Tag 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
Friday Round-Up
A bunch of news for today – as most of you know, our inaugural workshop was this last weekend in Anaheim, and boy was it rockin’! Great participation, great input, and super feedback from everyone. On the anonymous feedback forms, every ranking was either a 9 or a ten (and there were more of the latter than the former)! Such a rush to see so much appreciation, and Denver is sure to draw an even bigger crowd. There’s only a few early bird seats left (3 I think), so if you haven’t registered yet – better sign up while the … 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).
Creating the color video
As promised from last weeks post on Youtube, I promised to share the “how to” on the creation of the little teaser video for transitioning from a black and white photo to color. For those that don’t remember, the video is here:
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:
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
May We Salute You
The May pool of photos that everyone contributed to was quite stunning – the listening and reading audience is quite a talented group and some of the images on here were really incredible. Full of vibrance, vision, color and passion – it was really hard to narrow things down – but I give you here just a few from the wonderful month of May. There really is no better way to say it than: May, We Salute You I’m pretty sure the artist name matches with the description and caption, so be sure to stop by not only the LDP … 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
It’s Official – CS5 has been released!
Yup, the day it became available for purchase/download, the trials also became available – a first for Adobe! I’ve already downloaded it and am starting to play with it for the first time (was not a beta tester). Suffice to say, it’s pretty slick and yes, as I said yesterday, I am getting the upgrade! Rather than show you screen shots and pore over the list of new features which has been done ad infinitum, I did a short video of some of the settings I like to adjust on an initial install. So, here is that video straight from … Continue reading
And the Oscar Goes to…
Okay, it’s not an Oscar, nor an Emmy, but the LDP Monthly Giveaway is sufficiently popular that selecting winning images is very tough. Here’s what happens once the contest is closed: I’ve given my wife specific instructions on how to close the thread, and how to download all the images into a folder on my desktop. If an image is not downloadable – it’s disqualified. Once the images are downloaded, I look at the details view on my Windows computer. This avoids me looking at thumbnails and I only see the metadata – if the longest side of the image … 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
What’s the best ___?
What’s the best camera to buy? What’s the best Photoshop plugin for photography? What’s the best CS4 tutorial? What’s the best lens for the Vivitar 110? What’s the best iPod for the dollar? What’s the best car? What’s the best truck? What’s the best soda? What’s the best flavor of ice cream? I think you get the picture…so many questions on “What’s the best____” and almost without fail, the answer begins with an “It depends…” We all want to get the best value for our money, and it pays to do research before you buy. No one likes to over … 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
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
The Beauty of Bokeh Revisited
I know – the blog has not gotten much attention lately. My apologies – but after the job loss, and pounding the pavement, my schedule has tightened up considerably, so the “planned posts” have pretty much been exhausted as I let myself get behind. The good news is that with several opportunities on the horizon, I am a little less stressed about “real world” economics, and can dedicate some time back to the blog. A few items of note: #1 – The Year End Blowout Bash is underway – and LDP/Canon Blogger is giving away a ton of goodies. I … 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
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
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
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
Peruse your archives
First off, I’d like to extend a big time “Thanks” to Andie Smith for bravely stepping up to the plate and delivering a home run of a first Guest Blogger post. With 17 responses to her post, it is already ranked among the top five posts ever! Make sure you stop over and check out her blog and portfolio. For this Friday, I’ve got a fun little photo tip for you and that is to peruse your archives occasionally. You may find something of interest where previously you didn’t. Since inspiration and creativity can strike at any time and anywhere … Continue reading
Wacom Winner!
For those of you that don’t follow the twitter news and stuff, you may not know that I cut a finger pretty badly late last week. A visit to the doctor on Thursday pretty much confirmed that I needed to keep from using that hand for at least 24-48 hours. This meant no keyboard or computer use. SO Friday, when I started to disobey the doctor (shame on me!), the spousal unit found out and intervened. Since then, we had a nice little weekend trip to Santa Fe (only about 6 hours away from Denver) with some friends. We took … Continue reading
Post #501: Hardware Review – Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag
As you may recall from the video announcement on Friday’s post #500 – the giveaway product for September includes the newest bag system from Thinktank Photo. You read that right, it’s a bag system! Totaling $320 in value retail the bags include the following:







