I pulled this at the last moment as I figured it would get crushed in voting. It is a dry creek bed in south Texas where we have been short on rainfall over the past year.
I debated with myself a lot as to weather if I should enter my outtake but figured it would get hammered as there was no "obvious" flowing water. Which it is actually a river but flows very calmly through the park where I took it. So I ended up freezing my tail off to get the early morning shot of the waterfall that I entered.
I downloaded the Photomatix trial program to see how it works. Here's a random outtake of the same river (a little bit upstream from my entry).
(It seems a lot of people thought the trees in the background were desaturated, whereas they were actually covered with snow.)
I'd have scored this one higher than your entry, actually. Killa special-effects tone mapping. I don't think I've ever cooked one up like that LOL. beautiful photo-illustration.
