by Martin Bailey | Dec 15, 2009 | Announcement, Assignment, Competition, Gear, Podcast
Today it gives me great pleasure to announce the winners of the first MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment accumulated vote winners for the last six month’s assignments. As you know, when our sponsors WebSpy came on board in July 2009, they kindly set by $1,000 for prizes for our assignment, and I arranged some great prizes for the three people with the most votes from your peers in the six assignments from July to November. So today, we not only hear who the November assignment winners are, we find out who takes the amazing prizes that we have lined up.
Also, WebSpy have kindly offered to continue to be our sponsors, and have put up another $1,000 for prizes for the next six months of assignments, so today I will also announce the prizes that will be given to the lucky winners in July 2010.
Yellow & Fall(ing) (Copyright © Allen ONeal)
November Assignment Winners
First up, let’s take a quick look at the winners of the November assignment, which was a panning assignment. This was a tough one, as we can see by the number of images entered. I would have liked to have seen more images uploaded for this, as I know that many of you are up for a challenge, but I guess panning was pushing it a bit too far.
We’ll go through the winners in reverse order as usual, and so in third place, we have Zodiaci or Allen ONeal, with “Yellow & Fall(ing)”, which is image m14950 (right). This one really jumped out at me as I looked through the assignment gallery. I love the use of colours here, with the bright yellow contrasting against the red background. I would have guessed from the thumbnail that it was floating down a river with fallen red leaves on the river bed. Not so though. From the comment, we learn that Allen actually panned with this leave as it was falling, which is pretty amazing. The yellow leaf is very sharp, and the exposure long enough at a quarter of a second to render the background a total blur of colour. Excellent work Allen, and congratulations on third place.
Moving quickly along, in second place with image m14886 (below), from Marcus Bain we have “Racer”. Both Marcus and Allen have been placed a number of times in this last few assignments, and are really putting a lot of effort into this, and having fun at the same time it seems.
We can see from Marcus’ comments against the image that this was his first attempt at panning, which is great, especially when he comes up with shots like this. We can see that Marcus has desaturated the colours except the reds and blues, which adds a lot to the effect, and really makes us feel the slightly distorted view of the world that the man speeding past. Marcus got this effect with a 25th of a second exposure, so we can really get a sense of the speed here. The subject is not quite as sharp as it might be, but plenty sharp enough for this sort of shot, so congratulations on a great image again Marcus. A very deserving second place here.
Racer (Copyright © Marcus Bain)
In first place we have Edwin Collingridge’s image, m14938 (below), entitled “A Burn on the Bike”. This is a 1/50th of a second pan; so again, the subject is travelling some here. I love the composition with the young boy off center to the left, with plenty of space to ride into, and the yellow grasses amongst the green make for a very nice dappled background, sufficiently blurred by the panning action. The red fleece and gloves that the boy is wearing are also a nice contrast to the surrounding colours. I think what makes this shot is the sharpness of the boy. Technically it’s a very good pan, which I’m sure in addition to the artistic merits of the shot is another reason why so many people voted for this.
A Burn on the Bike (Copyright © Edwin Collingridge)
Congratulations on first place Edwin — a very good win with this amazing image!
Six Month MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment Winners
Let’s move on now, to see who the lucky three are that will receive the prizes that our sponsors WebSpy have enabled us to offer for this batch of six monthly photography assignments to November 2009.
In third place, it gives me immense pleasure to announce that our good friend Landon Michaelson will be receiving every issue of Lenswork Extended to Dec 2009. That’s all 29 issues released to date. Congratulations Landon! In the end, you amassed 99 votes for the images that you entered in the last six months of assignments. If anyone is going to make the most of these CDs and DVDs from LensWork, I know you will. I would also like to once again thank the kind folks over at Lenswork for making this special offer available to us.
