The Corbis Photography Award will reward the best photography works created for advertising and promotion purposes, including print and online advertising, Direct Mailing, packaging and outdoor.

Qualifying entries:

• The competition is open to any agency or individual based in Europe.
• The works must have been created for usage on a territory that includes Europe but is not restricted to.
• Works can be submitted regardless of whether they have been published or not.
• Both entries published and unpublished must have been created or launched in 2006 or 2007.
• One photography represents one entry.
• A maximum of 10 entries per participant can be submitted. Each entry will be judged separately.

Fees
There are no fees for submissions to the Corbis Award for Creative Photography

Deadline
The deadline for registrations and entry submissions is September 7, 2007.

Award
The author of the best photography will receive an award of
5.000 Euros.

Pix Digital Contest Rules:

WHO MAY ENTER: All readers of Photo District News except PDN employees and their families.

ENTRY FEES:
$35 per image | $50 per series | Students $20 (signed by instructor)

Deadline: AUGUST 1st 2007*

*Late? Pay $10 per entry for an extended deadline of AUGUST 15th. All entries postmarked or received after August 1st will be charged an extended deadline fee of $10 per entry. If you are paying by check or money order, this fee must be included in the amount for your submission(s) to be considered.

ONLINE SUBMISSIONS: To enter your submissions electronically, please visit www.pixdigitalimagingcontest.com and register. Once the registration process is complete, you will receive an e-mail confirmation. Simply log in to the PIX Digital Imaging Web site to upload images from your computer.
Images formatted in JPEG or TIFF measuring at least 1,000 pixels on their long dimension are preferred. Images may be color profiled in sRGB, Adobe-1998 or not color-managed.
For more information on electronic submission guidelines, please contact John Gimenez at (646) 654-5792 or e-mail jgimenez@pdnonline.com.

SPECIFICATIONS: To qualify, photographs must be taken between August, 2006 and August 15, 2007.

Good luck!

“Let the world discover your talent.”

Applicants offered a myriad of interpretations based on the contest’s theme “At the heart of the image.” Though their interpretations were unique and varied, we were delighted by the amount of entries strongly invoking inspiration and emotional response. These inspirational entries, reaffirmed the significance of using “At the heart of the image” as the theme of the contest. The Grand Prize was selected with this in mind.

The final stage of the selection process produced two finalists for the Grand Prize, an image of two fishermen (crossing waves) and an image of a dolphin (Breaking the silence). To have the final images for the Grand Prize coincidentally capture the spirit of water, an essential element to life on earth, was a revelation. It is with great pride and honor that I introduce the top prizes chosen for Nikon Photo Contest International 2006-2007.

Mr. Yoshitaka Nakatani, Chief of Judge

Photo Mistakes - Funny bloopers are a click away

Digital Camera Scene Modes - The 5 Modes You’ll Use the Most
By Karl Peschel

Technology is a beautiful thing. Every year hundreds of new or enhanced products are produced. Digital camera manufacturers come out with new models a couple times a year, each company trying to outdo the other. They’ve gone crazy with the variety of scene modes that are being added to new cameras.

Digital camera scene modes are a simple way for you to “tell” the camera what type of picture you are taking. The camera will then optimize the settings for that particular shot. Some modes change how colors are recorded, others change whether or not the flash fires. The trend now is to add special effects and things that you’ll probably never use.

How often will you use a Starburst effect? Do you take a lot of photos that require a Pastel Color effect? Even the semi-popular Sepia mode is not needed, as far as I’m concerned. One click in your editing software and you’ve got Sepia.

If you’re like most people, you’ll only use a few of the scene modes on your camera. Here’s details on the 5 modes you’re most likely to use.

Portrait Mode

Portrait mode is for taking people pictures. Whether it’s a single person or a group of people, you should use the Portrait mode. Your digital camera will select an appropriate shutter speed and aperture combination to capture your subject and blur the background. The idea here is to make the background less distracting.

Newer digital cameras incorporate autofocus technology that actually scans the picture looking for faces. It’s usually called Face Priority or Face Detection. It especially helps when your subject is not dead center in the picture or when you have a group of people. Nikon, Fuji, Sony and others manufacturers are putting this technology in many cameras.

Check your owners manual to see if your digital camera uses this technology and whether it’s automatic or you have to enable it manually.

Landscape Mode

Landscape mode should be your choice for all of those breathtaking views you want to shoot. Scenic vistas of the beach, the mountains, a field of flowers or a city skyline are all prime uses for Landscape mode. Your digital camera selects an exposure combination to maximize what’s in focus from front to back.

Although it’s not absolutely necessary, using a tripod or some other sort of support will help. Walk around a bit to find the best vantage point. Sometimes a small shift to the left or right (or up or down) will make the difference between a snapshot and a photograph.

Sports Mode

Whether it’s kids soccer or baseball, or an NFL game, Sports mode is designed to help you stop the action. Your digital camera will set the shutter speed as high as possible for the lighting conditions in order to stop action. Sports mode also puts your camera in Continuous shooting mode (hold the button down and shoot 3-4 pictures in a row) and forces the flash off. If you can, setting the ISO to 400 or 800 will also help. A few cameras do this for you.

