2nd place!!

I entered four of my photographs in the Juneau Photography Contest in April. I entered the Creative, Micro, Animal, and Juneau categories. Each entry cost $10 and had to be mounted on a white 16x20 foam core board. The money earned from the entries was donated to a cancer awareness group called Love Hope Strength. The judging took place on May 6th and I was awarded a second place ribbon in the Creative category, and honorable mentions in the Micro and Juneau categories! Here are my entries.

"Treadwell Ruin"
2nd place Creative color

This photo was processed to be a High Dynamic Range photograph, or HDR. Basically, I use a tripod and take 3 photos of the same subject using the auto-bracketing feature on my camera. It shoots 3 shots in about a second; one at a regular exposure, one at -2 exposure, and one at +2 exposure. (I'm shooting with a Canon Rebel XT, so those are about my only choices...but you can auto-bracket as many exposures as you want). After shooting, I grab all three photos and drag them into a program I have called Photomatix Pro 3. It stacks all three photos onto one another and brings out detail from all three photos. Then (after processing it how I like...I think this one is called "painterly") I open the photo in CS4 and tweak it just a little and add a high pass layer to make the detail even more crispy.

These are the three original photos I took on auto-bracketing...+2 looks washed out, -2 looks really dark, and the third is taken at the indicated exposure.




"Painting With Light"
honorable mention - Juneau category

I went out to the glacier one night and played with the "bulb" setting on my camera. This
was shot at f/8, ISO 200, at 35 sec. I found that when I stood between the camera and the writing and tried to write, you could see me in the shot...so I had to stand behind the flashlight and write everything backwards! (see the failed attempt below...you can totally see me smeared all through the picture)

"Melting My Heart"
honorable mention - Micro category

This is a red, heart-shaped ice cube melting on a white dinner plate. I used a long exposure, and while the shutter was open, I took a flashlight and shined it all the way around the plate. It made for an interesting effect


"Anticipation"
Animal category

This photo was also processed as an HDR image. Unlike the other one where I used bracketing, I had to take this one in camera RAW and it was pseudo-processed in the same program. I couldn't take 3 identical pictures of this dog, since he was moving around a lot, but by taking the photo in RAW, I was able to get nearly the same effect. Below is the original, unprocessed/tweaked photo.