Pollen accentuates a spider web connected to several iris plants in a Pembroke yard.

Let's take advantage of the long days this month - the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is June 20 - and rediscover beauty that's close to home.

Walk out your door and photograph something in your yard or around your house or apartment building. It can be something as sublime as a butterfly on a flower or as gritty as graffiti on a dumpster.

Your image will be judged on composition, lighting, and creativity.

Your photo must be taken this month, and it must be taken outdoors. As usual, one image per photographer.

JUNE 'MY BACKYARD' CONTEST GALLERY AND SUBMISSION PAGE

By the way, what do you think of these upcoming themes?

July: "The Need for Speed." Have you ever tried photographing a moving object? This is your chance. Take a photo of a moving car, bicycle, motorcycle, runner, animal, whatever. You can shoot the main subject as stationary with the background or foreground blurred, or you can convey speed by letting your subject(s) blur as it races past. You can start shooting this one now, or dip into your archives.

August: "Center It." Let's throw the Rule of Thirds out the window and see how our photos come out when we place the main subject smack dab in the middle of the frame. This one will have to be shot during the month of August.

Have any other suggestions?

By the way, judge Paul Marotta is working on our contest backlog right now. More later.

In choosing her Top 10, judge Susan Vermazen of the Globe Photo Dept. relied on my original instructions for this theme:

"We all yearn for simplicity in our busy, oft-complicated lives. So let's illustrate that desire with sparse, simple pictures of just one subject. Strive for peace and quiet - the zen of life."

Her choices:

Susan Vermazen, the Globe photo editor who judged the 'Singular' photo contest for us, evaluated the overall field of photos as "a really interesting, thoughtful effort." She has some good, basic advice that in summary, really says, "Slow down!"

I've tapped the Globe's excellent Photo Dept. for our judge for the June 'Singular' contest: Susan Vermazen, who has been with the Globe as a picture editor and multimedia editor since 2000.

Before arriving at the Globe, Susan, a graduate of Boston University, had quite the interesting and varied resume:

We all yearn for simplicity in our busy, oft-complicated lives. So let's illustrate that desire with sparse, simple pictures of just one subject. Strive for peace and quiet - the zen of life.

The rules:

Your photo MUST be taken this month. No appeals this time!!!

If you know how, please resize your photo to 500 pixels in height.

One photo per photographer.

The deadline is midnight June 30.

* BONUS *

The July theme will be "Grill It!"

It's a challenge to get creative with an everyday event, so let's see what you can do. I'm telling you about it now so you can plan enough cookouts to get a good photo -- and yes, your photo will have to be taken during the month of July.

I am talking about grilling food -- not photos of sewer grills or the braces on somebody's teeth.

And for you apartment dwellers, if you can't get yourself invited to an outdoor cookout, then indoor George Foreman grills or stovetop grills are fine.

I'm looking for creative shots of food grilling, closeups of the grill itself, grilling accessories, the grillers doing their magic ...

* BONUS 2 *

The theme for August will be "The Rule of Thirds." Those photos can be taken any time. More later.

Here's the gallery where you can submit your June entry and see those of others.

Questions?

I'm always pleased by how much the pros we enlist to review our contest entries enjoy the task, and this month's judge, Ronald Cowie, was no exception, as you'll see by his comments below.

Although our judge for the June contest, Globe staff photographer Bill Greene, found that the field of "Lines and Curves" entries contained some typical shots, he was very impressed with the number of "fresh looks at the commonplace. I liked the details of the natural world, lines in an old piece of wood, an infinity look of kids under a bridge.

Our judge this month, Bill Greene of the Globe staff, had a very hard time winnowing the field of 217 photos down to a Final 50. Why? "I was incredibly impressed with the caliber of the entries," he said. "It was a very diverse and impressive lot. I had a hard time narrowing it down." But he did, and here are the results.

Photo contest: June "Lines and Curves" Final 50

We'll post the Top 10, include First, Second, and Third Place, on Monday.

Check out the entries submitted so far for the July Self-Portraits contest on this Flickr tags search page.

And please check your tags again - they are:

Boston.com contest July2010 self

A couple of people have used "self-portrait" as the 4th tag, and that's not correct, so please check.

Sorry to be so late this month, folks, but it was difficult finding a judge who was available. With summer here, many of the pros are off studying, teaching workshops, traveling, and of course, taking pictures.

Midnight today is the deadline to enter a photo for the June "Lines and Curves" theme, and with 132 eligible entries so far, it promises to be a competitive contest.

Here's how to enter, and here's a look at the entries received to date:

Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Gallery 3

If you don't see your photo in one of these galleries, write to raw@boston.com.

Good luck to everybody!

There's less than a week to go in our June contest -- Lines and Curves -- and we have 81 photos entered on Flickr. Unfortunately, there are some multiple entries, and some photos that were not taken this month. So we have 63 eligible photos so far, and are looking for more.

Remember: the fewer entries, the better your chance of placing or winning. So if you haven't shot your image of lines or curves (or both), then take the opportunity this weekend. The deadline is midnight Wednesday. June photo contest details.

Meanwhile, here are the galleries we've built to date. We'll keep adding eligible photos.

Gallery 1 | Gallery 2

If you have any questions, just write to me at raw@boston.com.

Photography is about geometry as much as creativity: The rule of thirds, triangulating your subjects, using lines to create a sense of depth or lead the viewer's eye to your main subject. So let's dive fully into this world of symmetry and asymmetry and hold a contest where lines and curves are the most obvious elements of your image.

When the Globe’s prize-winning sports photographer Jim Davis evaluated the 25 finalists in June’s Spring Sports contest to choose the Top 10, he hoped to find – or, in some cases, not find – several elements.

The Globe's Jim Davis made his final selections in the Spring Sports contest last evening, and I'm assembling them now. Stay tuned for the winners.

The theme for our June contest is Spring Sports, so let's see those action shots. I had amateur sports in mind when I came up with this theme, but we'll certainly take any photos you've shot at pro games as well.