Liz's Photography Blog

Our Photo Essay assignment is underway and I wanted to remind you of a great opportunity to work on those essays. The World Wide Photo Walk is coming up August 23rd. This is a great chance to get out with other photographers and enjoy a day of photography. Its also a great chance to work on your photo essays for our learning assignment!

Patriotic Reflections

Photo © Ericandamos with permission to About.com, Inc.

Be sure to visit our forums and consider sharing your favorite images for possible selection as our photo of the week.

For this assignment I asked you to show me your best shot. We had a ton of amazing entries and I was briefly tempted to say "you all win" but I finally narrowed down the entries.

The winner for Photography Assignment 30 - Photographer's Choice is CSD619!

When you are done reviewing the winner and finalist images, be sure to spend some time enjoying the other amazing entries and additional critiques in the forum entry thread.

Please feel free to add your own images in the forum as well. We have a lot of amazing people as members in our forum and we would love for you to join us! Also, have an ongoing photo of the week competition with winners pulled from the photo sharing area.
Photo © CSD619 with permission to About.com, Inc.

Our learning assignment this month takes us into the realm of storytelling. This assignment we will be exploring photo essays. A photo essay, or picture story, is a photographer’s way of showing a more complete story than is possible with one image. It is a collection of images that work together to tell a story.

Because photo essays involve multiple images there are some special rules for this assignment. You will be allowed only ONE entry this time. Your photo essay will consist of between 3 and 12 images for this assignment. To help make this a true learning assignment, entries and ideas in progress may be posted to the Assignment 31 Lesson Thread in the forum. This is where you will post your works in progress along with questions and ideas. These works in progress will be critiqued and suggestions made to help guide you in learning about photo essays. Once you are happy with your assignment you will make one entry post of your photo essay to the Assignment 31 Final Entry Thread. Judging will be done from the final entry thread. The lesson thread is our classroom for this assignment.

Photo Essay Lesson

Things to Remember
Read over the rules for details on posting your entries, image size requirements, and helpful hints. Entries MUST comply with the rules (and the above changes) to be valid.
The deadline for this contest will be at 10PM Eastern time on August 31st.
Assignment winners will be announced September 5th.
Because entries will be critiqued during the assignment process this time, there will be no additional critiques to be posted in the entry thread at the conclusion of the assignment.

Assignment 31 - Photo Essay Lesson Thread - This is our classroom, post works in progress and questions here.
Assignment 31 - Photo Essay Final Entry Thread - Images MUST be posted in this thread for judging.
Photography Assignment Rules
Assignment FAQ

Hovering

Photo © Olmail with permission to About.com, Inc.

Be sure to visit our forums and consider sharing your favorite images for possible selection as our photo of the week.

There's still a few days left to go through your photo stash and show us your best shot! Pick your favorite photo (or 5). Chris Washer entered his favorite last December for our Winter Photographer's Choice challenge and came out the big winner. For this assignment, images can have been taken anytime within the last 12 months.

Things to Remember
Read over the rules for details on posting your entries, image size requirements, and helpful hints. Entries MUST comply with the rules to be valid.
The deadline for this contest will be at 10PM Eastern time on August 15th.
Images for this assignment may have been taken at any time in the last year.
Assignment winners will be announced August 18th.
In addition to the winner and up to 8 finalists posted in the winner's gallery, I will also be selecting several images each contest for additional critiques to be posted in the entry thread.

Assignment 30 - Photographer's Choice Entry Thread - Images MUST be posted in this thread to be valid.
Photography Assignment Rules
Assignment FAQ

Photo © Chris Washer with permission to About.com, Inc.

I don't normally plug someone else's shameless advertising but Scott Kelby has actually come up with a really fun idea to push the release of his new book, Lightroom2 for Digital Photographers. On August 23rd, there will be photowalks around the world. These are totally free events hosted by volunteer leaders in cities across the world. Each walk will probably last about 2 hours and end up somewhere to eat (or drink). This is a great opportunity to meet other photogs of all levels in your community (or get a free guided tour of a city you've wanted to photograph). You do have to sign up in advance as participation is limited ot 50 people at each location. However, the process is quick and easy.

Be sure to take a peek at Scott's site for details. Oh, and watch the introductory video - there is a great demonstration of "chimping". I'll be laughing all day about that one.

Fluorescent studio lights are the newest way to have continuous lighting without the incredible heat of the old tungsten sets. The fluorescent bulbs also don't explode if you touch them with your bare hands. Several lighting manufacturers are putting out fluorescent kits with varied results. To start About Photography's reviews of fluorescent lighting I began with pretty much the cheapest set on the market.

Review of Review of Vu-Pro Cool-V Fluorescent Lighting Kit

Twins

Photo © Artkwa with permission to About.com, Inc.

Be sure to visit our forums and consider sharing your favorite images for possible selection as our photo of the week.

Walgreens is feeling generous...and who am I to not assist in helping them be as generous as possible? Wednesday, August 6th (August 11th in Hawaii) Walgreens is giving away film developing. A coupon for the free developing is available on the Walgreens website.

Walgreens Free Film Developing Coupon