I purchased my camera and started this blog in earnest in July last year. A year seems to have flown past and hopefully I've shown a lot of what I've learned about photography. I know I've hosted a lot of images and had a surprising number of visitors to this blog.

In order to celebrate a year of blogdom and camera fun I thought it might be nice to have a challenge.

The aim of the game is to take the following image and make it 'better' using any post processing tools you have at your disposal. Be it Photoshop or Picasa, GIMP or Paint Shop Pro, even the online tools I discussed here are allowed. When you've finished, email me the image and I'll host all the finished work in a gallery for review. I'll even arrange an independent judge to pick the best one.

To make it interesting, and as a thank-you to all the people who've visited over the last year, I'll donate a £10 Amazon voucher to the winner. I know it's not going to change your life, but hey...

Closing date for entries will be the 30th June and I'll post the gallery and winner as soon after that as feasible.

So! What are you waiting for?

...oh, yeah, the image...

The full size jpeg can be found here.

The full size raw (.dng) file can be found here.

(You might want to use right-click then save link as...)

The small print.

I'm not sure if we need much in the way of formalised rules here, but just in case...

1. No more than 2 entries per person. The competition is open to everyone

2. All entries should have a valid email address associated with them

3. Submitted pictures should be composed of the above image (no substituting my digger picture for some random blonde, Jon)

4. The judges decision is final

5. The £10 Amazon voucher can be made available in different currencies as required

EDIT (21/05/08)

The link for the .dng file should now work.