We received approximately 40 photographs from 20 photographers. Most of the pictures were excellent. We divided the entries into 3 categories, Land, Sea, and Sky, though we had to fudge a little bit to populate all 3 categories.
Choosing finalists was difficult. We considered what we thought were the scientific and pictorial qualities of the photographs, and also attempted to represent as many photographers and present as much variety as possible. The text was written by the photographers and lightly edited for style.
Here are the finalists in the Land category. Please look through them before voting for your favorite. You will have to be logged in to vote on the poll. We know it is possible to game these polls. Please be responsible and vote only once. If we think that the results are invalid, the contest will be canceled. The photos and poll are below the fold.
The winner in each category will receive a copy of The Way of the Panda, by Henry Nicholls; we thank the publisher, Pegasus Books, for their generosity in providing the books.
Note: Matt Young directed the selection of the finalists and wrote most of this text.
Which photo best captures both artistic and scientific beauty?
Let me know if anyone is having a problem voting. I changed the system a bit for this round.
Note, you may have to refresh the page after signing in to see the voting options.
I was the second vote. No problems.
You may want to tag this to stay at the top of PT. Otherwise it might get lost.
I’ll tag it tomorrow, or do something similar.
Just refreshing in IE8 didn’t work, I had to sign in, leave the page, and come back. Works now.
I took the law into my own hands and made it a sticky.
I got a noticed planned for tomorrow, so I am unstickying.
Hmm… I’m signed in, but I don’t see a vote button. Am I missing something obvious?
Never mind :) Once I made the comment, the poll appeared. It must have been me.
lava
It’s a hard choice, but I think I’ll have to go with the Magicicada.
Mustangs!
Lava
Right now you have to be logged in to vote. I’d like feedback from the community about whether this should be changed for next week’s voting?
Same here as with Anonymosity; signed in, but no vote button.
The green katydid on the orange canna lily.
Magicicada all the way.
All of the rest are just sort of.. well, sitting there… But the Mustangs are running pretty fast!
I’m kind of bised - I was driving like mad to set up that shot while my brother was shooting the photos. -AR
Doesn’t work
If you can comment, you can vote. Refresh the page after you login to comment, and you should see the poll options.
Somebody needs to vote, cause the one I voted for is getting clobbered by lava and another bug…
FYI, the normal refreshing didn’t work for me. I had to leave to “Main” and come back. For a while there, I thought that there must be some secret evolutionary testing going on here. I signed in (See! I can comment!) I refreshed, (several times, just in case) No luck until I got almost exasperated enough to leave entirely.
Some browsers must work different than others.
I’m working on how to update the poll on login.
Okay, I think I got it working.
C’mon Katydid. Don’t you just love that color? The lava pic is great though.
Hi Reed, It works with Firefox 6 now.
Update