Category Archives: Contest
August Winner – September Begins!
Ahhh, month-end. Contest announcement days! As most know, this is the time when the previous month’s winner is typically announced and the next month theme is opened up for entries. Today is no exception… First up, congratulations go out to Evelyn B. for her winning metal-themed image: Not only is this a perfectly-lit image, but the details are spot on, and it totally fits the theme of Metal! Congrats to Evelyn B. from Flickr – please email me your contact information so I can submit to Red River Paper for you to get the pack of Pearl Metallic Paper (which … Continue reading
Lightroom 3 Contest Winner!
After much deliberation over the fantastic compilation of images for the July contest, I’ve finally had to just make probably one of the toughest judging decisions I’ve had to make thus far in the history of the contest series. However, in light of the theme of the contest (Slick), and the creativity that went into the image itself, I have to give the nod to Stephen Ludgate for his submission:
Shooting From the Hip
While recently taking a reality break and visiting family in my old stomping grounds, I had a chance to tour the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY. Viewing museums like these is a lot of fun for both kids and adults – kids because of the activities, and adults because I think as you get older, you can start to appreciate with more awareness just how tough things were (or how easy they are now).
Free Copy of Photoshop Lightroom
Contests, Contests, and yet more Contests!
The June contest came to a close on Sunday, and after looking through all the images after anonymization (a.k.a. my wife downloaded them) and import to Lightroom, the winner has been determined. (Drumroll please…) And the June winner is:
The 700 Club
This post makes it officially 700 thoughts and musings on the blog. At an average of 250 posts per year (since I don’t normally post on weekends and occasional “no blog” days), that means we are closing in on the end of three full years of blogging! To the readers who have been there with me since the beginning, I’d like to say thanks for all your patience as I’ve walked through several fires of growing pains. I’ve come to the realization that the more you write, the greater the chance you have to sound like either a fool, or … Continue reading
Lightroom 3 Q&A (Beta)
What a great day to release a new podcast – with the final release of LR coming out very soon, I had the distinct opportunity to talk with Rob Sylvan, author of LR2 for Dummies, and the forthcoming Taking Stock. We talked a lot about Lightroom, working at NAPP, and took a few listener questions and answers. More photo news, additional Q&A, and a new feed for the podcast start today, so be sure to download the latest show. You’ll notice I have pulled the feed back to this site, and the format is more iTunes compatible (m4a) so you … Continue reading
Over $2000 in prizes!
With April in the books a new winner has been determined. It was a really tough call as all the entries this month were deserving, and each could have easily been considered a winner given the theme, the composition, creativity, and treatment. All in all, the cream really has risen to the top, and I am seeing some really impressive quality in the images this month. Okay, enough dancing around the subject. The winner is: Bryan F Seriously, I don’t know if I can keep doing these contests, because every month the decision gets more and more difficult to make. … Continue reading
Contest News and Announcements
Congratulations and kudos go out to the winner for the February contest – the theme was Height and the winning image came from Sue90ca! To see all the images submitted for February, check out the thread here with all the images. Some really great ones were included, and as always, it was a tough decision. Nevertheless, Sue90ca’s “Crayons” was selected as the winner. You can see the rest of Sue’s portfolio on her Flickr stream here… Before anyone asks, the March contest info is not up on FLickr yet, but I should have an announcement for that later on tonight. … Continue reading
New Formats for the New Year
With the advent of a new year, the podcast is hopefully going to take on a new format – with things being more conversational. Erik Bernskiold comes back to the show and we’re talking about all the latest news in photography, as well as a main talking point of how to publicize and share your images online – looking at the pros and cons of the various options that are out there. Lots of news including announcements from the recent CES show, as well as contest information, and listener questions and answers so it’s a pretty heavily packed show. Almost … Continue reading
December Winner!
The trumpets sound! The chorus rings, and the internet shall stop and take notice! Why you ask? We have a winner for the December Giveaway! I am happy to announce that the winner of the December Giveaway Bonanza is none other than: Frank Sammut! Frank’s shot of a childs hand, offering up a gift perfectly symbolized the concept of giving, and his blurred bokeh of the holiday theme in the background was just beautiful! He’s got some great work on his Flickr page too, so stop by and check it out and tell him congrats! Congratulations to Frank for winning … Continue reading
37 out of 52
Can anyone guess the significance of the post title right off the bat? Any takers at all? For those that could, cool! For those that can’t, 37 is a reference to the last podcast for 2009! Episode #37 (Longevity of Lenses) is now available for your listening pleasure in iTunes and with the folks hosting the show directly on the web at Personal Life Media. It might be an hour or so actually before the show is available for download on iTunes, so hold off for a little there before downloading – you might get the previous episode! It does … Continue reading
I Got a Camera for Christmas – Now What?
