My first HDR, upcoming contest

While I'd love to write a post about the debate as to what category HDR photography should be placed (is it manipulated or not? short answer: its manipulated), I have a 20 minute presentation on Colombia's FARC for my World Terrorism class on Thursday. So right now, this is procrastination.

I actually shot these pictures back in 2008 to use as an HDR, but only recently got around to getting a program for processing HDR. Definitely need to try my hand again at this for a little more of a compelling subject, and one that offers a DYNAMIC RANGE (ya know- for the HIGH dynamic range look?) instead of a black sky. But, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I wanted to avoid that overly-plastic look that some HDR gets but I don't think I succeeded very well.

In other news, I have an upcoming contest I entered. The gallery opens on Friday. You can see my entries HERE wish me luck!

Augusta Photography Festival

I'm going to start this by saying that I do not win things very well. I don't exactly know why...but I've never been comfortable with being 'The Best'. I was very happy being 2nd chair in band, coming in 2nd place is a comfortable place for me. For me first place never makes any sense. If I win first place in something all I can think is "but I got lucky on that one..." or something along those lines and then somehow my conscious ends up feeling as though I robbed a talent of their hard earned work.

That being said..."Best in Show". I can't seem to wrap my head around the concept.

There were over 500 entries for the Augusta Photography Festival, a bi-annual event in Augusta, GA. From those 500 entries, 10 from each category were selected to be finalists (60 total).

Best in show means...that of all the 500 pictures...then of the 60 best of those - this was the BEST of every.single.one. in every.single.category.

It doesn't make sense.

Beware of the water in Georgia.

"A Nation's Debt"

Photo Journalism Contest

Great news tonight! I won second place in the annual photo journalism contest at the Columbia Camera Club. The goal is to tell a story in 7 pictures or less.

The 1st place entry was an accident between two semi-trucks. It consisted of fireballs, firemen, and helicopters. No one stood a chance, not only was it a great subject (photographically, not so wonderful for the people involved), but the photos were incredibly well done.

I got a score of 12 out of 15, the winner got 13 out of 15.
There were three judges (2 of the 3 of them were photo journalists themselves), scored on a scale of 1-5. It was my 1st time placing in a contest at camera club, and also my 1st time entering the Photo Journalism contest

Many thanks to Shannan Fraley for being my model, Amanda Jones for helping with some props and composition ideas, and Jennifer Logue for some last minute photos and editing help (as I was without a computer).

Here was my entry.