Ashanali

AnimalMad - that is what the challenge is all about. Even if you are tired, grumpy, busy, whatever, it is a challenge to simply take a photo of something that catches your eye or interests you. It may not be a world beater but each time you pick up a camera and use it, you are learning. :rolleyes: I think everyone in here has put in a great effort today! I can't wait to see what the rest of the month brings. Awesome job everyone! :D

very pretty Persephone :D

CM - great job on HDR with a living subject. It can be hard to do it over three exposures. Chester was a great (still) model :D I was about 4 meters away from her. I had thrown the stick in the garden a few times and she was jumping in the same spot each time so I new I could duck down in position and get the shot as I knew roughly where she was going to jump out. I might start a thread for photo a day failures. There's a couple of funny ones in the outtakes. :rolleyes:

There are some great photos here everyone. :D Good job! Keep them coming.

No. It is perfect exposure. :D If it was overexposed you would get splotches of pure white that lack any sort of detail. You have done very well.

I dont have photoshop and I have no idea how to use my camera or anything about photography and I am giving it a go. Come on... dont leave me to be the only n00b That's the spirit :D :rolleyes:

ANY PHOTOS! The only challenge is against yourself. Don't look at the work from other people and think you have to match it. This is just a fun thing to motivate people to pick up the camera and shoot. So now you have to post :rolleyes: :D

Yep. This is what I will be doing for the days that I'm away also. :D Just list the dates as you post them.

I guess I'll go first. Shensei is the only one of my dogs who enjoys playing fetch. She was kind enough to help me out with this photo. :rolleyes: camera Canon 30D lens 50mm f1.4 ISO 200 f 1.8 shutter speed 1/3200 Photoshop - used 'tonal contrast action' to bring out the detail in the weeds. Brushed the layer back over Shensei so she didn't look 'ruddy'. desaturated blue, magenta, green, cyan played around in a colours layers until I found the tone I liked Who's next?

There are some people on dial up still and it can take a long time for images to download so can we please try and keep images to a maximum of 11 inches long on the longest side and at 72DPI - if you are saving through photoshop, please save them at quality 6. I know this won't show off all photos to their full potential but it means that people on dial up can still take part and view everyone elses images without having to walk away from the computer for an hour while photos load. This challenge is for anyone, whether you have just been given your first camera for christmas up to professionals. The challenge is only against yourself to ensure you can take one photo each day for an entire month. It can be of anything you like (within obvious boundaries of taste). If anyone wishes to post meta data or talk about their photoshop treatments then that is fine and encouraged. Good luck and have fun everyone. Happy posting for January! :rolleyes:

Socialisation obviously has different meanings for different people. I breed my dogs, they get human socialised within my yard from an early age being handled by children and growing up around a rowdy family and handled by our many visitors. They are let in with the older dogs for supervised dog socialisation from about 4-5 weeks of age. They leave my home at 8 weeks. The dogs I keep do NOT go out in public until 3 months of age (what other owners do with their pups is up to them but I advise keeping them home until 12 weeks). Can't say that I have any dogs that are ill tempered, aggressive, shy, freakish etc and out of over 50 puppies I can only recall two being 'sour' in some way... ( a few that were very exciteable, but not bad, just in need of firm owners). I don't know, but I'll trust my years of experience and keep doing what I am doing. It's obviously working for me and I haven't lost any pups to parvo or hookworm due to the 'need' to get out and socialise them earlier than 12 weeks. ETA: Socialisation within my yard because I can control that environment. I can't control what people do outside my fence.

:laugh:

Pups shouldn't be out of their home yard until 12 weeks anyway.

I have NEVER had dew claws removed on dogs that I have never had an issue with dew claws on any of them. The only dog I did have issues with was a girl who had them removed by her breeder and one of them grew back, curled around and started to grow back under the skin. It was an operation to have it removed a second time. Every dog is different. I would lean toward leaving them alone and if your dog has a problem, then get them removed.

