Thanks David and as Stefan has pointed out if anyone is really desperate they could always photograph themselves

One of my friends also suggested a shot of a certain Sunday newspaper but I think that might be pushing your luck

Glyn

Is this competition going to get a record number of entries? I count 52 entries at the moment and think the current record holder is Hyram with 56 entries for his brilliant windows competition.

I'm glad I'm not judging this one

Glyn

Apologies, i'm a bit late joining this thread, been busy

I'm another advocate for Firefox, mainly because of the add-ons of which my favourites are:

Adblock Plus
British English Dictionary
Exif Viewer (but it has to be v1.52, from the author's web site to work with Firefox 3.6)
Exif (a simpler alternative to Exif viewer)
No script

I find Exif & Exif Viewer really useful where a right click on photo in a web page gives you access to the details.

As a new Mac user I did start out trying to use Safari but I'm afraid after a couple of hours of frustration, probably my fault and not the application's, I reverted back to Firefox.

Glyn

The place to discuss Fortnightly Competition # 36 - "People".

As is traditional I'll stop looking in this thread once the first submission is posted.

Good luck,

Glyn

The subject for this fortnightly competition is "People".

I have never been much good at taking photos of people. I guess this is because of my engineering background. I seem to be able to understand "things" but never people.

So I want you to show me how to get the best pictures of people. From my direction these can be a single person to any number of people. It can be formal, like a portrait, or informal like a street photo. I'll be looking for something that shows that the subject enjoyed the experience as well as the usual high quality of thought and technique that the participants of these competitions demonstrate so well.

The usual rules for the fortnightly competition apply. Particularly that the photograph must have been originally shot between now and 6pm (GMT) on Wednesday 3rd March 2010.

Good luck and I'm looking forward to reviewing your pictures

Glyn

Gosh - Many thanks for awarding first place to my light bulb, I'm overwhelmed. I thought there were a number of fantastic entries. I was particularly impressed by David Trout's urinal, not only the photo but having the imagination and nerve to carry it out.

I also need to say thanks to Hefty1 as with out him I would have probably submitted a mediocre photo of an Olympus trip .

I'm not too brilliant at Photoshop but do have an engineering background so there was no magic. The light bulb was blu-tacked to piece of white card into which I had punched a pair of holes for some wires that were directly soldered to the light bulb. I don't seem to have a dimmer any more so the glimmer was created by putting a few other light bulbs in series. Insulating tape and an RCD were used to keep it safe.

Hipperty say's thanks for the mention but on safety grounds he just watched

I'm giving some thought to the next subject and should post something up later.

Wow, many thanks again,

Glyn

Apologies for the edits I'm typing this on small Apple keyboard which a fairly new experience to me

But you don't include the date the shot was taken and my read of the exif data says:

Camera Maker: PENTAX
Camera Model: PENTAX K20D
Image Date: 2009:10:31 19:14:24
Focal Length: 21.0mm (35mm equivalent: 31mm)
Aperture: f/4.0
Exposure Time: 0.0013 s (1/750)
ISO equiv: 400
Exposure Bias: none
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: No

Which might be a problem, and a shame, because I think its a brilliant shot

Glyn

My preferred starting point, using a K-7, is "P" mode in "Normal" but running it as pseudo AV by using the rear dial and adjusting the aperture to achieve the required DOF. (This does confuse the exif which usually says I'm in AV mode.) I like having the green button to get back to the starting position if I mess it all up. Occasionally, for long exposure work, I will run it in "M".

I start off with fixed centre point focusing but will go to select the focus point and move it around if the subject framing needs it. I usually now always use auto focus as my eyes are just not up to manual focusing. Although for macro work I might use auto as a starting point and have a go at manual.

On the K20D I used centre weighted metering but on the K-7 I seem to get better results with multi-segment metering but sometimes resort to tweaking the ev. (I have to then remember to remove any ev adjustment to not get caught out next time )

I have been caught out too many times with auto ISO that I now set it fixed to 100 and only increase it if the shutter speed gets too slow for the required DOF.

I used to think there were far too many things to remember but now, most of the time, it all seems to come together ok. However for some shots I only seem to be able to spot the awkward issues when they are put on the, larger, PC screen .

Glyn

That is fine with me. However from my direction to do justice to my interpretation of this subject requires a level of detachment that I know I don't have, also requires courage and may involve some risk which I'm not prepared to take. If I was on commission to, say, Time Magazine then it may be different but not for a user group competition.

I think that while these competitions should be challenging they also need to be open and inclusive to attract lots of entries and encourage new members. I'm worried that this particular subject will have an inverse impact.

Glyn

5 Year old HP Media Center m1190 with a P4 HT @ 3.4Ghz
Upgraded to 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, ATI 4850 graphics card, Blu-ray player and ESATA port.

2 x 24" BenQ full HD (1920 x 1080) monitors calibrated with a Pantone Huey.

2 x 500GB configured as Raid 1 in a Buffalo Linkstation Pro duo NAS used as my photo vault.

2 x 500GB configured as Raid 1 in a Buffalo Linkstation Pro duo NAS used for backups.

1 x 160GB NAS now in retirement as an FTP server for the 4 ip cameras around the outside of the house.

2 x 500GB USB drives for general expansion.

1 x 1TB Samsung story drive formatted in Ext3 as a backup to our Freesat PVR but also available via one of the NAS drives.

1 x 320GB ESATA drive from an upgrade to the above PVR waiting to become useful.


1 newly acquired Mac Mini, 2GHz Cor2Duo, 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD running Snow leopard.

1 Samsung NC20 netbook.

1 Canon ip4300 printer and access to a Canon i6500 A3 printer networked via my wife's PC.

Loads of other old stuff, including an Acorn RiscPC 600 which I just can't seem to throw away

Glyn