For the longest time, Mr Nikon or Dan seemed certain to take the first prize in these assignments, but I’m sorry to say, from Dan’s perspective at least, that he has been pipped at the post. I’m definitely not sorry to say though that Dan will be receiving an incredibly Lensbaby Composer as the second prize. Congratulations Dan! Once again, I know that with your vision and technical ability, you are certainly going to put this lens to the best possible use. Dan by the way amassed 133 votes from the last six months of assignments.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, it gives me great pleasure to announce the winner of the 1st MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment, Zodiaci, whose real name is Allen ONeal. Allen was gradually gaining momentum in the first half of this six month batch of assignments, but then he really came through very strong in the last three. Congratulations Allen! You will be receiving a superb Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM lens! This is an amazing bit of glass Allen, so really well done. In total, Allen amassed 142 votes from his peers. You had an amazing batch of images over the last six months, including of course the one that we looked at earlier that came in third in the November assignment.
You guys all really deserve these prizes. You have each submitted some amazing images over the last six months. If you didn’t get placed, please don’t feel bad. You all submitted some great images, and hopefully became better photographers along the way, pushing yourself a little bit each month, both technically and artistically.
Prizes for the 2nd MBP/WebSpy Photography Assignment (Dec ’09 – June ’10)
I also have more good news for you. For the next six months of assignments, starting this month, December 2009, we are going to be giving away five, not three, but five amazing prizes to the five photographers with the most accumulated votes at the end of the June 2010 assignment.
I have posted information about the prizes in another post on my blog earlier today, so take a look at that for details and photographs. I’ll just summarize what these amazing prizes are here though, because I’m really excited that we are able to bring you these prizes, thanks to our sponsors WebSpy.
I’m going to just jump in and tell you that the first prize is a 320GB Sanho HyperDrive COLORSPACE UDMA portable storage unit! This new generation of HyperDrive UDMA portable storage units from Sanho really are the bees knees. They will download images from up to 14 types of memory cards to the hard disk inside the unit very quickly. They verify the data as it is being transferred, 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 if these are going to be your only backup in the field, which is what they are designed for of course.
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.
For the second prize, I could not resist going once again with the Lensbaby Composer. This time we will be throwing in a case, but really, after six months of using mine, I’m convinced that every photographer should own a Lensbaby Composer. They just enable you to capture images that would not be possible otherwise. Even if you try to emulate the look in Photoshop, you aren’t going to get it because you see the world differently when you are out in the field using these lenses. You wouldn’t come home with the same images to work from without the Lensbaby Compose fitted to your camera.
Finally, for third to fifth place, three people will receive an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. I have to admit that most of the time, I shoot with my camera set to a White Balance preset like Daylight or Cloudy, but sometimes, you simply 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. The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is in my opinion is going to be the new standard in White Balance.
I’m really stoked to be able to bring you these prizes, with the help of our fabulous sponsors. Thanks once again to WebSpy for supporting the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast and Blog!
Podcast show-notes:
Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/
Audio
Download the Enhanced Podcast M4A files directly.
by Martin Bailey | Oct 26, 2009 | Announcement, Art Talk, Assignment, Competition, Podcast
Before we take a look at the winning images, I wanted to note that since we upped the pace when we shifted to a monthly assignment, more and more I’m announcing the theme of the new assignments in the forum, and once announced, like earlier this month, I sometimes forget to announce the new theme in the Podcast.
Also, we’ve been getting good feedback on the back-stories that I read from each of the winners last month, so I’m thinking that we’re going to make that the default moving forward, so the announcement of the winners is also now forum based, but I will mail each winner to alert you to the fact that you won, and to ask for a back-story. I used the forum Private Message system in the forum to mail actually, so it’s important that you also have a user account on the main Web site, as well as the members’ gallery, so that I can easily contact you. You’ll have anything from a few days to a week to post your back-story, and then produce a Podcast like today’s to announce the winners again, read the back-stories, and add my own comments about each image.
You can read the back-stories in the forum, and there’s a link in the show-notes, but I’ll also be posting the full text for this Podcast with images and show-notes, to my blog. Although the preferred method to subscribe is iTunes, if you simply don’t want to use iTunes, there’s an audio player and link to mp3 files on the blog too.
So, let’s take a look at the winning images, as usual, in reverse order, starting with an image called “Misty Mountain”, which is image m14319 from Pixelstate, real name Chris Sargent, from the UK. Chris tells us in his back-story that he took the photo on a recent holiday to Scotland. Despite being on holiday he managed to drag himself out of bed before dawn each morning with the hope of getting some good light on the iconic Buachaille Etive Mor, and after two disappointing mornings the third day held a little more promise.
