This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums (7-13 June ‘09)

Weekly Assignment

Last week’s assignment challenged you to take a great picture of Plants, Not Flowers. We’re all familiar with the beauty of flowers, but looking beyond that shows how much detail there is in other aspects of the plant. This week’s winner was beretta_686‘ s black and white shot of a cheese plant leaf that was taken against the sky, giving it the illusion of an x-ray. What we liked about this shot was that it showed a strong, almost abstract pattern and the black and white really emphasised that. Our first runner up, and a shot that I adore for the creativity is rt80639’s “Pot-ty Mouth”. rt80639 assures us that it wasn’t actually dirt in his mouth, but crushed Oreos. Thank goodness because we definitely weren’t sure that any of us would be willing to put that much dirt in our mouths, even for a photo! And last, but not least is samsonta’s really clever “Rotten Tomatoes”. The main thing that made it stand out for us was the humour, but the technical aspects of it were also well done. The lighting is good and there’s enough definition in the masks to separate them from the background. Nicely done everyone!

If you have a Sweet Tooth, this week’s assignment is for you. While you can add your photo to the thread regardless of when you took it, if you want to participate in the mini-contest there are a few rules that you need to follow to make it easier for the mods to see which posts are part of the contest. First, your photo must have been taken between 3-17 June 2009. Second, your post must include the words “Assignment: Sweet Tooth” and the date that the photo was taken. Finally, the EXIF should still be intact and it’s useful if you can include some of the main points like camera, lens, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture in your post. Next week’s assignment will focus on a common item: the Chair. Show us how you can make a simple piece of furniture interesting.

Hot Threads

• CD Copy Protection: One forum member recently attended a seminar on wedding photography and another person mentioned using copy protection software. But is this really a viable option for protecting your photos? What is the best way to protect proofs so that customers will still buy photos?
• What’s your favorite FREE editing tool or program?: Photography can be an expensive hobby, but that doesn’t mean that post-processing your images needs to be expensive as well. Come learn about some free editing tools and programs in this thread.
• Difference between zoom, macro, and telephoto lens: If you’re new to photography there are a lot of new terms to learn. So what is meant by each of these lenses? Can each lens only be one? Can lenses be more than one? Come learn what each of these terms means over in the forum.
• What Would You Do: It’s the countdown to our 100th WWYD thread, the weekly post-processing thread where you get to edit the photo of another forum member. This week there are 2 images that can be used (and even combined!).