WebSpy, sponsors of the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast, have once again kindly set aside funds for us to offer prizes for the next six month’s accumulated votes from each of our monthly assignments. The first assignment, for December 2009 is already in progress, so if you haven’t already started shooting for this, the theme is “Quiet Light”.

For this coming assignment, we are actually going to give away fabulous prizes to the top five, not three, but five participants. We will keep a count of the votes each participant recieves from each month, and the five lucky photographers with the most votes when we complete the June 2010 assignment will win the following prizes.

So, here goes, with the prize list for the Dec ’09 to June ’10 MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment!

First Prize — A 320GB Sanho HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA portable storage unit!

320GB Sanho HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA portable storage unit

This new generation of UDMA portable storage units from Sanho are the bees knees. They will download images from up to 14 types of memory cards to the hard disk inside the unit very fast. They verify the data as it is being transfered, and have data recovery tools built into the hardware in case something happens to your images on the memory card. They read RAW files and show you the images on a beautiful 3.2″ LCD screen and will transfer up to 250GB of data with a single charge of the batteries. They also support incremental copy and backup to an external hard drive, which I think is a must.

These units are not only just about the best portable storage device on the market at the moment, they are not restricted by the size of the hard drive that comes with them. As hard drives get larger and cheaper, you can simply buy a new one, and stick it into the HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA device, and away you go. These things ROCK!

Note too that as prices drop, if we can buy a larger hard drive model in six month for the same budget that we have now, we will do.

Second Prize — Lensbaby Composer with Case!

Lensbaby Composer

Lensbaby Composer Case

Every, and I mean every photographer should own a Lensbaby Composer! These ingenious little lenses get you thinking about photography in a totally different way. I have owned one for just over six months now, and I simply love it!

The next three lucky winners, from third place to fifth place will each receive X-Rite ColorChecker Passports!

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

Most of the time, I shoot with my camera set to a White Balance preset like Daylight or Cloudy, but sometimes, you have to take control of white balance, and when you need to do that, the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is the way to go. The ColorChecker Passport contains a Creative Enhancement Target, a Classic Target and a White Balance target. What’s more, it comes with software to help you create custom camera profiles in a stand alone desktop application and Adobe Lightroom. Not to mention that it comes in a sleek passport sized case for protection and portability.

I’m really stoked to be able to bring you these prizes, with the help of our fabulous sponsor, WebSpy. Thanks once again to WebSpy for supporting the Podcast and Blog!

Good luck!

— Martin Bailey