“Misty Mountain” © Chris Sargent
Chris had spotted the potential composition earlier in the week and drove there in the dark, parked up and scrambled down the embankment to the banks of river in thick fog. Fortunately almost as soon as he had planted his tripod in the water and composed the shot, the mist began to clear and the early morning sun picked out the mountain almost exactly as he had pre-visualised it. The thin wisp of mist at the base of the mountain was an added bonus. Chris also tells us that coincidentally, the odometer on his car showed that he’d driven exactly 1000 miles over 4 days from his home in Surrey to this location in Scotland. I totally agree Chris that it was definitely worth the drive.
It is a very iconic mountain, and a great capture to do it proud. Of course, the theme of mirror image is upheld, with the beautiful reflection of the mountain in the river. Had Chris set his camera any lower than this on the tripod, the tip of the mountain would have touched the rocks in the foreground, so I’m sure Chris was conscious of this when composing the image.
The early morning light has given the shot a beautiful golden tone, and the dry grasses on either side of the river match the color palette perfectly, and they are complimented by the patches of dark green on the banks of the river. The mist is certainly an added bonus, giving the shot mood, and reinforcing the idea of this being early morning. I think possibly the exposure could have been just slightly shorter, as I see some hot highlights on the rock to the left, and the pale blue in the sky might have been a little darker with a slighter shorter exposure too. Of course, the dark areas of the rocks would also have been lost, so maybe just a neutral gradation filter in Lightroom would have been nice to reduce the brightness just of the top of the image. This is a tiny nit-pick though, and like all those that voted for this, I really like the image as is as well. This is just a little food for thought. Congratulations on third place Chris with this wonderful image.
Next up we have another wonderful shot called “What Has Sixteen Legs”, which is image m14152, from BKSecret, or our good friend Landon Michaelson, Wenatchee in Washington State. This is just wacky good, as we’ve come to expect from Landon. It’s a black and white conversion of a shot of a spider on a mirror, and Landon used some innovative shooting techniques to get this shot, so let’s take a look at the back-story.
“What Has Sixteen Legs” © Landon Michaelson
Apparently Landon found this wonderful spider in his front hedge before he started trimming it. He took her off, and set her in a container with a couple of the stems that were around her. The hedge is pretty large so it took awhile to get it all cut and cleaned up, but then Landon took the container into the studio. He grabbed a black cloth and draped it over a working platform on wheels. Then he got a 2ft square first-surface mirror, which we hear is also a “two-way mirror” or “shoot through mirror”, and put that on top of the black fabric, so that no light would show through. Both sides have a reflection, but you have to use the first-surface side here. It has no depth like a standard glass mirror, so the reflection is true, clean and the reflection of the legs touch each other.
Landon then set up a studio strobe and the beauty dish at about 45 degrees to the subject. He took the spider out of the container and allowed her to crawl around the mirror until she stopped, being careful not to let her wander off of it. He then moved the light and the platform around looking for the best angle when the spider stopped moving.
Landon then set up a second light for fill and shadow control, pointed the bare head studio strobe away from the subject and just bounced off the wall and ceiling. Then he carefully setup his background alignment to only reflect the darkness beyond the simple “stage” of the mirror, mostly by just where he placed and pointed the lens. He took quite a few photos and kept trying to keep the glass surface clean of dust, with a blower and a brush, which was tricky.
When he’d was done with the spider, probably 10 minutes later, he put her back onto the hedge to live out whatever fall days she had left. Her abdomen was about the size of a dime, so she was pretty good size. Landon also ID’d the spider as a European Garden Spider, also known as a Cross Spider because of the markings.
In post he chose the shot he liked the best, rotated it 180 degrees and looked at it for awhile. He liked it better upside down as it made the reflection a touch more surreal, and the image was toned the B&W in Lightroom, not pure B&W, but subtle color to enhance the photo slightly to his eye. He kept the shadows dark, but with just enough light in there to give some definition to the back legs that are out of focus.
