Month #21 - Retrospective of Daily Photos posted from 5/04 to 12/09 (most viewers for the month)

One of my favorite images using another of my favorite techniques. Here's what I wrote back then when posting this as a daily photo in January 2006 (note - all in camera; no Photoshop)-

One of 110 winners (of over 23,700 entries) in the February BetterPhoto.com contest.
Picking up in the New Year where I left off in the old. I think this will be it for now with the Rain-x water drop images. This one is about as good as I can do from a technical standpoint - plus I tried to improve the composition a bit from yesterday's. Since beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, I may or may not have succeeded. Last month's judge would have said - Out. No center of interest.
It was three days of experimentation to arrive at this point. The remaining issue that I'm not happy with is lighting. This was done in natural light plus I "painted" the area around the star with a flashlight. A softer and more uniform light would be better, I think but I don't have any lighting gear. Also, reflections in the drops are important; this shot got rid of too much of that I think. Thank goodness for Nikon Capture's White Balance adjustments because natural light plus a flashlight gave the whites an orangish-yellowish cast and the blue was more like purple.