This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

Last week’s assignment was a challenging one. We asked you to show us pictures of Feelings. There were lots and lots of feelings being shown in that thread. And the whole range of emotions at that! Our winner was amy-rose for her picture of being totally overwhelmed by emotions. Our runners up were ktlindsay for the picture of the pain and sadness she’s currently feeling and in a stark contrast, zillygal for the picture of her son, who’s face shows total amazement after seeing a squirrel.

Our newest assignment is Purple. So, take a look for purple around you, take a few photos, and come share them in this most recent assignment. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, you need to have taken the picture between 26 December 2007 and 8 January 2008, you must include “Assignment:Purple” somewhere in your post, and the exif must be in tact. Next week’s assignment will be Ghetto Lighting. You can read even more about Ghetto Lighting in this Flickr group.

Weekly Poll

This week’s weekly poll was, well, another kind of holiday related festive one, and we wanted to know if you made any photography related New Year resolutions this year. It looks like a lot of forum members will be busy trying to meet their photography goals this year!

neilwood had two resolutions for this year: “1) Get out more often with the camera. 2) Improve the quality of my photography both technically and artistically.
Number one should be fairly easy – number 2 could be difficult!”

wulf, however, said that he didn’t have any resolutions and said: “I am not a fan of New Years resolutions. If I can put something off to the turn of the year to start, I probably won’t carry on with it very long. However, I have some ongoing projects that I plan to continue with (like fiftytwo) and also some new gear that I want to learn to make the most of.”

This week, a turn back to the more technical questions, but one that everyone can answer How shallow/deep do you like your depth of field to be in a photo? And don’t forget to stop by the poll for some links and info about aperture if you’re just starting out. (There’s also a lot of great reading in the photo tips for beginners section of the blog).

Hot Threads

Would YOU Do It? (I’ve been asked to shoot for a Friend’s Wedding): Well, this is a topic that comes up a lot. Wedding photos. Your friends or family see that you got a shiny new camera, and cousin Mabel is getting married and can’t afford a photographer, and there you are, camera in hand, getting asked if you can record the most important day of a few people’s lives. What do you do? Do you take it? How do you turn it down gracefully? This question and a few others come up in this thread.

First Model Shoot: Getting people to model for you is hard. Pentaxian went to his wife and asked nicely, and in this thread he’s looking for some feedback on how his first model shoot went.

Rescue India shot: On a recent trip to India, james_c took a picture of a man on a boat, but he felt that some of the aspects took away from the photo. This critique thread looks at ways to improve a photo subtly, both with adjusting colours and contrast and with a different crop of the photo. See how both of these adjustments can make subtle differences to the end result of the photo.

Newbie(looking to make photos look more professional): Well, isn’t this what we all want? Our photos to have that professional feel? deshalon posted a picture in the post-processing section asking how to do that with one of her photographs. But if you have any tips in general that you think help make photos look more professional, why not share them in this thread?

Other Threads to Note

What Would You Do, our weekly post-processing challenge, is back this week after a week off! We’re up to WWYD32 already. This week’s entry is a bit of a challenge, but I know that people will step up to it. Watch for new WWYD threads around Tuesdays. The Classic Rock Challenge is on a break this week, but why not check out some of the previous classic rock challenge threads in the Games & Challenges section until the next one is posted.