This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas with the people closest to you, and now you’re busy playing with all those new toys that you received under the tree. Now, let’s see what the forums have been up to over the holidays.

Weekly Assignment

We finished an assignment that hopefully warmed up some of our readers in the Northern Hemisphere, Warmth. It’s definitely been cold outside, but all these images were able to warm us up a little. Our winner was amy-rose for her self-portrait of being all curled up under a warm blanket with fuzzy slippers and a warm mug of hot chocolate. You can’t get much warmer than that! Our runners up were db0yd13 for the picture of a nice glass of wine by the fire to keep warm on a cold Christmas night, and Teewinot for her picture which shows not only the warmth of sitting by a fire, but holding hands with someone you love. That’s a type of warmth that people are happy to have all year long.

This week, our assignment is Feelings. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, you need to have taken the picture between 19 December 2007 and 1 January 2008 (can you believe it’s almost 2008?!?), you must include “Assignment:Feelings” somewhere in your post, and the exif must be in tact. Next week’s assignment will be Purple, so let’s see some pictures where purple is the main colour in the assignment.

Weekly Poll

This week was Christmas, as you may well know, so we asked the question Are you getting camera gear this holiday season. Over 3/4 of people said that they had received some or they were going to (see even more about the gear that people got in the What did you receive this Christmas thread). Now of course, what that really means is that we expect to see a lot of new shots in the forum in the upcoming year, using all that gear that you got over the holidays. Of course, you could also put it to good use on one of the past assignments or the current one.

This week we’d like to know Have you made any photography resolutions for the new year?

Hot Threads

Posting Pictures on the Internet of People You Don’t Know: This has been a very lively discussion this week. Street photography can often involve taking pictures of people that you don’t know. Sometimes they are part of a crowd, sometimes it’s a single individual. Whether you do or don’t post these sorts of pictures, this thread raises the question of why you make that choice.

Do You Get into Other People’s Pictures?: A bit of a lighter note in this thread, but like the title asks, do you hop into random people’s pictures? Apparently you wouldn’t be the only one judging from the answers in this thread… but do you also sit there and make faces at the camera?

Portrait Photography – My growth in 2007: kunaldaswani has been on the forums for about a year now, and started posting portraits at the same time. He has shared his growth on this forum. This thread shows you one of his most recent pictures (along with a link to one of his first so you can see the changes). It’s great to see people actually learning and putting things into practice that they have learned though having their shots critiqued.

BEWARE – Contest Rules: Photo contests always have a lot of fine-print on them, and it’s a good idea to read the rules. While it’s not always fun to look through the fine details, you need to be aware of what they are asking for, and whether or not you are happy with that before you decide to submit your images. This thread looks at one contest’s rules in particular and discusses some of the issues to be aware of when entering contests.

Other Threads to Note

Because of the Christmas holidays, the What Would You Do thread has been extended for another week so we can get a few more responses to it. Why not take the opportunity on one of these cold winter nights to edit a tropical looking plant? There is, however, a new Classic Rock Challenge. This week’s challenge is to interpret the album title or a song title from Dan Fogelberg’s Souvenirs album.