Photo Challenge News & Ideas

Photo challenges are something new for Learn To Take Photos students. The Challenges offer another engaging way for students to share photos and have fun with some friendly competition. All students are invited to participate by uploading and rating photos. There are two prizes for each challenge. One prize is awarded to the Peoples' Choice highest rated photo and the other prize is awarded to the Instructors' Choice photo.

Congratulations to the winner of the most recent challenge. The People and the Instructors agree! It is unanimous, the winner of the Animals Photo Challenge is: Phyllis Burchett with her photo "Cute Kid". Phyllis wins a $20 coupon from Learn To Take Photos and a $10 Gift Card from iTunes!


This week's photo challenge theme is "Sunrise/Sunset". You may submit 3 photos of your choice that suit the theme. The upload deadline is Sunday April 12th 11:59 pm. Please click here to upload your photos.

The "Fill The Frame" challenge is open for rating. Please click here to rate photos. Remember, you must rate at least 50% of the photos for your votes to count. The deadline for rating this challenge is Sunday April 12th 11:59 pm.

Don't forget we have new courses starting Wednesday April 15th. They include:

• Spring Nature and Landscapes
  
• Black Shadow Backgrounds *
  
• Horses in Action *
  
• Beginners Guide to Great Photos
  
• Digital SLR Photography 101
  
• Learn more and sign up now!

We hope students will go out and shoot for the challenges. The best way to become an excellent photographer is to go out and shoot! Here are some ideas and tips for this week’s challenge.

We get lots of misty mornings and passing storms this time of year. These conditions make for very dramatic scenes. A misty morning at sunrise is hard to beat! The only thing that might be more beautiful is sunset after a storm.

Mist and fog simplify the scene by limiting visibility and concealing things in the background. A scene that usually doesn’t work can become beautiful when simplified by fog. Jump in your car and drive around on misty mornings to see things in a whole new way.

Clouds of any kind make for exciting photos. Clouds near the horizon are ideal. They light up and turn beautiful colors at sunrise and sunset. Clouds diffuse the sunlight and soften shadow and contrast.

Silhouettes are a great idea for sunrise/sunset photos, too. There is a world of colorful and dramatic possibilities for silhouettes.

The Golden Hour
The golden hour is the hour right around sunrise and sunset. When the sun is near the horizon the light is very warm in color and very directional. The light and shadows are soft. Those are the magic hours when professional quality shots are made. You will discover a wonderful peace and stillness at those times of day. If you haven’t been out shooting at dawn and dusk you have a real treat coming to you.

Check out www.sunrisesunset.com to find the time of sunrise and sunset in your area. Be sure to get to your location 30 minutes early. There is nothing worse than racing to get somewhere and watching the beautiful light disappear. You have to be there before the light!

When you think sunset is over, stay anyway and wait. After the sun goes over the horizon the sky will light up with color. Sometimes the color and light show will go on for quite awhile after sunset. Stay until all the light is gone.

How to include the sun in your photos
Shooting towards the sun and including it in your image can be very dramatic. But, just putting a big burning sun smack in the middle of your sky is not the best idea because it is going to burn out a big, featureless hole in your picture.

A better way to include the sun is to have it peaking out from behind something. The sun could be just emerging from the clouds, cresting the horizon, behind a tree, etc. You only need a few rays to make a beautiful sunburst.

Put your camera on Aperture Priority at f/8. Fill the frame with your background without including the sun. Pick an area off to the side of the sun and lock the exposure using the AE Lock method for your camera (check your camera manual). Recompose your picture and shoot.

The advantage of using AE Lock is that conditions change very quickly at sunrise and sunset. The light will rise or fall in a matter of short minutes. AE Lock is great for rapidly changing light or static subjects where you can take your time metering, locking and recomposing.

Full Moon April 9th
The moon is full on Thursday April 9th. There will be some great opportunities to shoot compositions that include the full moon rising and setting around that date. Before April 9th the moon will rise before sunset. Wednesday might be the best day to try for a full moon in a sunset sky. You can check the times of moon rise/set on www.sunrisesunset.com too.

New photography tip is available
We have posted a new photography tip about how to get a blurred or soft focus background in your photos. read more

Happy shooting!

Christina and Laura

Meeting People Via Photography

When I started really getting involved in horse photography I quickly realized that it could help me with a big problem in my life. I was isolated. I had a handful of good friends but my life wasn't busy enough.

Years have gone by now and my life is so full I can't find the time to do everything I want to do! I've met so many diverse and interesting people through photography, gone lots of places and seen all kinds of things.

The shared interest is a real door opener. There is always something to talk about and something to do. And, we have so much fun doing it!

On our school website we say "meet new people" in our descriptions and we mean it. It is such an amazing thing how social networking and photography fit like hand and glove. Recently, I have started participating in Facebook and have connected and reconnnected with all kinds of people. Facebook and photographers seem like a very good match.

We have met dozens of people at workshops we have given and taken and stayed in touch. This afternoon I am going to take pictures for our silhouette course with a lady I met last year at a workshop. She lives only about a half hour away on a beautiful farm. If not for the shared interest of photography we probably would not have met.

It's a wonderful life!

Learn To Take Photos Announces Winter Snow Photography Challenge Winners

Photography Challenge winners come from all over the US and Canada. Online photography course offering digital photography tips for beautiful winter snow photos will run two additional sessions in February.

(PRWEB) January 19, 2009 – Learn To Take Photos is pleased to announce the winners of the January Winter Snow Photography Challenge. Photos were submitted from all over the US and Canada. The winning photo was submitted by Carol Fjellanger of Zumbro Falls, Minnesota. The photo titled “Simmer Down” is a portrait of an adorable miniature horse in the snow.