Well Landon, congratulations on another amazing shot, and thanks so much for the detailed back-story. I’m really impressed with how clean this mirror is, and was not surprised to hear that you had been blowing and brushing this off. Spiders are usually pretty dusty creatures in themselves, so I’m sure this was a challenge. The use of the first-surface mirror seems to be key here, and I have to admit, that I’d never even heard of this type of mirror. I’m starting to wonder where I might get one of these in Japan now. There’s lots of inspiration going on here.
I love the tones that you achieved in the black and white conversion, and the slight colour tone has helped to give the image punch for sure. Also the 180 degree rotation was pretty masterful. I might have thought to flip this as a mirror image, but would never have thought to rotate it. Another bit of wizardry you performed there Landon. As we noticed this actually puts you a few points ahead on Mr Nikon for the WebSpy first prize, that will be awarded in December, after the six month accumulative votes are in, so congratulations on that as well as taking second prize in this month’s assignment with this magnificent shot.
And the winner of the September 2009 assignment with “Sunflower Illusionist”, image m14285, is Zodiaci, otherwise known as Allen ONeal, from Visalia in California. We saw in Allen’s back-story that this was an idea he’d thought about some time ago after inadvertently catching his own reflection in two adjacent mirrors in a bathroom. Allen noticed how his reflection kept on repeating itself over and over again. He knew it would be great to someday capture this phenomenon and the September assignment theme, “Mirror Image”, was the perfect motivation.
“Sunflower Illusionist” © Allen ONeal
To start off, he took down two 18″ oval mirrors from the wall and began playing with the repeating reflection. Allen discovered that if the mirrors were positioned just right, the reflection would wrap around itself into a circle. Allen said he’s never seen anything like this before, and neither have I I’ve seen repeating reflection, but the way this makes a circle is just wacky. Great stuff! Allen constructed a cardboard fixture to hold the mirrors in place and then used a satin-like sheet to hide anything he did not want in the shot.
Allen tried an apple and a few other objects first, but although the repeating reflection was amazing, it wasn’t what he was looking for. It just didn’t pop. Then one morning he went to his local farmers market, hoping to find a flower suitable for this shot, and found a vendor selling wildflowers and he had the most perfect, basically flawless sunflower. Allen bought the sunflower for a dollar, although the vendor only wanted $0.50, and off he went to shoot it. Allen notes that if the vendor hadn’t been there at that exact time with that perfect flower, this shot would not have materialized. This theme has run through this whole series, with the mist around the mountain for Chris, Landon finding the spider in his hedge, and Allen bumping into the vendor selling wildflowers. I’d say that this is a theme that runs through a large percentage of photography. As I’ve mentioned before, some people like to think that they totally control their art, and in some situations people do, but there’s no doubt that luck and coincidence help us on our way sometimes, if we are open and prepared for it.
The setup, shoot, and processing for this image was done really quickly, in a few hours, we hear. It was fun but challenging to shoot this image due to the fact that even the slightest mirror adjustment would make a relatively dramatic change to the scene. Because of this, everything had to be rigidly secured in place and the camera position was carefully dialed in. Overall he took about a dozen images or so and the one he chose as his favorite, Allen says, he simply couldn’t be happier with. What he likes most is the sense of absolute symmetry and enormous depth. It almost appears three dimensional, as if you could reach your hand into the image. Allen notes that mirrors are truly amazing when used in unusual ways, and he plans to continue experimenting with them.
Well Allen as you make more images with mirrors please do continue to share them with the MBP community. This really is a totally classic image. I love everything about it. Again as with Landon’s image, it’s very clean, even pristine. When I first looked at the thumbnail I thought it was some sort of a 1930’s light fitting, reflected in a mirrored surface below. It certainly took a few moments to figure out what I was looking at when I viewed the full sized image. I agree that the sunflower is perfect. You did so well to find that. I was looking for a perfect rose in my local flower shop recently and couldn’t find one from hundreds. I then went to a park last Wednesday and found one blooming on a bush right there, and got some great shots of it, that I’m really pleased with. Again, a little bit of serendipity in play here I think.
The other theme that we can glean through these back-stories again today is that each photographer has worked hard to get their images. It just goes to show that although part of the process is the luck to bump into the ideal subject or conditions to make the shot, you really have to be in the right place at the right time, or have the right ideas, and pre-visualization to set up the shot. Sometimes we are simply presented with situations and we’d be foolish not to take advantage of that, but other times it takes work, and we’ve definitely seen evidence of this today. Congratulations to Allen, and to Landon and Chris for your amazing images, and for gaining the most votes from your peers in the September 2009 Assignment on Mirror Image.
