Back in early April, I invited all of you to enter a photo contest that I was sponsoring. I decided to only have a first and second place winner, due to the low number of entrants. This was a first for me, as it may have been for some of you. Others, like winner Cindy Beck, may be new to photo contests, but not to photography. She took this beautiful shot of tulips.
This was her only entry and it was certainly a good one! Congratulations Cindy!
Photo and camera information:
Title: The Joy of Spring (Tulips)
Photographer: Cindy Beck
Camera: Canon EOS 10D
Lens: Canon 24-70mm
ISO: 200
Shutter Speed: 1/250
Aperture: f9.5
Focal length: 58mm
Prizes – The first place winner of this contest will receive a three day two night travel certificate, good for travel in the following locations:Las Vegas, NV – Laughlin, NV – Reno, NV – Orlando, FL – Atlantic City, NJ – Cancun, MX – Anaheim, CA (Disneyland Area) – Seattle, WA , – S. Padre Island, TX – Lake Tahoe, NV – Daytona Beach, FL – Palm Springs, CA – San Antonio, TX – Gatlinburg, TN – White Mountain, NH – Honolulu, HI – Pocono Mountains, PA – New Orleans, LA – Myrtle Beach, SC – Puerto Vallarta, MX – Mazatlan, MX – Victoria, BC – Branson, MO Portland,OR, as well as having their winning photo featured on my blog, with info about the photographer and links to their website, if applicable.
Cindy followed the requirements of the contest, and referred to some blog posts that helped her to take this shot. The requirements for the contest were as follows:
Requirements – I am not requiring much except that you read my blog posts, and use at least one technique for taking better photos, as explained in my blogs. When sending photos, please refer to the post that you learned the technique from (a permalink is suggested). Entries without a reference to one of my blog posts will be returned with an explanation as to why it is being returned.
Cindy included these posts in her entry email:
Common Errors in Photographing Subjects, and commented –
“I kept the background in mind, making sure the junk
was cleared out and background was sufficiently
blurred so that you couldn’t identify the tangled,
woody vines.”
Copyright Information, to which she says “If I hadn’t just read this blog today, I probably
would have overlooked putting the copyright on my
entry!”
and Depth of Field, “This was a little tricky, since I wanted flowers in
the foreground in focus, and yet the background out of
focus. And since there was a breeze, that made it even
harder. I reviewed the info on the blog before taking
the shot.”
Getting the separation between subject and background is tough if you are using selective focus. And windy conditions don’t allow you to use a slower film speed than she used, otherwise everything would have been blurred to some extent, even when using a tripod.
The second place winner was Shannon, with this picture of her daughter, Grace.
I love b/w photography because it removes a lot of the distracting colors, and leaves you with the pure emotion of the scene. While the background would have been totally distracting in color, it works okay here. The focus is clearly on Grace’s face, and her nose is just about right on the intersection of the rule of thirds lines I talked about previously.
This draws your eyes right into the scene and right to Grace’s expression. Then you want to know more about what is going on with Grace. “What is she looking at?”, “What is she thinking?”, “Is she happy about it?”, “Why does she only half smile?”
So, congratulations Shannon, nice job. To the other readers of this post, I would like to know what you think Grace is looking at, feeling, thinking, …etc. What do you think is going on in this picture? If you have no idea, make something up. Send in your guesses, and we will ask Shannon to tell us what she knows about the shot. The winner’s name and answer will be mentioned in a future post.