You’ll want to get as close as you can for great Sports and action pictures. First get physically close, right on the sidelines if possible. Move up and down the field with the action. (Not so easy at hockey games.) Then use your zoom lens to get the shot you want. Take some wide shots to show all the action, along with tight shots of one or two players. This will help tell the story much better.

Be sure to pay attention to what’s going on in the game. You may have to jump out of the way of the players!

Beach/Snow Mode

Having been a longtime resident of Florida, and as a current resident of Colorado, I can attest to the real benefit of the Beach/Snow scene mode. Both film and digital camera light meters are calibrated to a medium tone. Overly bright or dark scenes are not recorded properly. Beach/Snow scene mode is for all those bright scenes.

Big open areas of water on a sunny day. Long stretches of white sandy beaches. Snow covered mountains on your next ski vacation. These are all perfect times to use Beach/Snow mode. You are telling the camera that your subject matter is quite bright and it will compensate accordingly. Instead of muddy grey snow it will be recorded bright and white as it should be.

Sunrise/Sunset Mode

While most Scene modes change the aperture or shutter speed used, Sunrise/Sunset mode changes how the colors of the scene are recorded. The goal is to record the beautiful quality of light at these times of day.

Sunrise and sunset are times when the world is bathed in beautiful warm light. You’ll hear photographers refer to this as Golden Light or the Golden Hours. By using these settings instead of Auto mode you’ll capture that beautiful light and the dramatic colors. Try it for yourself next time you photograph a sunset and you’ll see the difference.

The next time you read your manual (You do know where it is, right?) check out all the scene modes your digital camera has. Perhaps there are a few that you would find useful for your style of shooting. Try them out, along with the 5 listed here, to improve the pictures you take.

Copyright © 2007 Karl Peschel

Karl Peschel runs TeachMeToShoot.com, a website for people who want to learn about digital photography techniques. Karl loves to teach people about photography and strives to explain things in plain English instead of techno babble. Check out the website at http://TeachMeToShoot.com and see for yourself. Sign up for the ShootLikeAPro Newsletter and get the free mini-report Top 10 Tips for Better Digital Pictures!

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Fashion Photography. by TJ Tierney

Do you want to be a fashion photographer? Fashion photography is an extremely tough market to break into, but if you are willing to work hard, have a good imagination and hold the ability to take perfect images you are off to a good start.

A fashion photographer must be good in two photography disciplines. First, you need to be a great portrait photographer - second, you need to be able to create images for the advertisement market. You must be able to combine the two if you are going to succeed.

To be a successful fashion photographer you must also have a love of fine design clothes - without it you will never achieve the heights that bring success. A fashion photographer must stay up to date with all the latest fashion and have the ability to use his/her imagination to sell new designs.

Selling is the key - the fashion photographer must be able to sell his images to the fashion editor. Fashion photography is advertising and selling clothes.

To establish a reputation in fashion photography, the first thing you must do is set up a portfolio. Your portfolio should display your best work and be your first selling point. The second, and equally as important as the first, is to set up an online portfolio - your own personal Website.

To set up a portfolio you first must hire a model. Contacting your local modelling agencies can do this. You don’t need to hire a well-known model for your fashion portfolio - you need someone who will act well in front of the camera.

To be very successful you need to Read the rest of this entry »

Landscape photographers by Alfred Gomez

Wide-angle lens: is the choice of most landscape photographers. They allow you to include as much of the scene as possible when you look in your viewfinder with a wide focal length of 17 mm to 40mm.

There are many different types of photography. You can take pictures of anything and there is someone out there somewhere who would like to see the pictures that you take. So,

photography is a great field to get into.

But you can find beautiful landscapes right where you live. That’s the great thing about nature, it’s everywhere, and landscapes are everywhere.

Photography is the art of reproducing pictures of people, objects or places in their exact likeness. These images can be transferred on any photosensitive material. Photography includes taking and printing pictures.

There are different ways of finding photography jobs, depending on the type of job you are looking for and your experience. You can begin by creating a resume and portfolio of your work.

Load a film fast and good So just how do you do it? Loading film on a manual camera is basically easy. All you need is plenty of concentration and focus and you are on your way to shooting the pictures you want and need. The following are basic steps and tips on loading film on a manual camera.

First things first, it is best that the film you are loading is the type that is perfectly suited for your camera. Determine the brand that works best for you as well as on your equipment. Try to search through and research the types of film you have seen developed. Do you like how they came out using that specific brand? If not, try to look at other types until you find the pictures that are colorful and that fits your taste. Read the rest of this entry »

Dominant Space – Directing a Viewers Attention
By Tedric Garrison

We’ve all heard about foreground and background. Generally the foreground is where you find the main subject. The background is, well . . . in the back. It’s just back behind everything else, right? Wrong! The background is just as important and in some cases even more important than the subject itself. How is that even possible you ask?

Take for example a picture of a car. If it was shot in a studio, the background could be entirely blank. That would make the car very important in the shot. If you shot that same car in the middle of a parking lot while it was full of other cars, your car becomes almost insignificant. (Unless there was something unique about it, like it was red and all the other cars were blue.) Now take it one step further, imagine your car on the racetrack with two or three other cars, but it was clearly in the lead. The car is again important, but not all by it’s self. Now it becomes a key element in a much bigger shot . . . the race.

