remoteman

You won't regret it :D You may have to change the batteries though, mine haven't failed yet, but a lot of people have said that they've failed within an hour of buying them hah. Other than that, they work a charm.

Yeah, i bought mine of Ebay. Link here.

Oooh more than devart! I love the leaf btw. Excellent shot, sharp as a tack, really brings out the texture. Perhaps could have shot at a slightly higher f stop to bring more of the lead in focus, but it's nice. You'll have to watch out for where the camera is focusing, in the panoramic shot with teh tree on the left it's obviously focussed on that rather than the horizon, which is your focal point. Having centre-weighted focusing would have helped. And yes, as someone pointed out, watch you don't over expose the skys. You certainly have an eye for the artistic stuff, can't wait to see more.

Dark Aura, why can't you just scan the prints in? You certainly have enough time. We've love more entrants :D Woopi, i bought the CTR 301 triggers, i did quite a bit of research and all of the reviews that compared them preferred them over the cactus triggers. I reckon they're much better built, the receiver in particular is better because of the flat base, much more convenient to use. They're said to have a lot less misfires as well.

Mmm nice. I've never done any real macro photography at all, this should be challenging, which is goood. It'll also give me the chance to use the wireless flash triggers that just arrived in the mail! Woooooo.

Or we could just try shooting a macro in a landscape where a street can be seen that includes architecture that has been influenced by nature? Something a tad more specific could possibly help though lol. Has anyone got a list of what we have done? Just so it's not repeated. I like the architecture one.

Good job everyone, congratz Sam :D Your choice for next month's theme. Quite fitting really, with your birthday and all.

That and that his finger fades into obscurity while the rest of his body and face is tack sharp. The pointing finger is a major focal point, i think more emphasis should be placed on it.

It was a low ISO, I just sharpened the photo and couldn't be bothered with noise removal crated by sharpening :P Thanks all :thumbup: btw: my birthday today :P Fair enough, and happy birthday!! Get anything photography-wise hah?

Nice work, particularly on down the plug. It's very noisy though, what iso are you shooting at, you mentioned 200-400, any reason? If camera shake is a problem then you should probably be using a tripod, especially for macro work, because it enables you to use the best quality settings available to you. And yeah, what's with the hard-edged out of focus areas that pyromancer pointed out?

Unedited 1. Littleboy - nice use of lighting. I presume you used a flash? Either than or you changed the WB? Either way, i like it, the focus is sharp on the eyes which draws the viewer in and the background is textured enough to be interesting without detracting from the main focus of the photo, yourself. Extra props on the selfportrait, they're harder than normal portraits :) 2. LP 3. Runemetsa Edited 1. Woopidoo2 - Love the contrast, and the playful pose. Nice touch with the older couple in the background. Lighting is fabulous. 2. Lukabo 3. LP Btw, thanks all for going along with the more-challenging-than-usual theme that i chose. Also, should we have a little gallery of the winners in a hide tag for future reference in the op?

Camera? A Pentax. Especially for your first camera if you're cash strapped, because there are sooo many lenses out there from years back that work perfectly which you can pick up on ebay for a song. There will be people blowing the canon/nikon trumpet, but you won't be able to have nearly as much fun with one of them as you will with a Pentax. Good thing being that on may 20 they're releasing a new camera, which will probably supersede the k20d, which means that the price for that will probably drop into your budget. I own four lenses, one of them was made after 1975 lol, the one bought with the camera. I bought a 55mm f1.8, 70mm f2.8 and 35mm f2.8 for under $100 AU total. They're outstanding lenses, solid metal construction and superb image quality once you get a feel for them. They're all manual focus lenses, but say to buy a new 55mm f1.8 ish lens you're looking at well over $500AU. Many people still swear by manual focus, and it's not really a hindrance. Yeah, just my little rant/two cents. Oh hah, for the photos, the top one is out of focus, and i think you're processed the last one too much, it's really contrasty/saturated.

yup, here's my edited one: [hide=non-edited][/hide] [hide=edited][/hide]

Man, generally speaking 2000 pix width is huge. All my photos of dev art or here are 750px on their longest edge, same on devart. Pano's maybe 1000. It depends more on the file size than the dimensions though, make sure they're all under 100kb if you can.

That fire hydrant is awesome, it's such an awesome location already, with the texture background, and the hydrant is in such a contrasting colour. Love it. Your problem is composition, as noted. It's rather boring, no offense. You want to look at photos and be amazed, photography is all about showing people things that they've been looking at their whole lives and haven't noticed the beauty in, or what ever emotion that you're trying to convey. With art, your goal is to invoke emotion in your audience. The emotion itself will differ between people and their life experiences, but you have to have a general idea. To improve this, you can do two things. First, head over to somewhere like deviant art, go to the photography section, pick a category and sort it by popularity, and see what the photographer has done in these photos to make them so popular. Or you could visit a local art gallery and look through a photographic exhibition if they have one. Inspiration really helps. Secondly, go back to a location, such as the fire hydrant, and seriously stay there and take say, 100 photos of it, all differing. Force yourself to reach this high number so that you have to try new things, trying macro, different angles, selective focus, framing it with something, only including parts of the hydrant etc. I'm just mentioning the hydrant because i want to see a cool photo of it, but you can take this approach to any photo. Forcing yourself to try new things, rather than seeing it, taking a happy snap and moving on. Just my two cents. RM

Lol so we're going with this theme are we? What happened to all our discussion hah? Ah well, i can't complain, i just don't know if that many people are going to enter, and we really do need more entries.

