Sunday 5 February 2012

Great Photo Pro: Software Competition - and results

Hello, If you are here it is cos you want to try and win one of the lisences for the photo editing software called Great Photo Pro.





Here is the competition announcement




To submit yourself for the competition, please email me your best Mistake of a photo to dombower@hotmail.com  Please only one photo per email and no more than 2 submissions. Please provide your name and a little detail about the photo so I can figure out what I am looking at.


At the end of February head back here to see the winning submissions.


In the mean time please feel free to download a free trial of the software
Check out their site, you can also try out the software for free for as long as you want, only difference is that when you export the images is that there is a watermark on it. http://www.everimaging.com/




for any of you who are still confused here are some examples of mistakes i have taken but i like













Results


First of all, well done to everyone, and thank you very much for your submissions.  there have been over 120 emails sent in for this competition.


Some of the mistakes were from accidentally firing your camera when you were not expecting to, or firing it at what at the time you thought was the wrong time.
Some mistakes were when people or other objects came into the image,
Some mistakes were with the exposure and the composition,
Some mistakes were with the editing of the shots,
Some mistakes were in the setup and organising of a shoot, the failing of a flash or the malfunction of a camera.






Here are what have been deamed the top submissions.





Lonely man fishing by
John Suarez


Beach boat by David Heaton
A quick story behind this one, it was on my expedition to Tanzania and we all wanted a group photo so I put my camera on the side of the boat you can see. Well i'm sure you can guess the rest, in my rush to get in the photo within the timer, the camera fell of the edge of the boat into the sand and took this shot instead.
Thanks
David Heaton






Hello Dom,
first of all I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
My name is Joscha and I am a 18 years old student from Germany.
This Photo was taken in school during a german lesson.
We had to shoot some pictures which represent a specific scene of a book 
(we call this "Standbilder").
So we sat in the classroom thinking about the pose and I accidentally 
press the shutter
while holding the camera with one hand.
Luckily my buddy Patrick looked at the camera.
I cropped the top of the vertical picture und convert it to B&W.
Then I applied some basic contrast and sharpening. That's it!
Hope you like it :D

greetings from Germany

Joscha

Nose by Flip

Hey Dom,
First I want to say that I'm a big fan of you youtube channel, even back in the day when you did a lot of them half naked. Strange times. My girlfriend used to think I had some strange gay lens fetish.
anyways, I figured I'd send in a foto mistake. I make a lot of them, but this one was originally completely black. I shot this with my lensbaby, but can't remember what the obtic was. So when I tried to bring back the image from the raw file (I was just curious what was behind the curtain) I got a lot of color but it also introduced a lot of grain. But because the grain is all blocky for some reason it made it look like a painting on canvas.
All the best,
                     flip







Light burn from Delano

Hi Dom,

I hereby send you my best mistake photo!

It was taken in Amsterdam. I was just walking home from a night out with my friends when I saw these light posts. Because it was a bit foggy you could see the light coming from the lamps which, to me, was very interesting. So I took my Nikon FM and shot this photo. No mistakes here, you think. But a couple of days later my film wouldn't advance so I needed to open my Nikon. But I had totally forgotten that I needed to do this in a dark place, so light spilled all over the film and a couple of shots where ruined. Luckily this shot was saved and I think because of this mistake the picture is even more interesting to look at.




John Nicholson


Hi Dom,

I thought I’d submit this as my “mistake photo”.

What happened here was a mix of nervousness and panic. I was shooting my first wedding a year or so ago, and was trying to get a nice shot of the grooms niece. I got the shutter speed far too slow for what I had planned, and at the same time she turned around, giving this dreamlike mistake photo!

Taken on a D200 at ISO 400 f3.5 and 1/4 sec.




Hi Dom,

I love your channel and it's helped me out a lot - I could write an essay on it but I'll keep it short as I know you're really busy - keep up the good work!

My photo was shot sitting in the boot of my dads car waiting for the rest of the family to get back - it was just after I got my camera and I was just playing about with it and enjoying the sound of continuous burst - as you do - and ended up with this, I really like the sunflare (though i normally dont, damn kit lens) obscuring the guys face. 

Cheers
Chris

Oh yeah, and I give you the right to do whatever with my photo and use it for whatever bla bla bla



Lia by Mike

Hi Dom,

Please accept my entry into this months competition. This was an out door shoot with a couple of speedlights and I was using a remote shutter release cable that stuck in the open position as I depressed the shutter. Got some blur and some flare and if I could reproduce the affect, I would use it more often. LOL. (Not sure if you wanted large or small image so I am sending a web ready size)

Shot with a Canon Xsi 

Regards,
Mike


Jonny

This photo is taken 10 a clock in the evening last september. it was pitch dark an i was doing some long exposures just to experiment, and a boat passed by in the middle of the exposure.
The boat had the lights on and passed by very slowly.

