Very nice. A finalist for sure. Very creative. I went wow then I saw it, scrolled down some more and went wow again ans scrolled down to the bottom and want WOW!
Bravo, Cal! I second Jane's comments! Fantastic shot and a certain finalist. My shot isn't much good this week so I'm casting about for other ideas but this one is going to be nearly impossible to beat!
All the best,
Endre
PS - Can you tell us a little more about how you set this up
After seeing CalW's picture, Scott takes his own picture, crumples it up, throws it on the ground, and jumps up and down on it several times in disgust.
very nice, I've played around with reflections in water drops before, and was thinking I would do it again this time.... in fact, that is the reason I voted for water last week.... but I know I can't match that... I may still play with it, but man, that is a great picture.
Endre, this shot was pretty much spur-of-the-moment. I was on my way to the basement to set up a water droplet shot there, but stopped for a glass of drinking water from the small filtered tap on the kitchen sink. There was bright sunlight coming in the window over the sink, and the water from the tap was sparkling like diamonds. Looking closer, I realized that droplets were refracting images of the background, so I experimented with several background subjects, and with focal distances of both the camera to the droplets and the droplets to the background. The biggest difficulty was that a tripod just won't fit into a kitchen sink so this had to be taken hand-held. I used the EF-S 60mm macro lens with a 250D closeup lens and supplemented the backlight from the sun using the 20D built-in flash and a home-made milk jug diffuser. A toothpick wedged into the faucet handle kept the flow about right, and then it was a matter of a lot of tries until my timing was right to get the shot I had visualized.
PS: There is a slightly larger version of the photo in my gallery that looks a bit better.
Edited by CalW on Feb 20, 2006 at 11:27 AM GMT (Reason: Spelling!)
This "business" of photography that we share is truly a gift to our eyes. Both from the photos we share, but more importantly the way that we look more closely at our environs and see things we would have never seen before. "Eye opening" one might say. Nice, Cal!!!
Jane
This is my first post on any thread here at FM. My registration is about all of 36 hours old. Amazing. This is one of the best photos I have seen in a long time. Looking forward to these weekly assignments. I can tell that most of you dudes are really enjoying them yourselves. It's about time I started looking at what other photographers are doing. Was getting bored all on my lonesome.
See you in the funny pages.
Its a gorgeous shot, Cal, with the redness of the rose. The way you got several little roses in all the drops is beautiful. (btw My only tiny, personal reservation is the black tap at the top, which kind of distracts me a little from the beauty of the rest of the shot; did you try cropping it off at all... but maybe you did and didn't like it... )
Zachs, thank you! I remember seeing your shot - and I have seen others that capture the refraction in a stationary drop of the background. But I don't recall ever seeing a photo that captures refraction in a moving drop, so that is what I set out to do. I'm not totally satisfied with this, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.
My shot isn't much good this week so I'm casting about for other ideas but this one is going to be nearly impossible to beat! 
so this had to be taken hand-held. I used the EF-S 60mm macro lens with a 250D closeup lens and supplemented the backlight from the sun using the 20D built-in flash and a home-made milk jug diffuser. A toothpick wedged into the faucet handle kept the flow about right, and then it was a matter of a lot of tries until my timing was right to get the shot I had visualized.
Nice, Cal!!! 
Great work!