This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

This week we finished the panning assignment. People were following along with kids and people running, people on carousels, and everything in between. One of the common items to follow using panning was bicycles as our winner edmDusty showed us. This picture had motion, colours, and really showed off the idea of panning nicely. Our runners up were ilovelambasbread for the picture of her boyfriend running through the backyard which was a test of whether or not her camera could even do panning (guess what, it could!) and Jaiwanjin for another bicycle shot which we loved for it’s crispness and the ability to show motion so well.

This week’s assignment is Your Morning. Show us what your morning is like in a picture. Whether it’s hectic or slow, early or late morning, filled with coffee, tea, juice, or the internet, we want to see your mornings. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest your exif needs to still be in tact, the image needs to have been taken between 19 March – 1 April 2008, and your post must include “Assignment: Your Morning” to show that you want your picture included in the contest. Next week’s assignment will be “news photography” so put on your journalistic thinking cap and show us what’s making news by you.

Weekly Poll

This week we asked forum members what kind of computer do you do most of your post-processing on? The results were not hugely surprising, but we did get some good recommendations for programs on each of the systems. Some of the most common programs were:

•  The Gimp
•  Adobe Photoshop & Photoshop Elements
•  Adobe Lightroom
•  Aperture
•  Paintshop Pro
•  digiKam (Linux)
•  RawShooter

This week, we want to know what’s the furthest you’ve travelled just to get a photo (or 20)?

Hot Threads

• Why Photography?: kunaldaswani asks a question that I’m sure many of us have thought of, and if not, you know you will get asked it at some point. So the question is: why photography? What does it mean to you? Why did you pick it was a it as a hobby? What was your calling? Why not think about it and drop by this thread and share.
• Getting out of the point and shoot mindset: Do you feel like even though you want to change your mindset, you’re still shooting in a “point & shoot mindset”? Do good photographers only plan their shots? Are lucky captures something that “real” photogs don’t rely on? Is basing your shots on “oh, that’s pretty” somehow wrong and not what real photogs do? Share your thoughts on these topics in this thread.
• What do you carry in your daypack?: Well, you don’t always carry all your gear when you go out, so what do you take with you in your daypack? And this question doesn’t just mean your camera gear! What are the photograph related but non-camera related items that you always bring with you?
• Give me your Opinion: This is another discussion on post-processing based around a quote from Galen Rowell’s book, “Inner Game of Outdoor Photography”. Do you think that because of post-processing photographers are more willing to take shortcuts and create pictures that aren’t real? Or is reality and truth even a necessary component of photography?
• Textures are addictive: Penny shares a before and after thread of how she’s been bitten by the “textures bug” and shows us what a difference textures can make, especially being able to help out with getting rid of an unwanted background.

Other Threads to Note

Another week means another week of What Would You Do, our weekly post-processing thread. The goal is to use the picture at the start of the thread and edit it how you would like, then come back and post the result and tell us about it. Simple as that! We also have another week of the Classic Rock Challenge! This week’s challenge is to interpret the album title or a song title from Robert Johnson’s “The Complete Recordings”. If you have a picture that fits one of the song titles, come post it in this thread.

Until next week, enjoy shooting!