Hello and welcome to our first, semi-annual giveaway vote, where you can choose who has provided us with the best overall image from our first 6 monthly challenges, is granted our undying adoration and given some free stuff as well.  Over the last 6 months, Heather, Mat and I have coordinated a monthly, dual blog challenge here and on Heather and Mat’s site Mirrorlessons where a theme is presented at the beginning of each month.  Anyone can submit an image into our theme specific Flickr group discussion threads for consideration.  At the end of the month, Heather, Mat and I choose an image that we each feel best exemplifies that theme and open it up for a vote.  The winner of that vote then gets to choose the next theme, and we begin again.  It has been a fun way to get to know and interact with many more photographers here and through Flickr, hopefully also translating into inspiration for many of us.  When we started this, we’d merely hoped that we could find a way to further build a community while gaining and hopefully providing some fun inspiration as a way to share our images with a wider audience.  It has been working and we’re thrilled with the connections made and beautiful imagery we’ve seen presented through these monthly challenges.

This brings us to our first giveaway vote!  The fine folks at Topaz Labs, creators of many very awesome software programs and plugins, have offered a free program of the winners choice.  I will also be building a custom Garda Wrist Strap for said winner with a few different color choices, not quite yet available for purchase and the title of our first, Semi-Annual Challenge Champion.

Let the vote commence!  Please come in and vote for your favorite image.

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