Sitepoint Shutterbug 2014

[FONT=Georgia]Hey everyone!

Welcome to our first photography/multimedia contest for 2014. The winner of this will be crowned our official “Sitepoint Shutterbug 2014.”

This contest will be starting from today (right now!) and run until the 28th of February, 2014. At the end, our panel of judges will decide a winner and, as always for our photography contests, we’ll award awesome prizes.

PRIZES:
Sitepoint Shutterbug 2014 will win a full month’s subscription to Learnable and electronic copies of [I]three[/I] [URL=“http://www.sitepoint.com/store/”]Sitepoint books of the winner’s choice.

The first runner up will win electronic copies of their choice of two Sitepoint books.

The second runner up will win an electronic copy of their choice of one Sitepoint book.

RULES
ALL WORK MUST BE YOUR OWN!

You may enter as many times as you wish, but only one image (whichever the judges deem to be your best), will be considered for the judges’ final tally.

Photographs should look as natural as possible. No goofy Photoshop effects or overdone photo-manipulation. Entrants are allowed to correct colour, contrast, and make minor tweaks such as removing litter or distracting objects from a photo, but no surreal colours or crazy filters.

Entrants are encouraged to include at least a sentence describing the photograph or the process of making the photograph. This isn’t a requirement, but it does add interest to viewers following along the contest.

All camera types are welcomed and will be judged equally. Your SLR, film camera, point and shoot, cell phone, bridge camera, are all valid. Please note that the judging will be based on concept and composition, and not on the technical capabilities of your camera. The story your image tells and your technique in composing the scene will matter. How expensive your camera is does not. A grainy, cell phone photograph of a wonderful, genuine moment which is well composed, will always rate much higher than a boring, poor composition from an SLR, no matter how many megapixels, how nice the bokeh effect, or lack of noise in the shadows.

We acknowledge that as the photograph creators, you will retain your copyrights/intellectual property rights to your submitted images. These are your images and you own them. We do, however, plan to share maybe two or three of the better entries in a given week on Sitepoint’s social networks solely for the purpose of drawing attention to, and promoting, this competition thread. By submitting photographs to this thread you are kindly acknowledging this fact and granting us that permission.

Sitepoint Staff (Mentors, Advisors, Team Leaders, Administrators) may post in this contest thread as examples, or just for fun (we like to have fun too!), but please be aware that no images posted by Sitepoint Staff will be considered by the judges. The judges will only consider the submissions by you guys, the wonderful lot of you who make up the Sitepoint Community. You’re the only ones who can win prizes and win the title.

TOPIC
So, all the formalities aside, the topic chosen by public poll for Sitepoint Shutterbug 2014 is…

Geometry

We want to see photographs that highlight shapes, angles, curves, geometry in architecture or nature or the human body, shapes in food, whatever shapes you see, whatever angles you think of, whatever geometry you imagine and want to create.

Good luck, and have fun![/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia]Hello again.

I’d gotten a couple PMs to clarify some of the rules.[/FONT]

You may enter as many times as you wish, but only one image (whichever the judges deem to be your best), will be considered for the judges’ final tally.

[FONT=Georgia]You can post, and we’d advice that you post, as many photographs as you’d like to this thread.

But you could only win one prize. So, for example, if you had the two best images in the whole contest, we can’t give you first and second place. In the interest of letting as many different persons as possible have a chance at a prize, we’ll give you first place and let someone else take second.

If that still doesn’t make sense, please let me know.

IMAGE SIZE
I completely forgot to add this. Submissions should be no larger than 1,000 pixels wide or tall. Anything larger would just take too long to load. Recommended size is about 700 - 900 pixels. That would be large enough for us to see clearly, but not too large that it slows down the download.

FILE NAMING
To make Life easier for the judges, please name your file with your own username, underscore, then the title of your photograph.

So if I was posting a photograph titled ‘A Pattern of Squares’, I would name the file, ‘shaun-of-the-dead_a-pattern-of-squares.jpg’.

POSTING
Please use our ‘Insert Image’ feature to upload your submission.[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia]Here are some ideas:

I readily admit I am poor at coming up with interesting titles for my photographs.

Geometry Cat

My cat, Photon, sitting inside of a pattern of square bricks.

