'. He says: "The photo was not planned. I was in the park and was just fortunate to find all these spiders under the hand rail of a foot bridge. I took a few photos from different angles and this one seemed to work best. I took the photo in Black & White.
The camera was a Konica Minolta Dimage A2. ISO 100, Aperture 3.5, 1/100, Focal length 45mm. 
Post processing, I sharpened it a bit, increased the contrast, and obviously cropped it as well.

Third place for Harm Tido Petter with 'Homicide Mouse'. Find his comments here 

Fourth place for Jonathan Abshire with 'Work/Life Balance'. His comments: "2 merged photos, 2 flashes overexposed (1 in sink), camera on tripod, dark side processed in photoshop, actual drinks of alcohol, and the shadow made this one a keeper."

Fifth place for Marloes Bongers with 'My dark side?' Marloes has posted detailed information on this image in here.

First place for Meliha Eras with 'Man on the roof'. About this images hse says: "I took this photo from a balcony in Istanbul about a year ago.  It was a spontaneous shot of a man working on a roof and  i took it in the afternoon light using a 18-200 lens.   There were actually 3 men working on that roof but I only included this man in my photo as I liked the combination of the stripes in his shirt with the lines of the wood boards.

Second place for Carolina Sanchez-Monge with 'Violin artisier'. "I took this photo with my wide angle lens 14/24mm. This is a place in the center of The Hague where they make violins from scratch. The shop is beautiful and I really wanted to take pictures of the artisans and the workshop that they have behind. They were happy to let me in."

Third place for Maude Bardet with 'Hard work'. "This picture was taken in a street of Delhi. The temperature was above 40deg and it was an effort for me to reach for my camera. Of course, it must have been much worse working with those bricks all day.
This image is the scan of a negative (100 ISO). It was taken with a teleobjective (100-400 from Canon) if I recall correctly."

Fourth place for Michiel Fokkema with 'Onion soup'. Due to image rights this photo cannot be displayed on the website.

Fifth place for Jonathan Abshire with 'Working out of the darkness'. "It was taken in Grenada Spain.  I saw this street musician working just in the shadows and it looked like a nice contrast between the light and dark.  I gave him some change and then took a picture.  Only later did I notice his sign "Necesito una operacion a los ojos" which translates to "I need an eye operation".  This led to the double entendre title of "Working Out of The Darkness."  Nothing special in the technical side of this picture:  all natural light, converted to black and white and brought out some of the shadows since it was a RAW image."

First Place for Meliha Eras with 'Blowing in the Wind'. "I took this photo at a boathouse in Ottawa, Canada.  I was sitting on the terrace of this boathouse and noticed the movement of the curtain caused by the wind.   What attracted me was the shapes the curtain formed from the blowing wind.   I took a few shots and liked this one best.  I converted it to black and white using photoshop."

Second place for Jonathan Abshire with 'Hot Water'. "This photo was taken in my bathroom.  I played around with different candles, and speeds of water droplets.  I ended up liking this one the best with the hot water where you can see the steam and slight rainbows in the mist.  This picture was taken with a 100mm Macro lens, longer shutter speed (1/20th) to expose for the candle, and a flash to freeze the water drops.  No post processing."

Third place for Luis Weber with 'Musical Elements'. He explains:
"The idea just came to me while listening to my random collection of music in the car. Earth, wind and fire, there are already three elements there, just needed to add some water ;-)
 The execution started at the market, searching for a LP or a single. It had to be an original to be of any value. I could have used a CD, but it just did not feel right. The picture is obviously staged. I set it up in my bathroom to have the possibility of play around with water, and because of the type of light. To take the picture I used my KM Dynax 5D with the 70-300 mm zoom attached at 300mm (450mm equivalent) to narrow down the depth of field as much as possible. I also used a tripod."

Fourth place for Jan-David Hartsuijker with 'Stardust'. "This is one of my photos for the "Stardust" series. Inspired upon Marcel van der Vlugt's series "I like", in which he covered the faces of his models with food he liked, I started working on this series. I really loved the effect given by a powdery substance, but thought his series was to clinical. I wanted not just a series in which a girl was covered in a powder ("dust"), I wanted to capture some of the feeling, the characteristics of the powdery substance, through the picture via the light, the pose, the expression... 
Fifth place for Heather Oortman-Bridge with 'Water, Wind, & Waves'
"This image was taken under the pier when on an evening down at the beach with a group of the images members in Scheveningen in June of last year."

1 - Carolina Sanchez-Monge - Close to Home
This picture was taken with a Nikon D700. My daughter was playing this game on the back of the house and i thought could be nice for "Close to Home".

2 - Jonathan Abshire - The Chaos of a Quiet Amsterdam Street
3 - Michiel Fokkema - Backyard

4 - Roberta Lattuada - Let the music play
waiting for my husband and daughter who were practising "schaats" I saw the guitar on the iced hofvijfer; so I took a picture...the owner came by to make sure I didn't have bad intentions...when he moved away I made another shot including him...

5 - Marloes Bongers - Grandpa Rulez
I entered this photo of my granddad with my Iphone and some kind of LOMO-ish application. I liked it.
So unfortunately I can't tell you anything about shutterspeed or lens for that matter, and I didn't quite take the picture with the POTY in mind. But it really suits the theme "Close to home"

1 - Jonathan Abshire - Hidden Amsterdam

This photo was taken through a window from the Hidden Church in Amsterdam.  I liked the hidden courtyard that is typical Dutch with the inclusion of the bike and rooftops in the background.  Post processing was done in Aperture and Photoshop to give the old sepia-toned feel of a forgotten rooftop.

2 - Meliha Eras - Delft Window
This  was taken through a frosty glass of a Delft pub on a rainy day using a 18-20 mm lens.  I noticed the colors as the pedestrians passed by ,which reminded me of Renoir's paintings.  I cropped the photograph a little using  photoshop.

3 - Michiel Fokkema - Taking a leak

4 - Heather Oortman-Bridge - Search and you will find!
5 - Carolina Sanchez-Monge - Hidden Holland

1 - Heather Oortman-Bridge - Last day in paradise
2 - Carolina Sanchez-Monge - Flying Duck
I took two pictures with a Nikon D700 and a wide angle. Then I tried putting them together with photoshop, so I could be able to show the movement of the duck flying away from the catapult.

3 - Roberta Lattuada - Impossible love
His comments here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/harmtido/4714803495/

5 - Marloes Bongers - A Happy Day