Weekly Assignment

The wreck (by Kosior)This week’s assignment was 10 Minutes from Home and the challenge was to take a shot, you guessed it, 10 minutes from your home regardless of your mode of transportation. From this assignment you might think that everyone lives 10 minutes from a derelict building, but there were plenty of other types of photos in the assignment. In fact, we got quite a nice look at the different places that people live. Our winner took one of these abandoned building shots: Kosior took a bike 10 minutes from home and found this abandoned trailer. Our first runner up was cheesee for a bright shot which almost seemed like it was taken inside a rainbow with the bright colours and the water droplets. Of course, the story that it told was something else altogether, but it’s the brightness that makes you take that first look. And last but not least, 3afsa’s shot taken after driving 10 minutes to the ice cream store showed a nice balance of movement and clarity, and of course, reminds us all of a nice way to cool down on a hot day.

Ice cream chef (by 3afsa)quarrel (by cheesee)We also started the X-tych assignment this week. The goal of the assignment is to create a single image from several image panels (up to 7 for this assignment). So whether you like diptych, triptychs, or moretychs, why not give this assignment a try and see if you can tell a story by putting several shots together. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, you need to have taken your picture between 23 July – 6 August 2008, your exif needs to be intact, and your post must include the words “Assignment: X-tych” in either the post title or the body of the post. Next week’s assignment will be auto-mode, where the goal is to take an excellent photo using just the auto setting on your camera and not using any post-processing.

Weekly Poll

After a week off, the weekly poll is back. Tell us whether you spend rainy days indoors or outdoors with your camera.

Hot Threads

  • Eyes closed -> a little PP -> now Eyes open!!: Isn’t this always a problem? You go to take a group shot, and someone inevitably has their eyes closed. While you can use a formula to determine the number of shots you’ll need to take to avoid this (statistically of course) another option is post-processing in order to open those eyes up. This requires another picture of the person with their eyes open, but it’s possible, and rsambuca shows us how.
  • Landscape Shots on Overcast Days: It’s easy to think that you can only take good photos on the nicest of days where the sun is shining and there are only a few clouds in the sky, but what happens when the day is overcast? Do you put away your camera or do you look to see how you can create photos that work with the overcast days? This thread offers a few suggestions on how you can use those overcast days to your advantage.
  • [Food Photography] Yummy: You know, a good food photo is enough to make our mouths water. Itanium shared one that was taken while trying to find something to stay entertained on a rainy day.
  • What Would You Do (#62): This is our weekly post-processing thread where you get to use a picture kindly “donated” by a member and work your post-processing magic on it to show us just what you would do with the shot. This thread is open to anyone regardless of your level of post-processing skill.
  • Problems accessing DPS?: If you’ve been trying to access DPS using Internet Explorer for the last few days, you may have had some problems. Those problems should be fixed now, but if they aren’t, you can always try using Firefox to see if the problem is still there. Everything should be back to normal soon though!

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