This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Welcome to another weekend update from the forums. Let’s get started!

Weekly Assignment

This week our Light Play assignment. The goal was for people to play with either available light or man-made light to create a picture that stands out. Our winner this week was the always clever Susan, who risked burning her face on a light-bulb for this shot! Our runners up were jarrol for the birthday cake picture, and pixelvision for a sunrise over Blue Ridge Parkway. As usual, there were plenty of entries to consider, so thanks to everyone who participated. Well done guys! Don’t forget you can keep adding to the assignment even though the contest is over.

This week’s assignment is In My Life. We’d like to see some of the most important things in your life, so whether it is a parent, child, or other family member, or just something that says a lot about who you are, we’d like like to see a photograph. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, your post needs to include “Assignment: In My Life” and the photo must have been taken between 18 Sept – 1 October 2007. Finally, the exif must also still be intact.

Next week’s assignment will be easy for those of you who are participating in threesixtyfive or fiftytwo… it’s Self Portraits II.

Weekly Poll

This week, the question was Indoors or Outdoors? What we found out was that a lot of people in the forums are fans of the great outdoors! Almost everyone voted for outdoor pictures actually. Who would have figured?

klew said “I think I prefer outdoors, as photography is often seen as a moment of frozen time. So with nature, it is never exactly the same again. When you are indoors, you tend to be taking photos of people or events, and if a shot is lost, you can (theoretically) reset the people and take it again.”

But peeperita said “it’s the indoor shot that i’ve thought out carefully, though, that gives me more satisfaction……finished product preference…..indoors”

This week, tell us whether you prefer flash or natural light.

Hot Threads

I need help with this one: What happens when a photo turns out half-great? Windrider86 had a photo with gorgeous colours execpt for the sky which was proving to be far more difficult to fix. See how people have worked to make the photo into something that matches the original vision.

With or without tourist: How do you go about getting shots of tourist locations without all the tourists? You can’t exactly sit and wait until the place is totally empty. Erik Kuipers shows us how he removed the tourists from one of his pictures in the Before and After forum.

Understanding Exposure: Do you feel confused over some of the terms that go with exposure for pictures? This thread looks at a number of questions dealing with exposing your shots.

Image pixels and sizes: Sometimes it feels like photography is all about math. Well, even if it is, this thread deals with one of the simpler matters: aspect ratios, cropping for printing, and pixel dimensions.

Other Threads to Note

We’re another week closer to finishing the alphabet threads. This week, W is for… wings, watermelons, water-skiers, welders, and well, wenches (in case you missed out on Talk Like a Pirate Day). So, photos of things starting with W are wonderfully welcome. We’re also up to week 19 of What Would You Do. These threads are dedicated to letting users practice their post-processing skills to help others see the many ways that a single photograph can turn out when looked at in a bunch of different ways. Drop by and give it a go! We’re always interested in another point of view.