The picture that I entered first was a waterfall taken with my old Nikon Coolpix. I was still debating what else to enter, I thought waterfalls would be a pretty common entry so I was thinking the dragonfly had a little better chance. I also liked this head shot of the blue dasher. I must say though that the damselflies are my favorite odonata. I had fun this summer photographing them - I had hoped to get out to some of the lakes to find more but never made it past my own pond and the creek. They are a bit more of a challenge than the dragonflies due to their small size but if you are patient you can get pretty close to them. Here are some of my favorites from this summer ... This is an american rubyspot, their coloring looks more like it's been drawn on ... Here is a blue-fronted dancer ... An eastern forktail that was just developing it's color - I have a whole series showing the color development but haven't had time to process them.... An ebony jewelwing ... they look like butterflies when they fly across the water ... And a mating pair of double-striped bluets ....

I voted. It was interesting seeing the different looks for the same daylilies. I did tend to vote for the ones that looked most like what I've seen in this area. Of course that didn't apply to the ones I hadnt seen before. Will be interesting to see which ones make it to the next round. Val

There are various ways to do it. If you want to enter contests you can check out the various photography magazines on the stands and see when they're running contests. There are also a few sites around that have photo contest where the prize is something like 100.00 bucks. I think one of them is called photo a day or something like that. Then there are various on-line stock agencies where you don't have to be a professional to upload your photos and sell them. At first the $$ they pay you per download doesn't seem like a lot-but if you have good photos and lots of them the $$ per download really adds up. I personally use Shutterstock and BigStockPhoto And I'm happy with both of them. The images are royalty free and the $$ from both adds up, plus they're non exclusive so you can upload the same images to both places or as many on-line places as you can join. Also see the website for your camera maker. Often times they run photo contests for their customers and give a small prize or bragging rights. Like Kodak's winners get their pic on that giant screen in Times Sq. And many different specialized mags also run contests from time to time so take an afternoon and check out the racks at Borders.

Hey all just checking in. I happened to see info about African violets above. Back when my father was much younger he was quite the horticulturist and loved African violets especially. He still has a magic touch with them. Funny (but true) family story. My aunt (mother's sister and known/admitted black thumb) expressed her absolute glee over how beautiful my father's African violets were. She was explaining that she could never ever keep anything alive but had an especially difficult time with violets. At the next family get-together, my father brought my aunt a plastic potted African violet. He said, "this is one you can never kill; I guarantee it." He thought based on that, that she knew it was artificial. About a year later we were at her house and she had it in the middle of the kitchen table and said, "Look Rick, I have been caring for it for a year and it hasn't even dropped it's petals." When he looked at her quizically, she said "I water it every day and make sure to give it sun but not too much. You were right, I didn't kill it." My entire family erupted into laughter when he explained that it wasn't real. Though crestfallen at the time, it has become quite the family hoo haw.