This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

This week we finished the In my life assignment. People showed us so many different things that were important parts of their lives, from family to friends, pets and hobbies… we got a glimpse into the lives of many of our forum members. It would seem shocking if Susan didn’t make it into the top three this week, and she did, as our winner (and she even made Flickr’s explore with her photo). Our runners up were jdesai for the picture of the “three year old troublemaker” and MikeM for showing us where the focus of his life currently is: Photography. Well done everyone.

We also started a new assignment, and we’re doing Self-Portraits II. This one ought to make all of the threesixtyfive and fiftytwo people happy. The title is pretty self explanatory, but in case you’re not sure, we’re looking for a picture that you have taken of yourself. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, you must put the words “Assignment: Self Portrait II” into your post, it must have been taken between 26 Sept – 9 Oct 2007, and the exif must still be intact. So, now that we’ve seen what’s important in your life, let’s see who you are. Next week’s assignment will be Coffee, so get brewing.

Weekly Poll

Our weekly poll asked forum members whether they preferred flash photography or natural light. The result was overwhelmingly natural light, but some forum members provided some insight into why this might be.

About flash, mdwsta4 said “once you learn how to use it, it will make a huge difference in the quality of your work because of the newly created light.”

And Saralonde also agreed and said “If all conditions are perfect, natural light might be best, but it often is not. The fact that you can control lighting to create different moods and effects, fill in dark areas, and construct shadows where none exist make flash an invaluable aid to artistic images.”

Of course, seeing as 92% of the responses were for natural light, there were a few responses that preferred natural light because, as thekevinmonster said, “I like natural light because it looks, well, natural. It’s also there all the time (except at night, duh) so you can ‘just take a picture’ without having to fiddle around with lights.”

Watch for the next weekly poll to be posted on Sunday.

Hot Threads

Most of our hot threads this week seemed to deal with potential disasters! So, if something has gone wrong, don’t panic, breathe, and look to the forums for some help.

Lens condensation: What happens when you get condensation in your lens? Regardless of how it got there, you want it gone. This thread offers some potential solutions for drying out your lens without sending it in for several weeks for repairs.

Problem – bigtime!: Lots of us backup our photographs on DVDs and CDs, but did you know that what you write on them with might decrease their life span? Read up here on how your backups may be effected.

Possible Disaster…: And what happens when you get home and a memory card decides to corrupt the data? Sime ran into that problem right after a shoot, thankfully he was able to recover his data, but this thread offers a few tips on what you should do if your card gets corrupted… aside from remembering to breathe.

How much to charge for pictures being used on website and recruit mailing?: Ok, thankfully this thread isn’t a problem per se, but it is a problem if you don’t know what to charge someone who wants to use your photographs. This thread offers a few tips on how to figure out what to charge, especially when you’re just getting your foot in the door.

Other Threads to Note

Can you believe we’re almost done with the alphabet? We’re up to X is for… and that people are actually posting pictures of things that start with the letter x too! We also reached a milestone in the What Would You Do threads. This week, we reached number 20! Here’s to our first milestone in that thread, and looking forward to numbers 50 and 100.

Finally, I want to mention that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Come share your pink pictures in this thread, and if you’re part of Flickr, consider posting your pink pictures to the Passionately Pink for the Cure Group since Yahoo! is donating $1 per picture (up to $50,000) to the Susan G. Komen foundation.