alexring

Placed 36^th in the challenge. This was taken in Porto-Katsiki beach, Greece back in 2007. The girl seemed to enjoy the beach for herself, without caring if anyone else was around...

Placed 2^nd in the challenge. This was shot at the Camargue natural reserve in France, the area where the river Rhone runs into the Mediterranean Sea. I was surprised to see how close some heavy industry bordered to this area of the reserve and though the flamingos didn't really seem to care much, when I saw them burying their heads in the mud I couldn't resist thinking that they were hiding from the ugly world that surrounds them...

Placed 10^th in the challenge. This was shot on a ship from Corfu island to Igoumenitsa, Greece and it is quite a lucky shot. I was there trying to capture the nice sunset colours against the dark blue sky, when this mother with her daughter (totaly unknown to me) started dancing around, ignoring everyone. Would be a pitty to miss this rare chance...

Placed 6^th in the challenge. This is a photo of an abandoned quarry on the top of the hill right above my house in Athens, Greece. Have wanted to shoot it for a long time and finally managed it on a very cold and windy afternoon of January 2012.

Placed 4^th in the challenge. This was shot at the amazing Aareschlucht, the gorge of the river Aare in Switzerland. I had taken a very similar photo many years ago on the same place (but in daytime), shooting some random tourists standing at the edge. So as I was at the same place and knowing how good the human element looks in this place, I decided (since there was hardly anyone around) to pose myself. The problem was that I could only trigger the camera with its timer and the distance from it to the point I was standing was more than what it seems in the photo. So I had to run really fast to get in place (and then back to see what I shot...) Had to repeat it a few times to get it right and then standing absolutely still for 15 secs got more and more difficult. But I think it was worth the sweat...

Placed 27^th in the challenge. This was shot at the wonderful Aareschlucht (the gorge of river Aare) in Switzerland, which gets so narrow at parts where you can actually reach for the other side. I wanted to add some human element to give scale so as no stranger was willing to pose still for 13 secs I had to do it myself. Took me some running back and forth (and pretending to stay calm after the running...) but I finally got what I wanted. Then I decided that a second human figure emerging from the background tunnel would be cool, so I decided to pose again there. More running back and forth till I get it right... This is a merge of the two photos, done manually in photoshop.

Placed 15^th in the challenge.

Placed 13^th in the challenge.