I think this photo turned out pretty well and it is a very nice mistake. It is pretty much original. it´s tweaked a little bit in Lightroom.

More info:

Camera:
Canon 1100D

Settigs:
F/10
27 sec exposure
ISO100
21mm

Lens:
18-55 Kit lens.

Greetings from Finland.





From Pedro

Hi Dom Bower my name is Pedro Solano, this is a photo of my son Jacob. We were in Santa Cruz on a hike I wanted to get a full body shot of him but he was following to closely. So I quickly ran ahead took the shoot. Little did I know that he was right behind me this was not the picture I intended to make but it is one of my best and favorite.




Dan

Hey Dom,

Here's my photo submission.  I was trying to do a macro shot of my wife's eye and it didn't quite work.

Thanks.
Dan



I was on the beach with my Daughter Erin, i was just generally snapping. She headed over to me trying to put her sticky fingers on my glass, so as i leant back to dodge the mitts, i hit the shutter and got this! 
I love this shot and have a large one framed in my sitting room.

From Shanna




Epic Beer guy

Dear Dom,
                 Here is my entry for your contest. I call it "Epic Beer Guy!". I was hired to shoot a New Years Eve party and managed to capture this awesome image completely by accident. It was completely dark in the club so I had no idea that this guy was holding his beer bottle in such a way that it looks like it has this EPIC aura of lights surrounding it...I just take a shot and only realized how cool it was in post. Enjoy!

Sincerely,
              Jacob delaRosa



I took this photo of my brother for his graduation prom day. I used a flash and try to bounce the light to a wall on the right. My brother (the guy in front) and his friend was walking toward me and all of the sudden, they both started walking faster. I took the shot but they moved too fast so i captured his friend behind him instead. the exposure wasn't right. but thanks to Photoshop the picture works out "fine"




Hi Mr. Dom,

I wasn't going to send a photo for your competition, but last night while out for a photo walk I took the attached image. I was shooting a backlit street-style photo of this girl sitting on the concrete staring out into space, and when I took the shot another character wandered into my scene. She was doing some kind of balancing/walking exercise and provides left-side interest to this right-side weighted photo.

You have my permission to display this image in any Web medium you wish.

Thanks and keep up the good work,
Jeremy




James sent in this

Picture was taken whilst walking my dog last summer. I'd put my camera down to mess around with the dog, when i picked it up it fired off this beauty.
Edited simply with Windows Photo Gallery Fix.






Dear Mr Dom.
This its my entry for your mistake competition.
I'm doing a timelaps movie about the new apartment building going up outside our house.
I was going to align them in Photoshop  and loaded a couple of hundred pictures into layers but hit the blend option by accident and this was the result.
Its not an accident shot but still in the theme of the competition.
I only have a small version right now  but if you want I can send a larger version later when I'm home.
______
Best reguards.
Thure (Henrik Thuresson)




Hi,
My name is Wayne Henry and I'm a long time, self taught, amateur photographer who specialises in bizarre/fetish/alternative styles.
I'm submitting as a mistake as this shoot had nothing go right for us!
We planned a sunrise shoot, I had a lighting plan in my head and we scouted the location the previous afternoon.
The next morning we were up at 4am, left at 4:30 and were on our way and slowly noticed it was taking a long time to get some light in the sky. At 5am it was obvious it was 100% overcast and at 5:15 when sunrise was meant to be there wasn't a single scrap of colour in the sky.
The battery powered strobes and beauty dish were unpacked anyway to see what we could come up with, the battery had died during the night.
The location we'd picked look pretty average with the planned light or sunrise sky making an appearance so had to change that as well.
We persisted and with an old flash and triggers, a friend holding the flash and a good dose of making it up as we went, we got some cool pics. Now that I look back at it, everyone has shots of The Pinnacles with a bright blue sky, sunrise or sunset, I can't find a single pic with a dramatic cloudy sky at that location so by accident I ended up with something unique and I now really like the images we got.
Cheers,
Wayne.



Hi Dom

This is my best mistake. I took it with the aim to freeze the rally car, but as I was in manual with a slow shutter speed as I was usually panning shots I got this capture. Luckily the background is perfect in spite of being hand held. A lucky shot no doubt

Thanks, all the best 

Paul Scott Thomas




William Campbell shot
Hi Dom,


That software looks brilliant, Especially the Miniture effect.
The resulting photo looked great even although you just clicked a few "random" buttons.