So, we’ve only got a few days left for the October assignment which is Only 50mm! I’ve got to tell you I’ve had a lot of fun with this month’s assignment, and I hope you have too. This has been the first time in a long time that I’ve had more than just one or two possibilities to select from. I had my old 50mm F1.4 lens fixed up for this and have really enjoyed getting out with this lens over the last few weeks. It certainly reminded me of how much fun restricting your focal length can be, and how much we can learn from it as well.
Images for the October assignment need to be uploaded to the assignment gallery on the www.mbpgalleries.com web site by the end of the last day of October. After this we’ll have just one month left in the six assignment series that our sponsor WebSpy have provided some great prizes for. Landon is currently in the lead, but Dan is still a close second, and just behind Dan now we have Zodiaci, or Allen, the winner of the September assignment that we just looked at. You can check the scores with the graph at the bottom of our scores page, which I’ll link to in the show-notes. With the votes for the October and November assignments still left to count, there is of course still time for someone to knock these guys off the top spot, so do try to get out there and join in the fun.
To quickly recap on the actual prizes we’re offering, the third place winner will receive every issue of LensWork Extended up until December this year. That’s 29 issues of LensWork extended, which is an incredible prize. Thank very much to the folks at LensWork for arranging such a great prize for us. The second place winner will receive a Lensbaby Composer. Again, this is just amazing, and will open many creative doors for the winner. Then the first place winner will receive an incredible Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM Lens! If the winner already has this lens or simply does not want one, though I can’t imagine why not, you can exchange it for a $500 B&H gift voucher. So get out there and shoot for these last two assignments like your life depended on it. Well, at least like some really cool prizes depended on it. Thanks once again to our sponsors WebSpy for making these prizes available, and for supporting the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast.
Podcast show-notes:
Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/
Audio
Download the Enhanced Podcast M4A files directly.
by Martin Bailey | Aug 24, 2009 | Art Talk, Assignment, Competition, Podcast
So, the images that we’ll look at today as usual will be included in the enhanced podcast, so you’ll see them in iTunes or on your iPod etc. Of course here on the blog they are posted below.
“Gecko on leaf” by qmcgrath
Let’s first go through the top three winners of the July Assignment that was on the theme of Backlit.
In third place was the totally amazing image, Gecko on leaf by Quintin McGrath. This is really just such an awesome photograph. I totally love it. Quintin has basically caught a Gecko, as the title implies, sitting on a leaf, and shot it through the leaf, using, yes, you guessed it, backlight. This is has so much depth, as we see the shadow of the gecko become more blurred as up the legs and torso, then on to the head, because of course these parts of the gecko are further away from the leaf than the feet. The feet themselves though are transparent, as the light pours through them and through the leaf beneath. Compositionally, you’ll notice great use of the rule of thirds, with the center of the leaf running up the right third of the shot, and the gecko sitting on the top left third intersection. I know that rules are meant to be broken, but we also find this sort of composition very pleasing for a reason. It’s imprinted in our artistic DNA from centuries ago. The overall colour is a yellowish-green, with beautiful texture captured in the leaf itself. This shot couldn’t be better executed in my opinion. Congratulations to Quintin on this really awesome image.
Next up is another simply amazing shot (below). The quality of entries never fails to amaze me and this is another great example by Dennis Brennan, which is called Holding Hands, in second place. This is obviously a visualized and posed shot, with someone’s hands cupped around a leaf. The image looks as though it’s been converted to a Sepia toned image, but it’s almost deceiving, in that the skin tones could be that color, as could the leaf, if it’s a freshly fallen autumn leaf, although it does look like a nice fresh green leaf.
The decision to sepia tone this was masterful, and the lighting is just exquisite. Beautiful soft light, with obviously some light coming from the front, from the direction of the camera, but much more light coming from behind, in line with the theme for the assignment. This has caused very sharp shadows of the fingers behind the leaf, which adds so much to the image visually. The hands themselves seem very soft, and maybe the thumbs are slightly out of the depth-of-field, to good effect of course, but the leaf itself is sharp as tacks, again, just making this image such a winner. It almost has a classic feel to it, and I applaud Dennis’ vision and skills with his lighting to execute what again is just such an amazing photograph. Well done indeed on taking second place with this image Dennis.
