Congratulations Alasdair McIntosh PFRE Photographer of The Month August

Congratulations to Alasdair McIntosh, York, UK, the PFRE photographer of the month for August.

Alasdair is a first-time winner. He's been a regular contestant for a long while. I must say, I really like this beautifully composed exterior shot of this idyllic English cottage. Great job Alasdair!

Here are all the contestants that the jurors awarded points to this month:

1. #12, Alasdair McIntosh, York, UK
2. #30, Brian Doherty, Boston, MA
3. #27, Jon Encarnacion, Lake Forest, CA
4. #7, Matt Parvin, Southport, North Carolina
5. #15, Ryan Hunt, Levin, New Zealand
6. #16, Thom Neese, Omaha Nebraska
7. #11, Craig McCasland - San Antonio, Texas

Don't forget to check out the discussion in the contest Flickr group. There is a lot of good discussion of composition and lighting. If you are working at raising the level of your work this discussion is a must read!

I've now updated the photos in the contest Flickr group to show all the entrants names. Thanks for everyone's participation!

Here are Alasdair's comments about creating this image:

I’m very happy to have won this month’s contest. Thanks to all the jurors and to all the commentators on the flickr group. Their comments always make a good read.

When I pulled up to this house located in a beautiful little village in the North Yorkshire Moors, it was raining. Fortunately by the time I’d had a look around and done a few of the interior shots the sun had started to appear and I was outside quickly before the rain returned. Such is the game in this part of the world. I first tried to scope out an angle of the house from inside the boundary hedge you can see in the photograph but although it was okay, there was a lot of gravel drive and I was much closer than I’d have liked. I took a look at a possible angle from outside the garden to bring in more of the property’s setting and with a bit of elevation with the camera on an extended tripod held above my head I managed to get a decent gap between the trees to help frame the house. I also timed the shot with a bit of thin cloud passing a slight shadow over the road and verge in the foreground so as not to draw too much attention to them. The processing consisted of a pretty straightforward RAW conversion in Lightroom and I cropped to 5x4 for this contest.

Thanks also to Larry for his work in running this contest.

PFRE Photographer of the Month Winners:

• July 2015 PFRE Photographer of The Month
• September 2015 PFRE Photographer Of The Month
• June 2015 PFRE Photographer of The Month