This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums (25-31 Oct ‘09)

Weekly Assignment

Ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night were a common theme in our Scary or Spooky assignment. There were definitely some scary and spooky entries this week but we had a very clear winner with this week’s votes. The winner this week was Murtasma’s Skeletor shot. This elaborate costume was both scary and well done. Our first runner up was a_brewley’s “Thing under the bed”. She took this shot while her daughter was asleep! Thank goodness she didn’t wake up. One thing we learned from this shot was that lots of us mods were scared of finding things under the bed as kids. It was gritty and scary and all kinds of film noir and probably a few of us found ourselves checking for things under the bed again (definitely click on the image to see the detail in it since the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice). And last, but not least was SNOOPY’s spooky black cat. While not as scary as our other winners, the black cat is classic halloween and the detail captured in both the fur and eyes was amazing. Congrats to all of this week’s winners and best of luck to everyone in the next assignment.

Speaking of the next assignment, our current assignment is Architectural Detail. Sometimes buildings have some great architectural details that we miss out on because we’re so concerned with capturing the bigger picture. But this week we want you to focus on some of those smaller details. As usual, a quick reminder of the rules for those of you who want to enter the weekly assignment competition. First, your photo must have been taken between 21 October – 4 November 2009. Second, your post must include the words “Assignment: Architectural Detail” and the date the photo was taken. Finally, your EXIF should be intact and it’s useful if you can include some of the main information (e.g. camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, etc). You’ll need to head over to the Assignments area of the forum to enter. Next week’s assignment will be “The Economy” so start shooting.

Hot Threads

• How to capture visual opportunities in bad weather: Jim Bryant offers up another one of his informative tutorials, this time on the subject of photographing in less than ideal weather. This one is useful whether you’re going into summer or winter, so if you’ve ever felt the need to stay indoors when the weather is frightening, this tutorial might change your mind.
• Lightroom 3 Beta Released: Whether or not you’re a current Lightroom user, it may interest you to know that Adobe has released it’s upcoming version of Lightroom as a beta. There are still bugs and issues in it, but if you’ve used it come join in the discussion on the forum and tell us which features you’re most interested in.
• Halloween Tangerine: A tangerine may not be a typical halloween food, and the normally aren’t all that scary, but mmatasic shows us how to turn an ordinary tangerine into something appropriate for halloween.
• The Haunted Path Halloween Fun: In keeping with the season, here’s a creepy photo for your halloween. It’s definitely at least a little haunting!