Carol says "I'm so excited you selected my photo as the winner, there were so many good photographs, it was a very interesting class, and very informative to read your critique of each photo."

The photographs were as diverse in subject matter as they are in location. In addition to the winner, five runner-ups were chosen. They are: “Urban Broodmares” by Jessica Hein of Justin, Texas, “Foggy Morning” by Kathy Higgins of West Sacramento, California, “Frozen in Motion” by Wendy Hodges of Hayden, Idaho, “Split Rail Fence” by Jo-Ann Hodgson of Burnt River, Ontario and “Winter Feed” by Bryan Smith of Ogema, Saskatchewan.

Wendy Hodges of Idaho says “This was a great course. It challenged me to get out there and take some pictures! It was a lot of fun, a great learning experience and I was impressed with all the feedback and help from the instructors. Thank you so much!”



The online photography course is offered by www.learntotakephotos.com and taught by Canadian photographer Christina Handley. It snows up to 6 months out of the year in Ontario and few photographers have more opportunity or experience shooting in the challenging conditions of snow.

The popular course offers digital photography tips for taking great winter snow photos and includes tips for finding subjects, protecting your gear and getting good exposures in the snow. “Exposure is the trickiest part of photographing snow scenes,” says Handley. “We teach step by step how your camera sees the snow and how to get a correct exposure.”

The course is attracting dozens of students from all over the world. The online photography course consists of a written lesson with lots of examples and a photography assignment. Students upload their photos and receive helpful feedback and advice. The learning environment is supportive, fun and creative. Everyone is encouraged to ask questions, discuss ideas and participate.

Learn to Take Photos offers a free short course each month for new students. With ongoing enrollment you can join anytime. The Winter Snow Photography course will begin Monday Feb 2 with a second session starting Feb 18. New students can use the coupon code SNOWINFEB at checkout and the course is FREE.

Go to http://www.learntotakephotos.com/winter_course.php for the course outline.

About Learn To Take Photos
Learn To Take Photos is an online photography school taught by well known horse photographers Christina Handley and Laura Cotterman. Students learn photography, get to know new people and share ideas in a fun, encouraging and supportive environment. Learn To Take Photos’ online photography courses are designed for adult learners and are self-directed, creative and motivating. Students have one-to-one access to an expert photographer.

Thoughts about image quality

I was looking through some old Nikon D70 photos for some good examples of digital noise. I found lots! I also found that many photos I remember as good are pretty blurry - not very sharp at all. Actually they are pretty terrible truth be told.

I was telling Christina on the phone about my blurry, crap photos and she was saying she finds the same thing. We were reminiscing about cameras like the D1X and the D70 that we thought were so great when we first got them. Even comparing the first digital cameras we had to the Nikon F5. It seems like every generation of camera seemed like a great improvement at the time but in hindsight the images from the D1X other obsolete bodies look terrible now.

We've gotten so picky about image quality. Having been early adopters of cameras like the D2X and Mark III that had focusing problems has made us focusing freaks who overanalyze the files looking for signs of camera malfuntions. Its absurd really because even those crappy old D70 files (at least the good ones) print up very nicely.

So, does that mean our image libraries become sort of obsolete as technology marches on? In one wya, yes. But I have many old pictures of dogs that have gone to heaven and kids that have grown up that I wouldn't trade for the most technically perfect 21 megapixel image in the world. All of which reminds me of one of the most real values of a photograph which are the memories it captures and preserves.

Merry Christmas Video Card

We thought it would be a fun and different way to make a Christmas greeting by making a video card. We have been very pleasantly surprised by how popular it has become.

Here is the permalink www.learntotakephotos.com/christmas/christmas_card.php

There is also a $20 coupon on that page.

Some people are wondering how the video was made. I made it using Photodex's ProShow Producer http://www.photodex.com/. Producer is a great program with lots of possibilities. Like everything with photography be prepared to spend some time fiddling but its very fun and creative.

We have thought about offering a course on making slideshows. I am just trying to figure out the logistics of uploading the slide shows.

Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam

Recently I took a day trip to the Conowingo Dam in northeastern Maryland on the Susquehanna River. Conowingo is a place where Bald Eagles congregate in the winter because fish are plentiful. Conowingo is supposed to be one of the best spots east of the Mississippi to view Bald Eagles. There are lots! It was really amazing to count 100 or more mature and juvenile eagles. There were many other birds as well. The place is sort of a bird watchers mecca.

The eagles were fishing and flying up in the trees to eat their fish.

There were lots of fish fights and skirmishes too.

I had never shot with a super telephoto lens before but I rented a Canon 500mm f/4 IS from my good buddy Roger at http://www.lensrentals.com/. Roger is very helpful and gave me some pointers for using the lens and fixed me up with a heavy duty ball head. For a horse photographer like me this was a real departure! That lens weighs 8.5lbs. I experimented with shooting on a monopod, tripod and even hand holding a few shots.

Let me digress for a moment and tell you that there were at least 100 photographers there with 500mm or longer lenses. Plenty of 800mms in fact. It was a stunning amount of big glass. You would think you were at the Olympics or something.

It was an amazing day, to be in the presence of those apex birds of prey. Super nice people too, those bird photographers. It was very different kind of shooting with big guys saying "Come on! Get in here, we'll make room for you so you can get a shot too." For this kind of photography it was all about gear and technique and a shared passion for the eagles.

Winter Snow photos

Winter arrived in my part of the world weeks ago and it's showing no signs of going away. Here are a couple of photos from this past weekend (Dec. 7th).

Our January Short course - Winter Photography is starting on January 1st and the class is filling fast. If you are sitting on the fence about taking this fantastic course, I say Jump off and sign up!