Pattern 01

An interesting pattern of shapes created by a wooden lattice being removed after a long time of shielding the yellow paint below from the weather.

Pattern 02

A blind inside of a conference room.

Sunlight Squares

Interesting geometry of squares created by the sunlight shining through the bars of my window.

And here is some inspiration:

Geometry of Circles

//youtu.be/ch-R1aIM-C0

How many of you Sesame Street addicts remember that?[/FONT]

Photo taken in Parc Güell, Barcelona, Spain

Repetitive Geometry

This is a set of Restrooms but, maintaining the ‘theme’ of the area, they are designed to look like small beach houses.

I forgot to mention, the first picture name is The window

I will add my recent favorite, Light in the circle and stop here, to let others post too :slight_smile:

Four beautiful birds I met in Cambodia…

Off Topic:

Cropped file: John_Betong_four_birds_I_saw_in_Cambodia_041003_1303_06.jpg

I have a small utility that extracts the photo Exif Date and renames the file. Photos saved in a tree structure of aPhotos/Year/YYMM_Month (sorts numerically).

Original photo location: ./aPhotos/2004/0410_October/041003_1303_06.jpg

The album acts as a diary.

I’m afraid this one is pretty big. :frowning: I’ve cropped the image, but it doesn’t really work if I reduce the image size, so be warned.

This is a photo I took on holiday last year of the Forth (Rail) Bridge. It makes me think of those puzzles you see: “How many triangles are in this diagram?” :slight_smile:

I like that one. Will your next vacation be to the Fifth bridge?

Seriously, where is that on a map? Is there a Wikipedia page about the area or about that bridge?

It crosses the River Forth, near Edinburgh. There is something about the shape of it that I’ve always loved - it somehow seems very “friendly”. (: And you get a great view from the train on the way over it, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge

[CENTER]Hay Bales in Belgium, Aug. 2013, shot with a simple Samsung-ES5 camera, 10Mpx.

francky_Hay-Bales.jpg
(shrinked to 750*1000px, 10% compr. )[/CENTER]

[ot]“Out of Competition”
@TechnoBear:
Could not have the heart to look with dry eyes to the Forth Bridge (what a beauty!): left pylon *) 2.3 deg. out of plumb, but not Pisa I hope. :wink:
Here a retouched version. :slight_smile:


*) In fact the rest of the img too, but not so striking (unfortunately not enough margin to rotate/crop the whole img).[/ot]

I like that. :slight_smile:

[ot]

Thanks for straightening me out. :lol: I was standing at the edge of a very steep and winding road, balancing a couple of walking poles and leaning over somebody’s garden wall when I took that, so I’m not at all surprised it’s a bit squinty. :)[/ot]

Off Topic:

I honestly think this photo has great potential. Have you considered applying some HDR filter(s) to this?
Not as part of this competition, but perhaps for entry in other photo competitions!

[FONT=Georgia]Oh wow!

What an interesting range of photographs so far![/FONT]

Thank you. :slight_smile: - No, I didn’t do something with filtering yet.
But now I see that the attachment is not what I had uploaded! :eek:

It is only a difference of 1px hor. and 1px vert., but of course this cropping together with the strong extra compression is nibbling on the sharpness / quality. :wink:

  • After some filter-manipulation I came to this new one: [U]francky_Hay-Bales2.jpg[/U]
    (Played with line accentuating, sharpness, saturation and somewhat less brightness in the dark tones)

@TechnoBear:
Yes, very recognizable. For the most beautiful photographs I always need one more step backward, while the rock behind me doesn’t step backward too. :wink:

I took these about an hour ago, down at the pier. Perhaps not the most picturesque scene, but undoubtedly geometric; cone, cylinder, sphere (or at least spheroid), cuboid, rhombus - what more could you ask? :lol:

Night photography panoramic, at Monte Verde - Brazil. This image was made from 15 images merged by photoshop. Each picture: Nikon D5100, Nikkor 18-55, @18, f/3.5, 15 seconds, ISO 800, tripod. The luminance is from moon. <snip>

Got Bugs?

A few photos I made with a piece of string, some LEDs and a long exposure time…

That is very creative. And fits perfectly into our theme (Geometry).