Weekend Task #23 - Summer

[Jan1977]

Weekend Task #23 - Summer

With the temperatures rising an being very high in Europe, summer has definitely arrived so it makes a nice theme for the the new challenge. The photos must express summer in some form, being sunny, showing summer activities, express the feeling of summer,.... It is up the the contestants

This week I will pick the winner. Despite Levina's warning of the daunting task it may be... , it is the best option since my holiday starts next week and I won't be available to tally the votes after the submission deadline. So I take my responsibility and will pick a winner just before leaving


This challenge begins when posted and ends at noon GMT on Monday July 7 2025
After that voting will commence. Or in a non-voting week the host will declare the winner.


The General Image Rules:

1. Camera: Any CAMERA is allowed (images from scanned film are also allowed);
2. Post only ONE photo;
3. Time: Any on-topic photo taken at any time is eligible, although photos that have won other competitions here should NOT be entered;
4. Size: Maximum image size is 1600px on the long end. Minimum size is 800px;
5. Post Processing: Do whatever you like, and the host/voters will decide if it works;
6. Title your image;
7. Posting: ONE PHOTO per photographer per challenge.
8. Commenting: No commenting and/or Likes during challenge. After the challenge is closed and the winner known, discussion is encouraged;
9. Keep it clean, and both family and work safe;
10. Have lots of FUN;
11. This text is available in a sticky. Copy the text and paste it in the new thread or quote it and remove the quote tags.

The rules for choosing the winner when the hosts chooses the winner:​

1. When the hosts decide to choose the winner him/herself, the rule is simple: he or she picks the winner;
2. The host is encouraged to give us his/her thoughts on the competing images;
3. The host is not allowed to submit an image of his/her own.

Hosting:​

1. The challenge host is the winner of the last challenge;
2. Once your win is announced, go to Games, Competitions and Challenges and choose "Post thread";
3. In the top (title) line, enter Weekend Task #X - Your Topic
4. Copy / paste the sticky in your new thread, fill in the right data (title, description, data etc.) and click "Post thread", at the bottom of the page. Or simply click the QUOTE button and then in your new thread choose INSERT QUOTE, toggle off the BBcode, remove the QUOTE buttons and toggle on the BBcode button again. Detailed instructions for that are here.
5. Soon after noon GMT on the next Tuesday, post the sum of the votes for first, second, and third place. No ties, please;
6. If the winner can't be contacted and doesn't respond by Wednesday noon GMT, the second-place winner will host the challenge. If both are unavailable, the third-place winner will host.

Link to Sticky with template.
Link to Rob's spreadsheet for tallying the votes.

>> THE WINNER ALWAYS SETS THE THEME FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE AND HOSTS IT - PLEASE BE PREPARED AND ON TIME >>

 

[Stiga]

Summer at Alnmouth, NE England) Cannon G12 panorama

 

[Jeff WX1USN]

 

[Terry McDaniel]

 

[greatgrandma]

The Beach

 

[inphoto]

Relax

 

[EdC]

Solitary splendour

 

[Ed Will]

Street Festival at Ocoquan, VA, Depth of Field study

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

Summer in the city

 

[greatgrandma]

Time to vote?

 

[Jan1977]

Time to vote?

This week I will pick the winner myself, am working on my verdict on this very moment . I'll leave on holiday, so I wouldn't have time to follow up voting.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

In other words, the competition is closed now.

 

[Jan1977]

Well, it's time to announce the winner: Greatgrandma (not because she was so eager to start voting ).

Everybody thanks for the participation and the photos submitted. It was of course hard to decide as it all comes down to subjective opions.

#1 Greatgrandma: The photo best expresses the feeling of summer like I imagine summer. Nice weather and people going to the beach. I feel like that if you asked people to add 3-5 keywords to that photo, "summer" would for sure be one of them.

#2 EdC : the sun flower is typical for summer and for me has the annotation with France and the Tour the France, where the TV-director always aims for shots of the fields with sunflowers. So this is based on my own associations mostly.

#3 Ed Will : Kind of similar to my comment for Greatgrandma's photo. The depth of field is nice photographically, but makes the photo compete with the family outdoors aspect and the bubbles.

Others, in random order:

Stiga: very nice photo, probably the one I look most looking at it as a standalone photo. The emptyness of the beach is what threw me off a bit regarding the WET theme as it makes is feel a bit less summer.

Inphoto: It does give a summer feel, but it also feels like it is in a tropical area where it is summer all year long. That made it feel a bit less "summer" then some of the other entries.

Levina: It clearly expresses the summer, and it is a nice 'different' setting. Other photos just appealed a bit more to the summer feeling.

Terry McDaniel: It is a scene that I definitely associate with summer. It was just that some other photos gave a stronger association for me.

Jeff WX1USN: Surfing definitely associates with summer, but the wetsuits give it a bit less feel of summer, as it could mean that the surfing was done in another season, while the weather was less warm.

Good luck with the WET's the upcoming weeks, due to my holidays I will not participate for a few weeks.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

Thanks Jan for hosting and for picking the winner. Have a great holiday!!

Rosalie, congratulations on winning this week. It sure is a sweet shot and it does say "summer"! It's a pity though that it is blurry.
Also congrats to the two Eds.

My own top three would have been Ed Will's photo for it's "bubbly" summer feeling and it's technical perfection with perfect focus on the bubbles, Martin's photo. It may not depict a typical beach scene but the whole scene breathes summer in my opinion. Inphoto's photo would have also been in my top three. I don't really understand the reason for dismissing it as not seasonal. I would have had a hard time deciding which of the three would end up in which position. I'm glad I didn't have to decide that this week.

My own pic is a good example of summer in the city and how people find ways to cool off. This is a square not far from where I live. On summer days the fountain goes live and the children come out and play in it. Their parents and just about every other resident there fill the benches, and cafe chairs (all just outside the frame), keeping an eye on the children and enjoying each other's company.

 

[greatgrandma]

If I was voting, I would have picked Ed Will first because we had a family reunion one year and we had soap bubbles to amuse the younger kids. And Terry Mcdaniels harvest photo would be a strong second. I did like the beach scene, except that I have photos like that which were taken in the winter - sometimes in more tropical locations where it was warm, but sometimes it was cold and that's why there was no one else on the beach.

As for surfing - wet suits are for how cold the water is and it can be cold in the summer in a lot of places (like California) But surfing does occur year round. Although it was a great photo.

I considered entering a sunflower photo myself and what I really wanted to find was a good photo of an outdoor swim meet, but couldn't find one.

I would have downgraded my photo because of the soft focus and small size. It was taken c 1996 of a grandchild of mine. He was a really cute kid. But I didn't expect his cuteness to overcome the photographic problems.