A little info:

Russian Roulette:

In class in college, we were all taking turns of photographing the models, I had finished my turn and went to sit back down, I looked towards the photography area and the model lined up perfectly with the softbox behind her, I remember reading about doing still life photography and using backlighting for it, I asked to get another 2 - 3 shots, On this particualr shot, the image was under exposed as the flash had not fired.
I messed about with the image in photoshop, simply out of curiosity, once I pushed the levels, the dirty grey / brown turned bright yellow, I later cleaned it up, taking out wrinkles in the softbox cloth.
This image made it into the finals of the BIPP Scotland Student awards 2011.
So, in a way, It was a double mistake, or triple, depending how you look at it.




hey Dom,
i was trying to get my flashes to work, so i was taking random shots well looking at the flashes...

Name: OP Tome

Hi,Dom,
My name is Hans and I am just starting with photography.
I want to submit this photo -Girl in black- which I took 2 days ago for your "Best Mistakes" competition.
Actually that day I had only planned to go out and buy new shoes, so normally I wouldn't bring my camera... luckily I did.
When I walked out the store it suddenly started snowing really hard, which is quite rare in Antwerp. I even believe it was the first day it snowed, so I decided to try some street photography.
Anyway, this picture was taken with a Minolta 50mm/1.7 lens ISO200 f3.2 1/160 sec. on manual focus.
It was a complete coincidence because I was just experimenting with the focus and aperture. I was trying to get some snowflakes (which isn't all that interesting).
All of a sudden the person in the picture appeared in front of the lens and disappeared a fraction of a second later (like a ghost).
I like the gothic and contemporary architecture in the background coming together with the mysterious person completely dressed in black and hooded like a monk text messaging.
I hope you like the picture,
Regards,
Hans De Waele


hi dom great site and videos thanks this photo was taken at windermer by my wife in December she must of pressed the shutter to hard and rotated the camera it was cold and we were parking on double yellow lines still the effect is very good. enjoy and keep making the videos.we now live in panama nice and warm thanks again DEVERO




Hello Dom,
I am a photographer from Glasgow . I took this picture in Paris from the Trocadero using my fuji x100 . Originally I had planned on taking the usual snaps of the Eiffel tower ,  but there was an old couple right in my view the whole time ,but I decided to take the pictures anyway,  when I got home and edited the shots I realised they made the picture and I was very happy with feel they add to the picture. Cheers for taking the time to look at this.

Stuart Conway









Hi Dom,
I enjoy watching your video’s about photography on YouTube and when you talked about ‘best mistakes’ I immediately thought about this photo I made:
With this photo I tried to make a high speed burst of someone jumping into a big puddle of water, so it would splash. But looking back to the photo’s before that, this one really caught my attention, because it’s like the person is flying/floating. You see the legs ánd the reflection ánd the shadow, which makes it even cooler.
I hope you like it!
Greetings,
Marco Hordijk
from The Netherlands


Hi Dom,

My name is Paolo from Italy and, first of all, thanks for all your useful pro tutorial/tips on photography.

That said, I have just watched your last youtube video about a competition and I decided to give it a shot so, please, find attached what I believe is my "best mistake".
Basically, last Christmas I was playing around with my point and shoot while waiting for my flight at the airport and... there it is, an interesting view of a pair of Xmas trees.

The picture itself is an sRGB - low resolution JPEG file so, please, let me know if you need some more specific file size, color space, etc...

Cheers,
Paolo





My name is Matija, 20 years old, 2 years of photographing.


In this photo I was shooting the pigeon, but my nephew ran into the shot, pigeon began to fly away, and I got a reflection of my nephew. I didn’t even realised the reflection until I got home.
Dom Bower has every rights with this photo. 




































































My new photography book. click below











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The link for UK photographers check out
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76 comments:

  1. Hi Dom, any size restrictions on the image??

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  2. the one by devero is the best great work

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    Replies
    1. I think that is the one that should win "the best mistake"!!!!

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  3. I would vote for "Dan" the failed Macro shot.

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  4. I vote for "Beach boat by David Heaton" It is a great image that I would actually pay for. Although its not the only one. I thought that the story of it makes it the best "mistake"

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  5. My vote goes for "Daughter Erin" from Shanna :)! I like this shot most!

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  6. Henrik Thruesson should win it imo

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  7. A mi en lo personal me gusto mucho la de "Lucy and Devero photographers" creo que esa es la unica que parece un accidente de verdad porque el resto parecen muy bien tomadas para ser un accidente....=D
    ESPERO QUE GANE!!!!!!!!!!

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  8. LUCY AND DEVERO PHOTOGRAPHERS....THE BEST "MISTAKE" EVER!!!!!
    I JUST HAVE ONE WORD THAT DESCRIBES THE HOLE PICTURE
    =D F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C =)

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  9. Eu gostei muito de lucy e devero ... eu acho que é o melhor de tudo lá ... o resto parece erros apropósito!

