Wow, well done!
That's a tough comp to get placed in, let alone actually get in the top three. Seriously, congratulations
Who was hosting it this year?
Edit: Found it
Should've read the whole topic before barging in.
The overall winner is also not to my taste, I agree, what's landscape about that pic apart from the horizontal format and a bit of sea in the background?
It probably won 'cause the tog used two different compositional rules and the opposing colours help too.
If the rules were for minimal processing, then that photograph should have been banned, there is definitely at least an hours worth 'o photoshop on that piece believe me, I can spot PS a mile away, even if it's minimal and I can tell you what was done: it looks like a natural HDR (as opposed to the uber fake HDR's that are over processed) which woudl require three or more images blended into one to capture the detail in the sky, the highlights and detail in the shadow area of the dog, then levels, curves, a selective colour (to make the blue and the orangey yellow really stand out and visually fight with one another) an overall hue/sat layer tweaked with the individual colours, possibly with the master sat set to -10 or more so it stopped short of becoming too colourful (a sure fire way to know that it is photoshopped) That green in the distance is definitely been increased. I would also venture to say that the sea has been burnt in a bit as well. The overall thing for me is the obvious lack of the ND grad which you can normally see on ND grad filtered images which leads me to think that HDR was employed.
Mind you, looking through the rest of 'em most have had the old photoshop magic applied. Shame really. I agree, that a levels & curves or exposure and contrast + sharpening should be allowed but not masking and individual colour saturation increase and hue. HDR is completely manipulating the image, filters on the lens could've been used instead, I mean how much is 1ND Grad filter nowadays?
... Sorry for the rant... Getting off the soapbox now.
