By Sharon E. Lowe
July contest judge

There were some excellent images in this contest and it wasn't easy picking the Top 10. Everyone in the Final 50 should be commended, and the Top 10 should be especially proud of their work.

The Top Three winners:

Folks, there are several contest photos that are not being pulled into our Voting Machine. We use Flickr's API to pull in the photos, so please check your account settings by visiting this page and making sure that ALL 3 boxes are unchecked. Then hit Save. Thanks.

Our judge, Sharon E. Lowe, has made her Final 50 choices. Here are her thoughts on your entries:

There were quite a few very nice images in this competition and I enjoyed seeing the different ways that people chose to illustrate the "Ripples" theme - landscapes, children playing in the water, abstracts, and floods, for example.

Our judge for the July "Ripples" contest, Sharon E. Lowe, first dabbled in photography when she was in high school. Several years ago, she rediscovered her passion, and now pursues her art professionally.

Our judge for the July "Ripples" contest, professional photographer Sharon E. Lowe, is on the job, sorting through your 200-plus entries to narrow the field to the Final 50. Later today I'll post her bio and links to some of her work, and tomorrow we'll post the Final 50 gallery as well as the Voting Machine.

It's summer, so I'm looking for water shots. But not just any water shots; let's get water moving, gurgling, splashing, spraying, and yes, rippling. In other words, water in motion. As usual, we're looking for creativity and good composition; we'll also look favorably on the effective use of light on water, but it's not a requirement.

NOTE: We're changing our tagging system. Usually to enter our contests you tag your photos with Boston.com contest month. We're altering that in two ways:

1) Instead of just the month, make your third tag the month and year. So instead of one tag being just July, it should be July2009 (no space).

2) We're adding a fourth tag to help the search results even more: The theme. This month, your fourth tag will be Ripples.

So this month, tag your photos with these four tags:
     Boston.com
     contest
     July2009
     Ripples

Remember, one entry per photographer. The deadline is midnight July 31. Here's more about how to enter.