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  10. für mich wie es war in England-Windermere genommen ... toll!

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  11. I vote for Devero I JUST LOVE THE MISTAKE....PERFECT, FANTASTIC, BEAUTIFUL MISTAKE!!!
    I WISH THAT ONE WIN!!!

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  12. me gusta la de lucy and devero en Windermere...yo voto por esa y por ninguna mas!!!!
    esque la foto me parece preciosa....las otras tambien pero esa es la que mas me gusto!!!

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  13. i like the one that lucy and devero have, i vote for that one

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  14. My vote goes to "lonely man fishing". Congrats to all

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  15. I vote for Lonely man fishing by John Suarez

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  16. I vote for Henrik Thuresson.

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  17. I think Henrik Thuresson should win

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  18. One vote for Henrik Thuresson

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  19. I cast my vote on Jonny Aspfors, nice picture!

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  20. I'll throw a vote at Thuresson.

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  21. I would be honoured if I won so I give myself my vote.

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  22. I vote for Lonely Man Fishing. Terrific shot!!

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  23. I like Henrik Thuresson's picture!

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  24. The one by Thure (Henrik Thuresson) has a effect with great detail in both space and time. I was instantly inspired and must try to recreate that mistake. Fascinating!

    /Jjfrn.

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  25. Thuressons image ftw. Makes me feel like I'm at the dentists :)
    /Phugel

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  26. Lonely man fishing by
    John Suarez

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  27. one vote for Thuresson.

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  28. vote for lucy and devero... I think is a great picture!!!

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  29. Lucy and Devero... that is my vote....

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  30. Lucy and Devero in England...lovely mistake

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  31. Devero and lucy photographers...i think is the best picture of all

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  32. i vote for lucy and devero because is the only one that looks like a mistake!!! END OF THE STORY....

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  33. LUCY AND DEVERO, THE BEST PICTURE OF THE LOT!!!

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  34. i would like to vote for lucy and devero, i wish that one win

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  35. one vote for lucy and devero...

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  36. LUCY AND DEVERO...THE PICTURE DESERVES TO WIN BECAUSE IN MY OPINION IS THE ONLY ONE THAT REALLY LOOKS LIKE A MISTAKE.

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  37. i vote for LUCY AND DEVERO the story makes it even better

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  38. A VOTE FOR DEVERO AND LUCY PHOTOGRAPHERS

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  39. Henrik thuresson +1

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  40. How come the many votes for "DEVERO" are all one minute apart...

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  41. i would like to vote for lucy and devero

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  42. YES, ABOUT THE "DEVERO" VOTES, IS ALL JUST A COINCIDENCE.
    AND BY THE WAY, ANOTHER VOTE FOR DEVERO...

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  43. one vote for devero and lucy photographers

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  44. one more vote for lucy and devero
    un voto mas para lucy y devero

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  45. My vote goes to Jonny.

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  46. My vote goes to 'Lonely Man Fishing' by John S.

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  47. Cool mistake by Henrik. My vote on that one.

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  48. Henrik Thuresson gets my vote

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  49. I vote for Henrik Thuresson

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  50. There's only one picture here that I really like. I cast my vote to Henrik Thuresson.
    /Krauler

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  51. One vote for Thuresson. Nice mistake.

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  52. Voting for Thuresson.

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  53. I vote for Mr Thuresson.

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  54. I'll vote for lonely man by John suarez

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  55. I like all of the photos, but the first one is the best in my opinion, so my vote go to Suarez

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  56. I vote for Lonely man fishing by
    John Suarez, such a captivating moment to capture. Grate light and everything.

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  57. I think Henrik Thuresson should win.

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  58. i vote for lucy and devero

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  59. I WOULD LIKE TO VOTE FOR THE PICTURE OF LUCY AND DEVERO....

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  60. i like the lone fisher man but as its not a mistake i vote for lucy and deveros photo

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  61. I'll Vote For Lonely man Fishing by John Suarez.. I like it a lot!

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  62. I vote for Lonely man fishing. What a beautiful and calm scene. I like it.

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  63. I vote for Delano

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  64. I vote for Henrik Thuresson

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  65. Henrik Thuresson is my winner!
    /Mr. Kate

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  66. I vote for my fiance Henrik Thuresson
    /Victoria

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  67. MY VOTE GOES TO MYSELF DEVERO

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  68. My vote goes to Shanna

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  69. I like the building by Henrik

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  70. +1 Henrik Thuresson
    /Elias

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  71. my vote goes to lucy and devero

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  72. you are indeed the best in the business, congratulations.

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  73. Thure (Henrik Thuresson)
    Supercool!

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