phototext, really? the 'artifacts' are part of the intended style. a bit like brush strokes painting with sparkles of light and color. It's saved as a standard jpg at 9 quality, btw. Thanks all, I'm thrilled it was so well recieved here...one of those shots that sat for far too long without living up to its full potential, and I found it one day.

Tommy, yeah sorry that's what I feel, to me it looks like the pattern and delicacy is being effected by the compression. There's so much pattern/ information to be compressed that at 90k for an image that size the compression is going to start adversly effecting the image and not where you have any contraol over. I can see jpg artifacts, maybe I'm wrong.

I do think it's a very impressive image, I just feel that an image of this quality/ wow deserves to be compressed as little as possible. I believe that you never throw away information unless you have to...then again I also hate mp3's. :-)

Well done. The fog gives to the picture a great atmosphere.

Love the oldish feel : and how the dust seems to be alive and dancing.Beautiful silhouette as well.

Great image - reminds me of an REM video

Really stunning. Incredible mood. Well done.

Excellent. Looks like a scene out of a movie. What are those tiny things in the background? are those people or trees?

Probably the best silhouette i have seen in recent times! Just stunning !!

does he have a trombone?? wtf....i like it if thats the case :)

Bingo. G4L, indeed, it's a trombone! takaaki, right you are, it's at Burning Man. Have you been there? I'd be surprised if you haven't and still guessed... The trombone player appeared out of the dust (not fog!) in the middle of a windstorm, played a little diddy as he twirled around slowly, and then disappeared again. *tingles with delight*
pursang, the dust was avoided using some creativity, a plastic ziplock bag with a lens-sized hole, and some masking tape.

Tommy, I think your description really adds to this. Very surreal. :)

Tommy, thanks for the tip on the plastic bag. I do the very same thing in the rain. I too thought it was a trombone, but an instrument like that seemed so out of place, I thought it was my poor eye sight. My son who plays the trombone insisted the 'cowboy' was carrying it, so I'll have to apologize to him as he was right. In any event, this is a wonderful image.

wow, I can only be sure it's not a ghostly cowboy appearing out of the dust because of the trombone... the color orange is very evocative, making everything seem surreal and other-worldly, yet it seems so right on as if it was just the light at dawn or dusk.

Nicely misterious! :)