Congrats to the winners. I have no idea what Laird's actually is, but we'll done.
Personally I loved Mr Evans' shot. Really good idea.
I agree, Mister Evan's shot was well executed. I can appreciate the effort - people called me crazy when I strapped $6000 worth of gear to the hood of my Jeep.
As for my shot you are looking at an image 52 million years in the making. Two summers ago I did some fossil digging in Fossil Butte, Montana. What you see here are two of the fossils I split out of the rock. You can't really see any detail on the lower piece but it is from a mass extinction event and has at least a dozen fish on it. The smaller piece on top has a fish about half way through the image just above the horizontal ridge. you can see the light skimming off of the backbone.
I had the two pieces separated by about a quarter inch by some clear beads. I then skimmed a tungsten light source across the top rock from the upper right. A blue light was skimmed across the lower rock and leading edge of the upper rock from the upper left. The blue light was then bounced back across the top with a mirror. The fun part is that the surface is similar to lightly textured drywall but the details are exaggerated by the edge lighting.
On top of the fossil there are some fishing flies and mono-filament fishing line. The strong tungsten source was diffracted by the line and lures causing them to take on a bit of a glow. That was rather unexpected and a pleasant surprise. Note the lure the furthest to the left. It is mostly sitting in a shadow but it is throwing off quite a bit of light on the surrounding rock face.
On the lower rock there are some additional fishing hooks and more of the clear beads (bubbles). There wasn't as much detail in the lower rock but it turned out OK
The whole thing was setup parallel to the floor with the tripod anchored above it and the camera shooting downward.
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Hope you're over the worst of it Laird. I got knocked for six by the flu a couple of months ago - nasty business.
What was your photo of anyway?
Thanks. I'm back at the office but still dealing with the lingering bits. I'm OK for the most part (well flu wise anyway).
As you can see above I was already typing up the answer to your question.
