First picture I've managed to take that even closely resembles one of the monthly themes! Just waiting on Nath to get an account for the proper POTM site so I can post it there...
Whoops sorry, didn't see your PM there. Details are in the post. This is stunning. The purple -> orange gradient and the silhouette just work perfectly together. Definitely a contender for the top prize this month I reckon!
The shot has a very nice feel to it, I would have prefered the corn to be a little more in focus/sharper though. Still a great shot.
The technicalities of this photo generally involved me standing at the side of the road, trying to figure out how to hold a piece of grass up in front of the camera, whilst working out how to manually focus it without a third hand... Not too much PP done, just a light blue top gradient to give the purple a bit more punch and a twiddle with the contrast. Exif: Canon 400D 1/4000 sec f/1.8 50mm ISO 100
QFT. Wonderful concept, but the grass is just a tiny bit too soft to have really nailed it IMO. Then again, for all I know, that might just have been due to some weird effect of how silhouettes work. I'm surprised you got that strong of a silhouette on 1/4000sec exposure, though. I'd personally have stopped down to f/2.5 or so since that lens (f/1.8 50mm, right?) gets really sharp around there, plus you wouldn't have such a razor-thin DOF to make focusing so tricky. Though come to think of it, why not just use autofocus?
It was a little windy, which meant that the af was having no joy with focussing, let alone being confused by the sun in the background. In hindsight stopping it down a little would have been much better, but at the time I was just thinking "go for bokeh"
On something 93M miles away, I doubt one stop would have made much difference on the bokeh. Also, try AF Servo mode. It works well for moving subjects.
Just a thought, but isn't pointing directly at the sun/very bright objects supposed to damage camera sensors? Maybe it's from crappy cams, but I always thought it was the case...
Depending on how long the exposure is though, it could only be for 1/8000th of a second or something. If that's the case then maybe it doesn't do much damage?
I think it's only if you're actually focused on the sun. Think $1000 magnifying glass and replace ants with a CCD.