June 2009

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced here. A big thank you to everyone who participated! …

Otto Kitchens is the photoblogger behind ottok photography.

Here's a photograph I randomly snapped on a tennis court a few days ago: …

Jonathan Greenwald is the photoblogger behind Shrued.

On the same day I was experimenting with the light painting I described in a post yesterday, I also fiddled around with long exposure portraiture. I had my buddy Aaron pose for me at his desk in near darkness. The only sources of light in the room were his laptop screen, a few LED flashlights that I placed on his desk in various directions, and a lighter that Aaron held in his hand.

I love experimenting with photography, and trying out interesting new techniques, angles, and styles. One of the things I've really enjoyed playing around with over the years is drawing pictures with light using long exposures.

Jessyel Gonzalez is the photographer behind dailysnap.

The first PetaPixel giveaway has come to an end, and I'm definitely surprised by how many entries we received. We received 101 comment entries, and 76 entries through Twitter. To choose the winners, I used random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 177. Numbers 1-101 were comment entries, and 102-177 were Twitter entries.

Here's a photograph I took of my brother skateboarding (or attempting to) back in 2005: …

Nick Campbell is the photoblogger behind greyscalegorilla.

Dusk is a really interesting time to take photographs, when the sun begins to turn the sky reddish orange. If you use the faint light in the horizon as a backdrop, you can get really interesting silhouette photographs of people and landscapes.

Going to school in Berkeley, California, there always seems to be something people are protesting. A few times the past couple years, I took the time to run to some of the demonstrations downtown, and found that they're always rich opportunities for interesting photographs.

Kathleen Connally is the photographer behind A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania, a photoblog that has been chosen as "Photoblog of the Year", "Best American Photoblog", and "Best Landscape Photography" by numerous publications.

Hey everyone.

Update: This giveaway has now ended. The winners have been randomly selected and are posted here. Thanks to everyone who entered this first contest! …

A few weeks ago, I was taking photographs of my friend Tommy at his Berkeley graduation using a Canon 40D and the 24mm f/2.8. I had originally purchased the 24mm as part of a package and was planning on selling it off, but decided to keep it after being shocked by its quality and versatility. Anyhow, here's an unprocessed photograph of my friends Tommy and Jacob I took right after the graduation: …

Justin Ouellette is the photoblogger behind Chromogenic.

Felt like experimenting a little today, and started out shooting low depth of field photographs of flying insects. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I was taking photographs of water balloons popping (Don't ask me how). Here's what I used: …

I was working with Adobe Bridge today, when I came across a file that I couldn't open in Adobe Camera Raw (though I knew it could be opened). The menu item "Open in Camera Raw..." was also grayed out, as seen here: …

One of the things I became very aware of during a recent road trip to Oregon is how much easier it is to salvage an underexposed photograph versus an overexposed one. When you overexpose a photograph and "blow out" the highlights in the image, those areas that were blown out to white are unsalvageable, whereas much more detail could have been preserved in areas of the photograph that appear to be pure black but are not (though noise results from salvaging these areas). An implication of this is …

Zac Doob is the photoblogger behind photoflavor.

If you want a reflector to play with lighting, but don't want to shell out money for a real one, you might want to try making an aluminum foil reflector. They're cheap, easy to make, and decent at providing fill light for harsh shadows.

While an undergrad at UC Berkeley, I took an advanced photography course in which each student worked on a semester long project with the theme "Downtown Berkeley". For part of the project, we were told to do a general survey of the area, and I spent hours walking up and down the downtown streets.

Jonathan Day-Reiner is the photoblogger behind EighteenPercentGrey, previously known as groundglass.

I had another go at the Bible Heart picture but this time with a tripod to properly hold the flash so that I could get consistent lighting and a ring instead of a UV filter.