We're trying something a bit different this month -- TWO themes instead of one. Since we had two winners tie last month, and used a theme from one winner, Gary, and we had a different winner this month, we'll catch up by letting you choose from two different themes.

The themes for this month's competition have been chosen by 1st Place WINNERS of our September and October competitions -- ejk and CJSwartz.

ejk chose the theme "Black & White". She tied for 1st Place in the September competition.

CJSwartz chose the theme "Similar or Different". She won 1st Place in the October competition.

Earlier this year, we decided that each member may submit only one entry for each month's competition, so choose one of the themes and submit one entry that fits that theme.

Deadline for submitting your image: Tuesday November 27th, 2007 at 12 pm EDT.

The goal of these friendly competitions is to inspire members to grab our camera and actually use it. New photos are our goal, but we will accept recently photographed/recently processed images that fit the topic also.

We'd love to hear any shooting info you have (shutter speed, ISO, f-stop) this isn't the place for Photoshop art filters [we have other forums for that.]

Feel free to add info about what/where you shot, and why you chose your subject/composition, etc. when you post your image in this thread.

What does the winner get? The winner gets to choose the next assignment (this time PLUS gets all the nice accolades that come from being chosen "Winner".

Post your photo submissions in this thread, and we'll have the separate thread for discussion of this assignment and your comments regarding any of the entries that strike your fancy.

All RetouchPro members may take part in the competition and all members may vote, whether they have submitted an entry or not.

Great themes! Hmmmm, which one will I choose...decisions, decisions!

Great themes.

Thought I may kick this one off. I haven't taken a B&W before so would appreciate a little feed back thanks.

It is a picture of an old piece of mining machinery which is in our backyard. I used a Panasonic FZ-20.
f 7.3
1/125 sec
ISO 100
in black and white mode.

Scubamargie, I don't know a lot about BW but I think that's an awsome picture. Are those gears really that big or do they just look huge because of how you shot them?

Don't shoot much (if any) B&W shots, so it was a complete change to try and get something interesting using just tone, hope I've succeeded some.

This image was taken with a Nikon film camera using a 28mm lens ...

This was an opportunity to engage two facinations: BW conversions and the interesting shapes/angles possibilities of train tracks, something to shoot while waiting for trains! Nikon D70s, ISO200, 1/800, f3.5 (Sigma 50-150 f2.8).

For those who enjoy BW conversions, if you haven't done so yet take a look at the following thread that has some good info on this subject:
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-art-101/4769-tutorial-05-converting-color-image-black-white-grayscale-bw.html

Thanks Janet for pointing me in this direction and to ekj for suggesting this theme.

Another of my trees in black and white. Canon Rebel XT; 24-105mm at 75mm zoom; F16, ISO 100, 1/20 of a second.

Janet

Here is my entry, I haven't really taken a photo that I like, but I wanted to post one to show you I was trying.
Canan G3 on flower mode with a flash, obviously ha ha.

Shot this with my Canon G3 at f4, 1/160, ISO 200, no flash. Was just trying to see if I could use my old camera for the cat/dog shelter photos that I'm doing, and started working on the image and decided to enter it. I cropped it a lot, and dodged / burned some. I did not convert to black/white, but the photo contains black and white.

Cathy, I'm glad you entered your image, and we love to have more people take part. Also, now the cats outnumber the ducks! ;)

For the first time, I had trouble getting the file uploaded - when I sized it in CS3, I used the new option of including .xmp file data and the file was larger than the size I requested. When I realized that adding the file data was making the file larger, I turned off that option and was able to upload the file.