Chromasia Training: Blog

The 'Spirited Community' competition I mentioned in my last blog post, organised by the Isle of Jura, is now half way through.

The first four weekly winners (selected from almost 500 entries) have been announced, and have each won:

• An Olympus VG-170 camera.
• A bottle of Jura 16 year old single malt whisky.
• A 12 month subscription to David's online Photography and Post-production tutorials.

If you would like to take part, you have just another four weeks to upload your images.

If you enter just one photography competition this year, make sure it's the 'Spirited Community' competition organised by the by the Isle of Jura (one of the Southern Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland).

All you need to do is submit a photograph and 50 word description of why it captures a sense of community spirit.

For the next eight weeks, the photo that gets the most public votes during that week will win the photographer:

• An Olympus VG-170 camera.
• A bottle of Jura 16 year old single malt whisky.
• A 12 month subscription to David's online Photography and Post-production tutorials.

At the end of the competition the three overall winners (one from the UK, one from the US, and one from the rest of the world) will win:

• A week's all-expenses trip to the Isle of Jura, including a stay in the exclusive Jura Lodge and a VIP tour of the Jura distillery and island.
• An Olympus PEN E-PL3 camera.
• A one-day photography workshop on the island provided by David.

You can jump straight to the competition website below, or read on for the full press release.

http://www.isleofjura.com/communityspirit/

If you do submit an image, please leave a comment to let us know.

Every year Gulf Photo Plus – the premier photography training company in Dubai and the Middle East – runs two major international events: one in March, the other in November. I've been lucky enough to be an instructor at every one since 2007 and have run workshops on various aspects of post-production (e.g. Creating Dramatic Images, Understanding the Curves tool, and Enhancing Portraits), a Landscape Photography workshop on the shooting and post-production of desert and urban landscapes, how to shoot the architecture of Dubai, a crash course in HDR photography, and a whole range of other workshops and seminars.

The November 'FotoWeekend' events are relatively small scale – around four of five instructors – but the March event brings together a much bigger group. This year there were 13 of us – me, Zack Arias, David Burnett, Greg Heisler, David Hobby, Chris Hurtt, Bobbi Lane, Joe McNally, Louis Pang, Martin Prihoda, Claire Rosen, Steve Simon and David Tejada – and, as always, it was a delight to meet up with those I know well and a pleasure to meet those who were attending GPP for the first time.

I could spend a long time writing nice things about GPP, including how well it's run by Mohamed and Hala and the rest of the GPP team, and could spend an equal amount of time writing about how much I enjoy taking part, how great it is to work with capable and enthusiastic students, and how much I enjoy taking photographs in and around Dubai ... but I won't, at least not now, because what I want to talk about in this post is one specific aspect of the March event: the shoot-out.

If you're a subscriber to our photography and post-production tutorials you'll be familiar with our Critique Slot Screencasts. These are critiques of our subscribers' images, normally about an hour long, and split into two sections. In the first part I work through and critique the edit supplied by one of our subscribers – explaining the changes that were made, offering alternative solutions, and so on – while in the second I re-edit the image from the original RAW file.

For this image, supplied by Doug Stroud, the processing centred around Doug's creative aims. Specifically, whether it was possible to create an increased tension between the foreground and background: the happy/innocent children at play, offset against a moody and ominous background.

If you'd be interested in taking a look at a low-res version (730px wide rather than 1280px), and finding out how I would process this image, read on …

Does the world need another photography blog? Probably not, but I'm going to create one anyway. Read on to find out why …