I define dominant space as the environment that most compliments your subject.

Taking a picture of a young lady in a string bikini sitting on your couch just Read the rest of this entry »

Taking Pictures vs Making Pictures
By Joseph Szymanski

A friend and fellow photographer recently made a very bold statement over drinks one night…

“Rangefinders help you take pictures and single-lens reflexes help you make pictures.”

I believe there is a colossal difference between taking pictures and making pictures, and an equally enormous difference between rangefinders and and SLR’s. However, I can’t help but take offense to the statement that SLR’s help you make pictures.

Rangefinders help me make pictures all the time…

The differences between these two types of cameras are obvious. Through the lens versus a viewfinder, focusing mechanisms, size, weight, film advance etc. What we as photographers seem to forget is that a camera is a tool.

When I was little my father had a workshop in the basement. In the workshop was a hammer. This was not a special hammer, other than the fact that is was older than dirt, rusty, beat up, just a really old hammer. I asked my father why he did not just buy a new hammer. He said, “It still pounds nails.” Point being, my rangefinders still pound nails.

That aside, the real issue I have is the difference between taking and making a picture.
The other day I was at a friends house for dinner. She took a picture of everyone at the table with her digital camera. Result: She took a picture. Short, sweet, to the point.

Last month I bought a roll of Tri-X (yes I still shoot film). I had a few things in my head I wanted to photograph. I made some exposures over the next week or so. I developed the film, made a contact sheet, edited down to a couple of frames I thought would print well. I then proceeded to the darkroom where I made an 11X14 fiber base print. When I was pleased with the print, I then matted and framed it. Result: I made a photograph.

Some people take pictures, other people make photographs. The camera is just a hammer. Film, digital, rangefinder, SLR, all just ways of recording an image. Our individual process is what makes photographs, not our hammers.

Joseph Szymanski
Art and Photography, Mostly…OpenOrigins.com

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Understanding Image Resolution by TJ Tierney

Whether you are printing, scanning or sending an image by e-mail, you need to understand and know how to keep your images sharp and preserve as much detail as possible in your final print.

This topic does cause some confusion, so I hope the following will help.

Image resolution explained: Photography resolution is a measurement of image quality, so you may define resolution by how much detail is in your print. If your print has sharp detail you may consider your image to be of good resolution. If detail is blur in your image you may consider your image to have poor resolution. Good resolution is a direct result of having a large number of pixels in an image.

Pixels explained: Digital images are made up of millions of small dots - each dot is called a pixel. Each dot contains a small piece of image information, and when added together with the other pixels you’ll get your final image.

Print resolution is measured in pixel per inch (ppi) or in dots per inch (dpi) - both hold the same value. 300ppi means that there are 300 pixels per inch or 90,000 pixels per a square inch.

What size can I print my images?

A digital image that’s 1500ppi wide will print a 15-inch wide print if the print resolution is 100ppi.
If you change the same image to a print resolution to 300ppi your final print size will become a
5-inch wide print.

If your image file is 3000ppi wide x 2400ppi high with a print resolution 300ppi, your final print size will be 10 x 8 inch. The same file with a print resolution of 150ppi will give you a final print of 20 x 16 inch.

Divide the print resolution into the pixel width or height of your image.

Higher resolution should not be taken to mean that your images would be of higher quality - your images would only be of high quality if you print to the correct format.
Example - if you print a 3000ppi x 2400ppi size file to a print size of 20 x 16 inch at 300ppi, the pixels may be visible resulting in a blur image. You need to print it at 600ppi to attain good quality.

What size resolution should I use?

At 600ppi (which is an extremely large resolution) your image will be supreme sharp. You will be restricted with print size.

Printing your images at 300ppi is the standard quality. Image sharpness doesn’t get much better. The only setback is that the maximum print size will be restricted - you might need to drop the resolution to get a larger image.

If you need a large print from a small file print your file at 150ppi - your print will lack detail and the pixels may be visible. You should not print an image any smaller than 150ppi.

72ppi is standard with your computer screen. Don’t print your images at this size - the pixels will be visible.

Resolution tips: Scan your images as large as possible; it’s easy to resize them later. If you scan an image to small you may have to re-scan at a later date to get a larger print.

If you need a print that’s twice the size of the original - scan it at 600ppi and print it at 300ppi.

Try to print your image at 300ppi.

If you use a tripod when taking an image you may be able to push the print resolution lower than the recommended 300ppi - this will enable you to get a larger print.

Other Tips: Be very careful when cropping an image, if you crop it too much you will reduce the print size.

Be careful not to confuse print resolution with printer resolution; printer resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi), but these values are a great deal higher- common printer resolutions are 2400dpi and 5760dpi - this is a measure of the amount of ink dropped onto your paper per inch.

TJ Tierney is an award winning Irish Landscape and nature photographer. For more tips you can visit his photography site. To view his images visit his on-line gallery of flower pictures or see his collection of stock photography

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