This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums (12 Apr – 18 Apr 09)

Weekly Assignment

The red line in the Milano subway walks… (or rolls, depending on how you look at it)  …away with this weeks first place in our regular dPS weekly assignment, the photo was taken and mildly photoshopped by member giastem. Second place goes to scubabbl with “not everything is above ground, right?” followed by rt80639 and “Going Home” (My personal fave for what it’s worth).

This week is another in a series of lighting assignments, Natural Light Portraits. This is a very inclusive assignment that can be done by everyone, whether you have a point and shoot or pro-level camera, are a beginner or experienced. Remember, no use of artificial light, even for fill. Use of a reflector to bounce natural light will be fine.  Whether you’re new to the assignments or have been doing them for ages, there are a few rules to remember. First, your image must have been taken between 8 April – 22 April 2009. Second, your post must include the words “Assignment: Natural Light Portraits” and the date the picture was taken. Finally, your EXIF should be intact and it helps if you can include the main points such as camera, lens, ISO, shutter speed and aperture in the text of your message. Next week let’s try a fun assignment, “Jump!” It’s become a popular style of portraits lately with bridal parities and families jumping all over the place, but it can be interpreted in a new way. How creative can you be to make your picture stand out?

Hot Threads

• Anyone up for a DPS 365 day project?: I have realised that I am not actually challenging myself with my photography. Even though I have the passion, I find that I take pictures only during the odd weekend outing and these turn out to be “snap shot” style as I don’t take the time to think about composition and creativity because I don’t want to bore the people I go out with. So, I thought a 365 day challenge will help me to improve. Only issue is that I need support – I know I am not going to be able to keep doing it everyday if I don’t have a group of people to kick my backside
• Photographing animals: I’m doing a photography course right now, as part of my media degree; and as our final assignment due in May, we have to do a portfolio of ten pictures. I’m thinking of photographing my cat, he’s a good subject as he likes to pose and easy to work with.
• Enter our latest DPS Competition: You may have seen on the blog that DPS is running a contest to win an Olympus Tough 8000 camera. All you have to do to enter is click on the link here and give us your favourite photo tip in 350 words or less. You can only submit 1 tip per person, so make it your best! – WINNERS ANNOUNCED SHORTLY!
• Am I Too Young to Charge?: When are you old enough to be working as a photographer? Is it when you’re good enough or is it when you’re old enough to legally be able to enter into contracts? Come offer your advice in this thread for what a new and young photographer can do to help get started.
• What Would You Do: Nearly every week we run a post-processing thread where you can edit the photo of another forum member and show us your take on the post-processing. It doesn’t matter what level of skill your post-processing is at and it doesn’t matter what program you use, you just have to want to show us how you process things.