Hey tess... first w00t! :rolleyes: Awesome! Second, the photos that you see in the preview have been talked about in a few reviews I have read. Most people are relying on the histogram for greater accuracy. A few people are still choosing the 40D over the 50D because of it. Hopefully you just fall in love with it and screw reviews!

He's not having a DOLiday, he chose to leave. I'm another who would like to see him back. I have emailed him and told him that we like his input here.

I have had an email from Luke, it doesn't look as though he will be back anytime soon. The first one is using texture layers and colour adjustments. Textures can be LOTS of fun when you know how to do them right. Bad textures look like crap. The second one is just a nice photo and an interesting crop The third one is a composition. Horse has been cut from another image (a very good cutting job) then put over the top of a textured background and some burning in has been done to add a bit of drama. The last one is the same as the third one. Techinques: There are many ways to cut a subject out of a composition and not get hard edges allowing you to paste it somewhere else and work some magic. Luke has posted his cutting technique somewhere else but I can't remember where it is (sorry). My cutting technique is different. I will use a mask layer and paint back the area I want to keep. I zoom into 300% and work from there so I can get all the fine detail along the edges. This is a tutorial for another cutting technique - not as good as the one used on the horses but it gives you a good platform to start from. http://library.creativecow.net/articles/mu...l_selection.php Textures: One of my greatest PS joys is working with textures. I LOVE it but I don't do it that often because there are very few people who like it. This is an image I worked on for Alex for last years AIPP awards (it JUST missed out on a silver) This is a practice image for me. I will be doing something sort of like this for next year's comp. I do have some other way better images using textures from a recent shoot but I can't post them as I don't have permission from the client (:rolleyes: ) So textures... how do you use them (this will be the very basic version of what to do) Well, the first thing you need is an image that you love - horses are good. The second thing you need is an image of a texture. Textures can be anything. They can be a photo of a mouldy concrete wall, crinkled paper, pages from a book etc. You can even jump onto flickr or photobucket and search 'free textures' and there will be thousands for you to choose from. Heaps of people create textures and allow people to use them. Now you open both images in photoshop, click on your desired texture and drag the texture image over the top of your original image resize your texture image and drag the corners so it fits your original image Now you can play around with the texture layer and do all sorts of magical stuff. In the layer palette, you can change the opacity of the layer if you like. Also change the mode. It should be in 'standard' mode but go through and change it to anything you want. Multiply, screen, hard light, linear dodge - all of them have different effects on the texture layer. Find the one you like. From there you can brush back area of the layer to show through images of your original image underneath that you want to draw emphasis to. Thats it really (in a very simple version) - just play and have fun. You can get lost playing with textures for hours! There are also some really good flickr groups for textures where you can go and see what other people do and post your own samples. Have fun!

http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=153041 and http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=153707

http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?showtopic=148518

It's a nice shot Abbey. :D Of course there are things that can be played with and altered and people are likely to have different ways of doing things, but the SOOC (straight out of camera) image is still very nice. I would do a slightly different crop to Gayle but along the same lines.

I like shooting people and my prefered style is photojournalistic. My partner prefers an editorial/fashion style when shooting so our mix of styles works well together. He sets them up and poses people/brides/couples the way he wants and I shuffle around the outside being the unobtrusive second shooter and just keep a watch for 'those' moments to capture the images that I like. :D I love my 50mm 1.4 which is great when I can get in close and I am doing one on one stuff. A handy little all-rounder is the 28-135. Not the best quality but it still gives some good results. My next lens will likely be the Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro.

Hardly Normal charge WAY too much. Always shop around. http://www.shopbot.com.au/

There are many different ways to produce a sepia print but I prefer to use an action that I created myself. I call it a desaturated antique action. It's in another thread...

We have used live view in situations where we are holding the camera above our head. We can hold it up and out slightly and see enough of the screen to see if what we want is framed correctly rather than just guessing. For us, it is useful when photographing bride/groom surrounded by a lot of people.

These thoughts are echoed strongly here