Photo Contest: Hot Pics for April

Steve says that he took this photo while on vacation in California, and tried to mimic some of Ansel Adam's techniques while editing this shot.

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Tyler says: "I caught these droplets just as the sprinklers came on outside of the main house of a local arboretum. I used a Nikon D50 and a 60mm f/2.8 lens."

Myka says: "I took this photo on my farm in southern Iowa. I was outside one evening last summer, taking random photos in our yard, when I climbed up on the recently baled hay for a different point of view. I used my Kodak EasyShare C633."

Rob writes: "I could not resist taking a photo of these backlit masts at Long Beach Pier in California. I used my Canon 5D with a 50mm lens teleconverted with a 1.4X adapter. In Photoshop Elements, I layered a gradient fill to brighten the foreground."

Pamela writes: "The red glass ball is a paperweight about 3 inches in diameter. I had just bought a macro close-up kit ... for my Canon D20 and wanted to get really close to something, anything... you know that itch! I put a lamp behind the ball to illuminate it, but I think that the lamp's texture enhances the photo as well."

Greg writes: "We stopped to look at the Pacific Ocean on a drive down the California coast, just south of Big Sur. These boats seemed to be abandoned on the beach in a small cove below Pacific Coast Highway.... They were old and a dirty gray, so I converted the photo to black-and-white and colored the boats to make them stand out."

Stephen says that he took this photo with his Panasonic Lumix FZ-20, "in the brief period near noon, when shafts of sunlight illuminate the canyon."

Tim used a FujiFilm 3-megapixel camera to catch his dog, Abbie, sitting among the wildflowers.