With the major holiday of the year behind us, many are proudly wielding new cameras…but many are also asking questions. The most popular question I am getting via emails is something along the lines of: “I got a new ______ for Christmas. Now What?” (Insert your own camera make/model in the blank) The answer to this really depends on what, if anything, you had before the new item made its way into your hands. For simplicity sake, I’ll break the response down to 3 different categories: 1. This is your first “serious” camera, and you are making the foray into … Continue reading
Last Minute Gift Guide
Is your shopping done? Mine isn’t – I am going to be braving the stores tomorrow for some last minute ideas I had that popped in my head over the weekend. Unfortunately for Tracy, she is not a photographer, so camera-related items are not really an option. But, if you are running out of time and ideas, rest assured, I’ve got a few more here for you today. Fair warning though, because when you’ve waited this long to shop, the sticker prices for items are generally in the higher end rather than the lower end. (You may recall that I … Continue reading
I’m dreaming of an HDR Christmas
Last night I got the bug to try something I’d seen before – the classic Christmas-y look with a score of music and a shallow depth of field. It was straightforward enough and after putting a piece of sheet music on the piano, and trying it that way, wasn’t getting the drop off in depth-of -field as I had hoped for. So, I took a different approach and put the music sheet flat on a table, knowing the dof would drop off that way, with the foreground out of focus and receding off in the background too. So, the second … Continue reading
December Giveaway News
A few days late, but the year-end giveaway is quite exciting as there is just a ton of good stuff going into this giveaway. Here’s the inside skinny on what the winner is going to walk away with in December: A free copy of the “Within the Frame”, the wildly successful and great book donated by David DuChemin! A free copy of “Visionmongers”, the latest book from none other than David Duchemin! A free copy of Photomatix, the software known for its HDR processing, donated by the folks over at HDRSoft! A free 16″x20″ gallery wrap of a print of … Continue reading
And the Winner Is…
With the November giveaway deadline behind us, it was time to look at all the submissions and pick a winner from the set of entries. Without further ado, the winner of the November Contest/Giveaway is: The theme for the contest was “Winter” and though it was a little early for this, Yvonne took her creativity to new levels by doing some rather unique post processing on an image and it worked! It looks like she converted this to black and white or added an infrared filter of some kind. Not sure what exactly she did, but it sure gave me … Continue reading
How Low Can You Go?
In episode #34 of Learning Digital Photography, we look at the subject of low light photography. In these shooting circumstances, you often need to drop your shutter speed pretty low, while shooting with apertures that are relatively open, and high ISO’s in order to get the scene with enough light. Whether you are shooting night photography, concert photography, or foggy weather, these are all things to look at and think about. To help shed some light on the subject (get it? ), we talked to Becky Thomas (aka BecThomasPhoto on Twitter) on the show. A great conversation, and lots was … Continue reading
Freaky Friday Follow-up
After a freaky Friday yesterday filled with podcast-associated technical difficulties including broken URL’s, missing media, and quieter than normal audio, the idea of writing a blog post for the day completely slipped my mind. So, the awaited hardware review for the week got pushed back a little, as well as the announcement of the winner of the Scott Kelby Digital Photography book, volume 3! The former is a little to late to push out on a Saturday, but the latter is accomplished easily enough, so I turned to my trusty Random Number Generator website (which I learned about from friend-of-the-blog … Continue reading
Creating Compelling Captures – the Podcast!
Last week we looked at 5 different ways to create compelling captures here on the blog. Well, today the latest podcast is available where we go into a little more granularity on the subject. A little dash of some photo news and tidbits are thrown in too, but more importantly, the previously hyped and promoted conversation with David DuChemin is now live and ready for your listening enjoyment. We look not only at how to create compelling captures, but also at how the idea of controversy fits into the picture. Can controversial pictures make for more compelling images? What defines … Continue reading
A Look Ahead…
Just a few news nuggets today of some things that have been going on and simmering on the proverbial stove for the past few weeks. Many of these are now starting to bubble up to the surface, so here’s a little hint as to what I’ve been up to, and what is ahead for the blog and podcast…
November News
Another month goes into the archives as we enter November for 2009. Here at the CB/LDP headquarters though, that means it’s announcement time for a couple of things, not the least of which is the latest contest news, the October newsletter, and something new for blog readers only! Let’s start with the contest news: Fellow blogger, NAPP member, and active LDP participant, Karen Stansel was the winner of the October giveaway. She walked away with a Pro license of Noise Ninja from the folks over at Picture Code. Congrats to Karen (a.k.a. Mitzs), and thanks to Picture Code. With that … Continue reading
Don’t Touch that Dial
This week we take a look at the dial on your DSLR – what do they do and is it worth it taking it off the Auto Mode? Or even putting it into the auto mode? What are the benefits? Pros? Cons? There’s thoughts both ways and I’ll look into each and give a few answers on this weeks show. Also on this weeks show, I had the opportunity to talk with Matthew Bamberg, a well-known and respected photographer and author of digital photography books. We had a great chat that you definitely are going to want to tune in … Continue reading
Photo Framing Follow-up
After the blog post on Wednesday, and the number of comments received, I thought that the next podcast would be well served to discuss the idea behind matting and framing in more detail. As luck would have it, that podcast just went live earlier this afternoon! You can catch the podcast over at the Personal Life Media site here: Learning Digital Photography Here’s the Show Notes: In this latest episode of Learning Digital Photography, the Grand Prize winner from the September $500 giveaway is announced, and the October contest opens up – ready for your entries. The theme this time … Continue reading
In the interests of full disclosure…
It recently came to my attention that the FTC commission has taken an interest in the reviews that bloggers provide as unbiased information on the products. I guess this came about due to some people that gave reviews of products that were actually paid endorsements, and did not disclose this information to their readership. The FTC is now apparently requiring that all reviewers release and disclose their relationship with the vendors of the products for which they are reviewing by December 1st. So, in the interests of full disclosure, I have compiled a page to disclose exactly what I get … Continue reading
