Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and posted here. Thank you to everyone who participated!

It’s time for another PetaPixel giveaway! Huzzah!

Today I’m giving away a copy of onOne Software’s Plug-In Suite 4.5, a package that retails for $499.95.

This is a package of six award-winning plugins for Photoshop, and four of the plugins can be used with Lightroom and Aperture. Here are the plugins:

Genuine Fractals: The industry standard for resizing images
PhotoTools: Instantly give your photographs a professional look
PhotoFrame: Add edge effects, backgrounds, and adornments
FocalPoint: Easily add selective focus
Mask Pro: Remove unwanted backgrounds
PhotoTune: Quick and easy color correction

If you purchase all six of them separately, they would cost about $1,300. One lucky PetaPixel reader is going to get all of them for free.

Entering this contest is easy, but please pay attention to detail to ensure that your entry counts.

To enter, all you need to do is answer the following question:

What is your favorite or most memorable photographic experience?

Just like most of our previous giveaways, there are two (2) ways to send your answer to us. You can use both ways to double your chances of winning, but please don’t use either of them more than once:

1. Leave a comment on this entry with your response
2. Tweet your response (it doesn’t even need to be @petapixel), but be sure to link to this post (http://bit.ly/kKCQv) at the end of your tweet. Here’s an example tweet:
   

   My fav photo experience was when I went to the grand canyon in 2006! http://bit.ly/kKCQv

Linking to this page in your tweet will automatically add your tweet to the “Social Media Reactions” list under the comments. This makes it easier for us to manage entries and randomly select a winner.

In our previous giveaways, you could simply tweet the answer to us without a link, but I had to record each of the tweets by hand. As the number of entries has gone up, it has gotten harder and harder to do by hand, so I’m asking that it be a little more automated now.

The deadline for entering this contest is the evening of Saturday, July 25th, 2009. We will randomly select the winner and post the results at that time.

Good luck!

Oh, and also — if you submit a really unique or interesting answer (feel free to include links to photographs!) that catches our attention, we might include some of them in the results post.

Update: Don’t worry if your response doesn’t show up in the Social Media Reactions immediately after you tweet it. It’ll show up eventually.

Update: Just to clarify, adding a link to this post is only required for tweet entries. If you respond via a comment, there’s no need to do anything else aside from respond. We just need the link in the tweets to track them.

Keep the favorite experiences coming. They’ve been extremely interesting to read so far!

Update: Looks like the Social Media Reactions aren’t showing up as they should. We’ll try to get it sorted out and working for our next giveaway. For this giveaway, I’ll include the tweet entries by searching for our link (http://bit.ly/kKCQv).

Update: This giveaway has ended, and the randomly selected winners were posted here. Thanks to everyone who participated! Stay tuned for more awesome giveaways!

High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is really interesting, and is mentioned a lot these days. Some people love it, while other hate it. Whatever camp you’re in, I would still recommend that you at least try it out, since I believe you actually learn the most in photography from experimentation.

Here’s an HDR photograph I took in 2008 of the Campanile on the UC Berkeley campus:

It’s composed of two photographs that I took without a tripod, and was created using Photomatix by HDRsoft. It seems like everyone these days is using Photomatix for their HDR work, and if you’ve heard of HDR, you’ve probably also heard of Photomatix.

Well today, I’m giving away two (2) copies of Photomatix Pro Plus, each worth $119. This bundle includes not only the standalone program, but also plugins for Photoshop, Lighroom, and Aperture. Of course, feel free to downgrade to one of the individual packages if this much software is overwhelming.

Entering this contest is simple. All you need to do is answer the following question:

Who is your favorite photographer?

Any photographer is okay, though try not to say it’s yourself. Links are definitely encouraged if the photographer is modern enough to have a website!

There are two ways you can send your answer to me, and feel free to use both methods for double the chance to win! You can…

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. Tweet your answer to @petapixel on Twitter

Winners will be randomly picked and announced in a week on the evening of July 18th, 2009.

Good luck!

If you’d like to view more examples of what you can do with Photomatix, check out the Photomatix group on Flickr, and to learn how to actually do HDR photography, try reading this tutorial by Trey Ratcliff on Stuck in Customs.

Another tip: If you include a link in your tweet back to this post, your tweet will automatically show up below the comments section, allowing you to share your answer not only with me, but with PetaPixel readers as well!

A big thank you to everyone who entered our latest giveaway. The winner of the free QuikPod handheld tripod is:

#12: Patricia Reiser

Congratulations! I hope you enjoy your new accessory and put it to good use! Please send an email to editor@petapixel.com to claim your QuikPod.

We have many more giveaways planned, so please check back soon. Also, I’m definitely looking forward to Monday, when we’ll be hearing from David Nightingale of chromasia!

Have a great weekend!

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 are the winners:

#102: Frank DelValle (@frankdelvalle)

Canon EOS 1D Mark III

#84: Diana Pink (iamdianthus.com)

While I love my D80 with the 18-50mm 2.8 lens, it will never replace the 1970′s Minolta with 35mm lens I learned with.

#141: Chris Scott (@nzcjs):

Just starting HDR, see http://tinyurl.com/nhl4yg Favourite camera would have to be my Nikon D300. Do I win now ;-)

#140: Jon Krombein (@Krombein)

my favorite camera is the Canon 1Ds Mk3.

#79: Dustin Dodge (dustindodgephotography.com)

Camera: Canon 5D
Lens: 24-70mm 2.8L

#123: Donnita Mae (@DonnitaMae)

My favorite lens in the Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS.

#34: Robin (aroundtheisland.blogspot.com)

My only SLR is my Nikon D40 so I’ll go with that. It’s either that or the older than ancient Yashica I had as a teen many (far too many) years ago.

Congratulations to all the winners! Please send an email to editor@petapixel.com to claim your HDR PhotoStudio license.

If you didn’t win, don’t fret. I have some more giveaways planned for the near future, including more HDR software licenses!

Now, some interesting things I discovered through laboriously tabulating the entries by hand:

The most popular cameras were the Canon 5D Mark II with 12 entries, and the Nikon D90 with 10 entries.

The most popular lenses were the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS with 8 entries, and the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D with 4 entries.

You can download the final tally here, though I’m not sure why you’d want to.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this first giveaway. I definitely had a lot of fun reading through everyone’s favorite cameras and lenses, and am definitely looking forward to the next giveaway.

P.S. PetaPixel just broke the 1,000th follower mark on Twitter (@petapixel). Thanks everyone!