Ashanali

Here's a competition for you, just found it when I visited my bank website. http://www.heritage.com.au/About-Heritage/News/2011/May/Time%20running%20out%20for%20photographers%20to%20enter%20Heritage%20competition%20for%20share%20of%208000%20in%20prizes.aspx

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pillaring-cause-planking-is-sooo-yesterday/215310165153867

Actually, it's called 'pillaring'. No joke!!!

Just go to the website of the shows and find the link to competitions. Alternatively google, 'photography competitions australia' or something like that and you'll get plenty of links.

I think Linda and Huga have covered my thoughts. However I'd just like to say Huga... you sound like a pro-photographer now. lol. It really IS different when you're on the other side of the fence isn't it? It's amazing how much you have to learn and how fast when you're trying to kick start (or run) a business. :D Good for you!

Full frame here also.

Toolz... try waiting for the point the cars are passing you (more like the white car at the very right of the image). Also you can make your shutter speed a little slower also. Have fun practicing.

An oldie but a goodie and something that's always good to brush up on. Things you can try FROZEN MOTION This is where you want to capture the motion with perfect sharpness and clarity. For this you will need a fast shutter speed (usually over 1/500th of a sec), wide open aperture (the lowest numbers you can get to) and depending on how much light you have, you may need a high ISO. The goal for frozen motion is to have every part of your subject sharp. PANNING This is where you want to capture motion that has a blur to give it a sense of movement however successful panning shots will have a point of focus that is still clear and readable. The best thing to get some initial practice on is cars driving down the street. Set your camera to a shutter speed of about 1/30th of a second (or even slower). You may need to make your aperture smaller and have it around F8 or greater. The trick is to move at the same speed as the subject while pressing the shutter button. Ultimately there should be a point of the subject that is sharp and clear but sufficient blur of the image to show the movement that occured. Have fun with the challenge!

I put up an April challenge but not many wanted to play with me. Thanks Ams... usually at this time of year people don't play much on the challenges anyway so don't think you were ignored, it was probably just the normal ebb and flow.

Hey folks, sorry I've been away and haven't been putting up challenges. Things have been absolutley crazy here with work, kids and other responsibilites and I've barely had time to log on to DOL. I'll get a challenge up for May later today though. Better late than never!

So sorry for your loss. Texas was one amazing and gorgeous dog.

Sorry for the delay. I've been snowed under lately. Okay, this month is a twist on a masterchef challenge. I'll give you a list of 10 items/concepts and you can incorporate as many or as few as you like into a shot to see what you can come up with. The more items you attempt to incorporate into one image, the more difficult your challenge will be. Remember, this is more about how to use them creatively than simply getting the items together and taking a photo of them. the items are window water branch F 2.8 spotlight fork ball balance cupboard blanket Have fun and good luck.

Sorry guys... things have been crazy busy here. Will get a challenge up shortly.

Unfortunately no (unless you fly to Las Vegas. ). With over 5000 images and a few hundred albums entered, there is no way that they can host all of them. ;) Bit of a shame as I'd like to view them also.

2011 - results wont be online for a few weeks. They're a bit slack. Serena might post a photo later if she can. She's at work at the moment.

I have to post this here because I am so so so so excited and without DOL I would never have met Serena and given her a huge push to enter lots of awards. Serena entered the WPPI awards in Las Vegas. Some photographers enter up to 20 prints in the hope that they might get lucky and pick up an award somewhere. Serena entered just one print and one album. Her print was awarded 2nd place in the Portrait Pet/Animal category and her album won 2nd place in the 'Non-Wedding Informal' category Seriously, this is a HUGE achievment in the world of photography. Entrants are generally from Europe, Asia, Australia and the US and for a first timer to come out and blitz the categories with just two entries is absolutley incredible. Word is that when the album was displayed it received a huge cheer and lots of laughs and claps from the audience to a room of nearly 1000 photographers. What a way to make a mark! The biggest congratulations Serena... and to think your career started simply because you wanted to photograph Rocco. He was a very special boy and I'm sure he'd have a big slobbery kiss for you right now.

Loving the month already everyone

I think after the horrible month that has been suffered by lots of us and the continuing angst over the next couple of days for those in FNQ, this month should be a month dedicated to SIMPLE PLEASURES I think we all need a reminder of what is joyous and amazing in all our lives. Share your photos of 'simple pleasures' people. Can't wait to see them.

One of the photos shows where our friend's business went under. Another shows the area we took wedding photos for a couple on Dec 10th The image at Graceville shows a street that I ended up driving down on Sunday when avoiding the hordes of traffic on the road. I have been to many of the flood affected areas but it was by far the worst of any that I saw. Entire walls ripped out of homes. The force of the water must have been strong along that part of the river. Another image shows a street I lived on about 5 years ago. I went down there to help with the clean up on Saturday. It's horrific.

Years ago we had a setter that we had no idea she was even mated. The there were three rather fat puppies in her kennel one morning. We were all shocked because there was no nesting behaviour, no belly, no swollen mammary glands, nothing.

I had one dog who really was a lovely girl, very loving and very sweet, but I just didn't click with her. To the point that if I went outside and she wanted attention from me it just felt wrong and I had to push her away... I felt irritated with her constantly. There was nothing with her, it was just a clash. She was rehomed - probably the best thing for her rather than being ignored.

Just thought I'd post. We're fundraising for flood victims and session money will be donated to the Premier's Flood Appeal. This might be a time to update your human family portrait, a portrait of your pets (Serena is shooting on Wednesday up to 3pmish) or maybe even a high quality studio portrait of your show dogs for just $89 (the deal on offer would usually be around $800) 100% of the session proceeds are being donated to the appeal. Lots of details on our blog. Even if you can't take a shoot yourself, please also share the link with as many people as you can via twitter/facebook/showlists etc. We want to get the word out!! http://www.savvystudios.com.au/?p=608 or www.thepetproject.com.au Please don't PM me here as I don't have PM's. If you want to find out more, please call us on 3891 1400 or email via the website.

Located in Greenslopes. Safe for the time being but watching water levels closely. We've moved some stuff to higher ground. We SHOULD be okay, but the 74 flood stopped only 100m from our house and this is meant to be bigger so we're being safe. We do have a place to go if the water hits us and it's high and dry and a short drive/walk away so we'll be fine.

I listened to a National Geographic photographer talk about this a couple of months ago at a conference. He got his job the old fashioned way about 20 years ago by continuously pushing himself on the publishers and begging for a job. He started at the bottom and worked his way up because his work is awesome. However as much as he loves his work, it's the bottom of the food chain for photographers... around $300 per day only when you're on assignment. He makes most of his money self publishing and selling his own books of his work (which he said takes about $30,000 to start off with when doing it properly - and he already had a name behind him that helped with distribution.) Another photographer I know would LOVE to do this sort of work, he has lots of accolades and awards (including a nat geo award) and he's brilliant, but his day to day income comes from child and animal portraiture. Very hard to get in to and not really enough to solely make a living from unless you are incredibly unique.

Funky