This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums (18-24 Oct ‘09)

Weekly Assignment

We took a look at the way that Windows can enhance photos in different ways. Windows can create frames, be part of the background or even be the subject of a photo. You can be looking out, looking in, or looking through, but the use of windows can add a new dimension to your photos. Our winner this week was cheesee’s “Jail”. There was something about this photo that kept drawing us back in. Maybe the composition, maybe the tones, or maybe just the human element and the way it looked like she was reaching out towards us. Our first runner up was makaio14’s “I’m blown’ this popsicle stand!” which was another creative look at escaping out the window. The shot was fun and different and really made use of the window as an element of the photo. The window really helps to create the story in this shot. And last, but not least was SNOOPY’s old “Cowshed Window” which gave us a look back in time to a 100 year old cow shed where the cows were still milked by hand.

In honor of Halloween, this week’s assignment is Scary or Spooky. As usual a quick reminder of the rules. Your photo must have been taken between 14-28 October 2009. Second, you must include the words “Assignment: Scary or Spooky” in your post and you must include the date the photo was taken. Finally, your EXIF should be intact and it helps if you can include some of the main points like camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Next week’s assignment will be “Architectural Details” so take a close look at some of the details of buildings and consider how to highlight these details in an interesting and creative way.

Hot Threads

• Confusion on crop factor: DX, FX, IF, VR… it seems that lenses carry any number of designations. In particular, the DX designation refers to lenses that are made for digital cameras that have smaller sensor. This smaller sensor means that your camera probably has a crop factor associated with it. But what does that mean? And what does the DX designation on a lens really mean? Come read more about it in the forum.
• How well do you see colours?: One of our long time forum members, Digidave posted a link to a test about colours over in the forums. The task is to put all of the colours in the appropriate order. It’s harder than it looks, but it might give you some insight into how good a judge of colours and hues you are, something that can be very important when colours correcting your images.
• The importance of a good title: While a picture may be worth a thousand words, how do you pick out a good title? And is it really necessary to have a good title? Come join in the discussion about how a good title can help draw attention to an image and how a poor title may diminish an otherwise excellent photo.
• How did you end up on the DPS forums?: Maybe you wound up on the DPS forums after reading one of these posts on the blog, maybe you got there through a Google search, maybe you didn’t even know they existed until today, but come share how you got involved in the DPS forums. It’s great to see how so many like minded people have come together.
• What would you do?: There’s another week of our post-processing challenge going on over in the forums. Hop over to the thread to see all the details of this game where you get a chance to edit one member’s photo in your own way.