This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

First, let me say a big welcome to all the new forum members who have joined in the last few days and a big welcome back to all the old faces that we haven’t seen in a while. If you’re new to the forums or you haven’t been back in a long time, don’t forget to have a read through the FAQs to familiarize yourself with the forum areas and the forum rules. Odds are if you have a question about how the forum works, the answer will be in there. So, if you’ve been overwhelmed with all the posts in the last few days, here’s a summary of some of the interesting things that have been posted this week.

Weekly Assignment

As many of may know, we finished the weekly assignment Your Morning this week. It’s always interesting to see how common mornings are regardless of locations. And to see how many people drink coffee in the morning. We had some very creative entries this week. It’s great to see people thinking about the topics in different ways. Our winner was Giya for the composite of his morning. We thought it was well put together and really showed the various things that many people do in the mornings. Our first runner up was Nasoj for “10 more minutes” where he’s reaching out of the picture frame to turn that alarm clock off for just another 10 minutes. It was a very creative use of the “out of bounds” idea. Our second runner up was el_floz for the fish-eye shot from below of his morning breakfast. Very creative use of perspective in this shot.

We also started a new assignment this week. This week’s assignment is News Photography. So get out there and capture the news as it happens or build yourself a news desk. Maybe recruit someone else to play reporter in your photo. Whatever you decide to shoot, make sure that it says “News” to the person looking at it and show us your journalistic skills! In order to be eligible for the mini-contest to have your photo featured in the weekend write-up on the blog, the exif needs to still be in tact, the photo must have been taken between 26 March – 9 April 2008, and you must include “Assignment: News” somewhere in your post to show that you’re giving us permission to include it in the assignment. Next week’s assignment will be “Spring”

Weekly Poll

Last week’s poll was one about traveling and photography and wanted to know what’s the furthest you’ve traveled with the main goal of taking pictures. We have some real jet-setters on the forums and as a matter of fact, the results were pretty evenly spread out among each of the options.

Liz Caldwell said “166 Miles. Sadly, my camera battery DIED! just before I got to the spot :( I forgot to charge it!”

ShepArt must have travelled the furthest of all the responses this week and said: “The furthest we have traveled for photos is over 7,000 miles (14,000 round trip) by car, plane, train and boat. The family traveled to Norway in January of 2007 (to get a family photo at Nordkapp) and also to get photos of the Northern Lights. Tip, if you want to get Northern Lights photos, don’t try it from the deck of a moving ship.”

SkySpade stayed closer to home, but still said: “Awww. Seventeen-years doesn’t give you a lot of leeway, but it’s safe to say I haven’t traveled further than under 10 miles from my home so far. Most things come about not because I’m going for photography (but, I must say, it’s quite a welcome to be able to actually get out and shot something you didn’t expect).”

I highly recommend going to the thread and reading about all the places people have travelled for their photography and the stories of why they’re willing to travel just to get “the shot”!

This week’s poll was a thread started by amy-rose and I liked the question so much it became this week’s poll. She asked Which metering mode do you use most often? Why not come share with us your opinions on which metering mode is your favourite and why.

Hot Threads

• You know you’re a digital photographer when…: It was only a matter of time until a thread like this came up… what are those things that you do when you’re walking around that really make you think: if I weren’t a photographer this wouldn’t even cross my mind. My favourite one by thread starter falafelicious was “You know you’re a digital photographer when you can only enjoy beautiful scenery when you’re uncomfortably crouched with your head tilted to one side”. Add your own to the thread!
• Nifty Fifty for Landscapes?: Ok, so the nifty-fifty gets a lot of praise for being a good portrait lens, but is that all it’s good for? This thread discusses the pros and cons of using a 50mm lens for landscapes and whether it’s ok to use a lens other than a wide-angle lens for shooting them.
• Digital Cross Processing: This thread started out as a before and after with one way to do digital cross-processing, but after a few posts there are now about 3 or 4 different ways to do cross processing with different results. Stop by this thread if you’re looking for some information about how to simulate cross processing or if you have a favourite technique that you’d like to share with us.
• Backseat Driver – How I took it: This week Nobie took a picture for the Your Morning assignment and wanted to shoot his morning commute. Well, that’s not an easy task if you’re the driver of the car, so in this thread he shows us just how he took his shot for his entry in the “Your Morning” assignment.
• Is photography a crime? Are we criminals?: This story isn’t new and photographers have been faced with questions in the past, but edwud brings up a recent set of posters that are being published by the UK government. This thread is a good chance to ask about what photographers’ rights are in your own country.

Other Threads to Note

It’s another week of What Would You Do and would you believe that this thread has been going for nearly a year now? I highly recommend checking this thread out if you’re new to the forum and just learning post-processing because there’s a lot of good information to be had. What Would You Do is our weekly post-processing challenge where forum members edit the picture of another forum member and post it up for others to learn from. It’s easy and you don’t need any special skills, you just need to want to try. For all you music lovers out there just waiting for a challenge to put songs and photography together, make sure to check out the Classic Rock Challenge. This week’s album is Foreigner’s “Complete Greatest Hits” and the goal is to interpret one of the song titles with a photo. Simple as that.

Finally, if you weren’t already aware, Digital Photography School is running a Competition to win a Nikon D60. That’s one heck of a prize! All you need to do to be in to win is to be a member of the forum and be an active member of the forums between now and the end of April. Every time you post in our forums in any way (asking a question, answering someone else’s, sharing an image, critiquing someone else’s, posting a review of a camera or book etc) you enter this competition. The more you post the more chances you have to win (make one post in April and you have one chance to win, make 200 posts and you have 200 chances to win).