Ha i wasn't thinking along the lines of studio portrait photography, rather any photo where a person is the main or major subject. Just mucking around taking photos, my example would be this: http://remoteman472.deviantart.com/art/Bella-118970858 I had no intention of taking a great shot hah, it just happened. spontaneous portraiture if you like. I'll think of something else then if you like. I was thinking along the lines of an object, and you could take any sort of photo that you liked, as long as it included said object, such as a pen, or a chair, or a pair of sunglasses. I'm liking the chair. EDIT: Btw, i want this months theme to be something remotely challenging. Something that you have to get out and photograph, not something like flowers, where you can just go out into your backyard and take a photo in five minutes.

Bah i can't believe i missed the voting lol, i completely forgot about it, been rather busy back at school. But thanks all :D I would have voted for you Zargo btw, i didn't even think about the electronic side of music, how we listen to it etc, nice work. Themes.... I was thinking about doing a portraiture theme, but would everyone be ok with that, posting photos of people? You'd have to make sure the person being photographed is ok with it, unless it's street photography. But yeah, i love taking photos of people, it came to me straight away. The thing is that probably something around 90% of all photos are of people, happy snaps etc, but it's rare that you find photos that really pop. So that'd the challenge, to take a picture of a person that means something more than every other happy snap on myspace/facebook/what ever you use. If people don't like the idea, i can choose something else i suppose.

Thanks for the c/c. Yeah the composition does suck, i have some other shots, but none that block out the letters of the sign as much. We can't do another shoot, since we live like two and half hours from this place, and it was the only day we could go there. I'll fix it up later today and get back to you.

Sadly, i'm not hosting said competition if that's what you thought hah :P I am entering the one put on by my school every year, and i really want to win it in this, my final year. The theme is heat, and i really wanted to stay away from anything to do with fires lol, because i can guarantee so many people will use it as their central idea. Went up to Blackheath today, in the mountains about 2 hrs out of sydney, we have a house there, and shot this on their train station. I've maniped it a bit, as you will see, as that's fine within the rules, and it needed to be done. That's what i particularly want c/c on. I took the cloudy sky from another photo, shot in the same spot, just earlier on when it wasn't blanket cloud cover, same thing with the middle boy's head. The right hand side pillar of clouds i had to paint in, because the clouds didn't extend that far. That's the bit i'm worried about the most, and where they fit around the boy on the right. Is it realistic? I don't want people to know i've maniped it. So any c/c please, and be honest, brutally if necessary. [hide=Original][/hide] Also, any suggestions for a title would be appreciated :D RM

It's funny because in Australia, pretty much every school wears uniforms. I only know of one school that doesn't, it's a public school, but all others do. With public schools it's generally a pretty casual uniform, school polo shirt and school shorts etc, or long pants in the winter. I go to a private school where it's a lot more strick, we're about to start our first winter term, that's grey long pants, white shirt, tie and a blue blazer. Black leather shoes/loafers. I like uniforms, especially with ours i think it helps create the sense of a school community. Especially in big events against other schools it's impressive seeing a mass of blue together cheering teams/people on.

I gather i'm the minority then, i love shopping. I will also at this point classify myself as a fully heterosexual male hah. I am really into design and such, i spose fashion comes hand in hand with that. For instance i recently spent $300AU on a jacket from Country Road, it is quite the amazing and will last me 10+ years. Mind you, when i shop, i never shop expensive stuff (with the above, one off exception). You can pick up really cool stuff fairly cheaply if you take your time and don't rashly buy stuff. My favourite shop in Australia is Jay Jays, i buy most of my stuff there. Bought a pair of skinnies there and a shirt for $25 and $20 respectively, good quality stuff. I couldn't stand wearing just a plain coloured tee and jeans around the place hah. The only thing i hate shopping for is shoes, because i can never find anything i like and don't know what i want. I totally agree, baggy clothes really make you look daggy, a semi-tight fitting shirt/Tshirt will generally make any outfit look half decent. We're going into winter here, so scarves are great too, maybe not in the northern hemisphere at the moment ha.

Here's my entry for the unedited section. I'm actually quite proud of this shot, it took nearly two hours of trying to find a nice angle, what to put in it etc. I didn't use photoshop at all to adjust levels/contrast/curves etc, i really wanted to try and make use of the camera properly, cause i always fix things in it. The only bit of editing i did do was removing a speck of dust that was on the sensor that was in the top left of the picture. I really wanted to have one line down the centre of the image, the white keys at the top, black at the bottom, the mic stand come in from the top of the photo, but i couldn't do it without some serious effort, effort that would be kinda silly considering the nature of the contest hah. Ah well. [hide=Here][/hide] Now i've gotta work on my manipulated entry. I've got an awesome idea, although it's going to be bloody hard, because it involves moving my piano into my back garden hahaha... Ah well. One can dream. EDIT: I ended up cropping the picture a bit; the original is here: http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i244/ ... r-keys.jpg I really don't know which one to use.... rawr. I like the longer keyboard visible and the whole perspective thing, but i like the cropped version how the mic is centered in the blue wall at the top. I wish i'd thought of that when i was taking the photo.

Yeah nice work, did you follow that bokeh tutorial that was floating around devart? I have a dual display wallpaper i'm currently using, looks great. Nice work, it's fairly simple though. Try adding some of your own flair to it? Be original :P

What lens did you shoot the flowers with? The dof is nice, smooth bokeh.