“Holding Hands” by dennisbrennan
“Stare” by Mr Nikon
I guess as we get into the second month of the six month group of assignments sponsored by WebSpy, it’s not hard to figure out that Dan is currently in first place with the accumulated scores as well. If you go to the scores page that you can find on my Web site, and there’s a link in the show-notes, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the total accumulated scores from the votes that people have amassed so far. We can see that Mr Nikon has 64, followed by Landon Michaelson or bksecret with 43, and qmcgraph, or Quintin, who scooped third place in this last assignment, has 31. Dennis Brennan is just slightly behind Quinitin with 27 and in fifth is Edwin C with 26. As we’ve seen in the past, you don’t necessarily have to win to get placed high in the accumulated scores for the grand prizes. If you produce an image each month that captures the imagination of a lot of your peers, you can still steadily amass votes, so please do get involved and try to get your hands on one of the amazing prizes that our sponsor WebSpy has enabled us to offer for this six month group of assignments.
A reminder the scores from all six assignments from June to November 2009 will be tallied up to find the three photographers with the most votes after the November assignment, and they will receive some incredible prizes. There’s a post on my blog with details of the prize which I’ll link to in the show-notes, but to quickly recap, the third place winner will receive every issue of LensWork Extended up until December this year. That’s 29 issues of LensWork extended, which is an incredible prize. Thank so much to the kind folks at LensWork for arranging such a great prize for us. The second place winner will receive a Lensbaby Composer. Again, this is just amazing, and will open many creative doors for the winner. I’m totally loving my LensBaby Composer that I picked up a few months ago. Then the first place winner will receive an incredible Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM Lens! If the winner already has this lens or simply does not want it, though I can’t imagine why not, you can exchange it for a $500 B&H gift voucher.
Remember to tweet “Thanks to @WebSpy for sponsoring the @MartinBailey photography podcast!” to show your support and let our sponsors WebSpy know that you are listening. Without WebSpy there would be no prizes.
Remember also that the August assignment theme is Juxtaposition, and if you have trouble figuring out what that’s all about, go and take a look at the thread for this assignment in the Photography Forum at martinbaileyphotography.com. Dan, the winner of these last two assignments has kindly done a bit of research and posted some definitions for us, which was a help for me too, as I wasn’t 100% sure of the meaning either.
Podcast show-notes:
Here’s what I need you to tweet on Twitter: Thanks to @WebSpy for sponsoring the @MartinBailey photography podcast! #photog
Assignment prizes: https://martinbaileyphotography.com/2009/06/09/competition-prizes/
Music created and produced by UniqueTracks.
Audio
Download the Enhanced Podcast M4A files directly.
by Martin Bailey | Jun 9, 2009 | Assignment, Competition
The MBP Assignment is run monthly. Each month members work on their photograph for the assignment as a means to hone photography skills and to learn how to see things differently. After each monthly assignment, we spend two weeks voting for the top three images that are closest to the assignment theme, and best executed. We call these the winners, but everyone is a winner, as we all become better photographers by participating.
Every so often a kind sponsor provides a means to offer prizes for the assignments, and they can then be considered a competition, and the winners get a little more, in addition to recognition from their peers.
This time we have prizes to beat all previous ones. Our new sponsors WebSpy have generously donated $1,000 for prizes for our assignment winners! The top three people receiving the most votes between June and November, 2009, will receive the following amazing prizes! Each of which has been carefully selected to also help you to hone your photography skills and learn how to see things differently.
By the way, if you already own a Sigma 50mm F1.4 lens, you can have a $500 B&H gift voucher instead. Now how cool is that!?
So, get stuck into the assignments, and it doesn’t even matter if you don’t take part in all six. You don’t even have to win any of the six assignments. All you have to do is post images good enough to get lots of votes, and you’re in with a change. The votes for each assignment are published each month so you can track your progress as you improve your photography.
Thanks so much to our sponsors, WebSpy, for enabling us to offer these amazing prizes!
Good luck!
