Entries are now being accepted for this month's competition -- make a post in this thread and attach your entry.

The theme for this month's competition has been chosen by the
1st Place WINNER of our March 2008 competition -- DWTHOMP - Dennis!!

Dennis has chosen the subject/theme "Trees".
Trees are part of our planet's life cycle, and are among the most long-lived creations on Earth. They are beautiful, variable, and some are endangered.


Each member may submit only one entry for this competition. You may change your entry (or submit another entry in its place) up until the deadline.

Deadline for submitting your image: Monday April 28th, 2008 at 2 am 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 also 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) as well as any regular photographic post-processing -- cropping, levels, saturation, dodge/burn, etc.

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 a 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.

I pulled off the interstate and shot this at a rest stop in Oklahoma.
Shutter Speed 1/100
ISO 100
F / 8

Cropped slightly, Bumped color slightly, curves. Then I shrunk it unmercifully until we both cried. :(

I posted one that is half the origional size here. :)

http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/48670/2002216637630953685_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002216637630953685)

This is a California Valley Oak taken behind my house. The photo was taken with my Olympus E-500 set at: f8.0, 2 sec., ISO400, and an R72 infrared filter. The image was processed in Photoshop CS3 as black & white, then I applied a Virtual Photographer (from optikVerve Labs) plug-in.


Jack

Here is my entry: Trees!

It has rained so much here in the midwest lately that finding any dry (or semi-dry) day to shoot is extremely difficult. We've had over 15 inches of rain in the last two weeks. I took this one just a few minutes before the last downpour.

ISO 200
F 2.8
400th of a second
60 mm macro lens on a Canon 40D body

I took this description verbatim from my personal website (shameless plug: www.downenphotography.com) but it seemed fitting for the description and technical data.
Missing technical data: Minolta Maxxum 700si with a Tamron f2.8 28-105 lens.

I took this picture the first evening I arrived in Yosemite for one of my annual winter visits. There was frost on the tall grass and a bit of ice on the roadway. I wandered half blind into the meadow and could faintly make out Yosemite Falls somewhere along the cliffs. I could clearly see the tree in front of me and roughly composed what I thought could be a decent scene. Then I bracketed the scene by 4 minute stops; This shot was f22 @ 8 minutes. Of course at the time I was using analog film, this was Agfa 25 speed black and white film. I had no idea what I had captured until several days later when I got the contact sheet back. What a surprise!

Now on to Photoshop. The negative was somewhat damaged, there might have been dust specks on the film backing that stuck to the silver via static, I’m not really sure. There were thousands of specks though as well as several scratches horizontally running across the negative. The specks were largely removed with the Dust and Scratches filter, the scratches were removed with the clone tool. I also increased the contrast to help bring out the details in the mid-ground trees and the cliffs.

Here is a photo I took last week, it was a beautiful spring morning, very mild after a looong winter, the sun was just coming up and was hitting the trees nicely. I'm just working on improving my amateur photography.
I used a Nikon D40 on program setting and I don't know how to recall the information.

Hi, i'm not sure if exactly suitable for this contest....
57722
Schloss Neuschwanstein
Date/Time 07-Aug-2007 05:20:07
Make Canon
Model Canon EOS 5D
Flash Used No
Focal Length 200 mm
Exposure Time 1/50 sec
Aperture f/11
ISO Equivalent 100
.............................................................
www.edgarmaivel.com
www.pbase.com/emaivel

Hi, this is my entry
This was photographed on 35mm Ilford FP4 125 with my Nikon F3, it
cold winters day.
I hand printed the neg on Agfa multi contrast paper with some of the
film rebate showing and then scanned it. I made adjustments to match
the scan to the print but otherwise no photoshop work.

Here is my entry taken on 4/21/08. This is a blend of 2 shots.

Canon 20D with ef24-70 f2.8L @ 35mm.
1rst shot - 1/100 @ f10 ISO100
2nd shot - 1/50 @ f10 ISO100

Post processing - converted both RAW images in ACR. Boosted contrast, clarity, vibrance, and saturation a bit. Also added just a little saturation and luminance to the yellows, greens, & blues. Brought both into CS3 and used blend-if on the 2 layers. A slight curves adjustment, then sharpen & resize.

Had a hard time trying to get this one under 100k and decent quality. Because of that here is a link to a little better quality. http://photos.imageevent.com/dennisthompsonphotography/trees/_MG_6327_6328.jpg

I'd like to submit this for the "Trees" competition with your permission. I did not yet know the monthly theme until I had posted this for you to work on. If this is a problem I will gladly withdraw no worries, just say the word, I understand.
With me having to stay at home taking care of my father right now I have been a little out of the loop on here and had to give away some assignments so I have not shot in a few weeks.
This image was actually shot on Fuji 400 and scanned in at a very high res, maybe even 3600dpi on my Kodak film scanner. This would explain all of those yellow dots, especially in the sky. What amazes me is that not one person complained, whined or even commentend on those and I am so proud of you all:) One time I got in trouble with Swampy because my images had nothing to correct so I figured I'd lay it on you, just for her. :)
Thanks

c

Here's my entry. It's a pic of a Japanese maple in front of my house (var. Sango Kaku for those who are familiar). The early spring leaves are green, but quickly become become bright red. You can begin to see some of the red fringes forming. Towards the end of the day the light hits various individual leaves in a beautiful manner.

D200, ISO200, f3.2, 1/500. Natural light. Raw processed with ACR, final tweaks in CS3.

Recently took this on a trip to Arizona...unbelieveable beautiful day...applied a little Painter.
Just a note...this shot was taken out of the window of my car..fortunately there was no traffic on the highway. I shot with a Canon 30D and a 24-70/f2.8. The moment was "unreal". The sky was indeed this blue and the moment was amazing. I wish I had had more time. Nothing was retouched except I did apply Painter to get a painting look.

My first submission : ) Hope you'll like it..... This is a try with IR photograpy

I love trees ; )

This month's competition is closed - the voting thread is now open.