Win Nikon D3000
Win a Nikon D3000 with Q-Photo
Interpret the Cup Fever with your photos. You can enter 3 Photos online or in store.
Entries will be loaded onto the web site and the photo with the most votes from the public wins!
Grand prize is Nikon D3000 & Accessories worth R10,000.
Visit http://www.qphoto.co.za/ for more details and to enter
Closing date is Friday 30 July 2010
Competitions | Pieter | June 16, 2010 | 
Comments (0)
Win with ellesse
Legendary Italian sportswear brand ellesse is searching for the World’s most beautiful images of Sport & The City.
ellesse Sportswear launched a Photography competition where you can win a Nikon DSLR and a trip to London, Barcelona, Rome or Athens.
You can enter photographs which truly capture the spirit and emotion of your City.
I think with the current World Cup Soccer being held in South Africa we South Africans have an advantage over other countries.
You can get full details (and enter online) at http://www.ellesse.com
Competitions | Pieter | June 15, 2010 | Comments (0)
Stock Photos
10 Important Mistakes to Avoid When Submitting Photos to Stock Photo Sites
A quick and easy way to make money with your photos is by submitting them to stock photo sites online. You can start earning money with the photos that are already in your hard drive; you don’t even have to take new photos right away.
If you want a step-by-step guide to monetizing your digital photos through stock photo sites and other ways, check out Turn Your Photos Into Cash.
Meantime, you can get started right now. But do make sure you don’t make these 10 mistakes when you submit photos in stock photo sites:
Photography Tips and Tutorials | Pieter | April 29, 2010 | Comments (0)
Photoshop is one of those programs the modern photographer just cannot go without. It is the most powerful image editing software on the planet.
I know many people are looking for a good Photoshop courses or tutorials and that some people stay to far from major cities to attend a proper course.
I found Lynda.com's Photoshop courses and tutorials to be very good. I started using it for DreamWaver courses and then also tried some of the PhotoShop courses. There are hundreds of courses you can attend online.
Give Lynda a try, visit them at http://www.lynda.com
Photography Tips and Tutorials | Pieter | January 20, 2010 | Comments (0)
Here are the details of the competition: (also see http://www.photocomment.net/)
Sony and PhotoComment
2009 YEAR END PHOTO COMPETITION
We want your image that best defines your 2009
2009 is fast drawing to a close and with it memories of an exciting yet challenging year for us at PhotoComment and most likely you, our readers as well.Before the year comes to a close for good we thought we would launch our first PhotoComment competition. Submit your image with a brief story of the moment that made your year to stand in line to win the grand prize.
Judging will look particularly at the emotion evoked by the image in relation to the theme and caption.
Closing Date: 15 December 2009
Send your entries to: competition2009@photocomment.net
Sony
Terms & Conditions Apply
Competitions | Pieter | November 16, 2009 | Comments (0)
I received an email from Ethan Fried inviting us to subscribe to the National Geographic International Photography Contest. This contest is also open for South African entries.
Here are the full details:
Attention all travelers and aspiring photographers — National Geographic wants your photographs. Readers of National Geographic around the world are invited to take part in the 2009 National Geographic International Photography Contest. Readers of the English-language edition in eight countries, as well as readers of 20 of the magazine’s international local-language editions, are eligible to participate. The international grand-prize winners will receive a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., a digital camera kit, and their winning entries will be published in all participating editions of National Geographic magazine. But act soon — the submission deadline is Oct 31, 2009. Full details can be found at http://www.ngphotocontest.com
Competitions | Pieter | October 9, 2009 | Comments (2)
The pupil of the eye becomes bigger or smaller in order to control the amount of light it allows through. When a person is standing in a dark room, the pupil of his eye will be large to allow more light to enter. The camera also has a mechanism which controls the amount of light moving through the lens – the aperture.
The aperture controls not only the amount of light moving through the lens but also the depth of field. The f-stop is the unit in which the opening of the lens is measured. The f-stop number is inversely proportional to the size of the lens opening. This means f22 is a very small lens opening, with a large depth of field, and f4.5 has a wide lens opening with a shallow depth of field. With a wide lens opening and shallow depth of field, more light will reach the film. Thus a large lens opening is more suitable for photography in bad lighting conditions, but unfortunately with a loss in depth of field. Also see illustrations below. The f-stop number is equivalent to the diameter of the opening of the lens relative to the diameter of the front lens unit. An f-stop of f16 will therefore be 1/16 (one sixteenth) of the diameter of the front lens unit.
Apperture size
Tip: If you have a SLR camera with removable lenses remove the lens from your camera. Hold it in a position to enable you to look through it from the back. Now turn the f-stop ring on the lens from side to side. You will see the opening of the lens changing as you turn the ring.
Photography Tips and Tutorials | Pieter | August 31, 2009 | Comments (0)
If you use a too slow shutter speed your photographs will be blurred. Some novice photographers think that their photographs are out of focus but sometimes they just used a too slow shutter speed and their photographs are blurred.
If you use an automatic camera it will normally either pops up the flash automatically or have a flashing indicator which warns you when the light is too low to take a photograph. If there is not enough light the camera will use a longer shutter speed in order to have enough light to record. This long shutter speed is what cause the blur effect since you cannot hold the camera still enough in your hands.
If you use a shutter speed of anything less than 1/60 of a second you must use a tripod or any other object to support your camera. The minimum hand held shutter speed also depends on the length of your lens. For up to 80mm you will get away with 1/60th of a second but if you use a longer lens you will need an even faster minimum shutter speed. Like when you use a 200mm lens it would be best to put your camera on a tripod for anything slower than 1/150th of a second.
You can also use a slow shutter speed to your advantage.
If you put your camera on a tripod and use a slow shutter speed to picture a waterfall or stream, you can create a soft effect of the water.
Soft Waterfall
With a fast shutter speed we can freeze the motion in a picture.
Freeze the motion
To freeze motion of a picture, the shutter speed must be fast enough. You will need a shutter speed of at least 1/250 to freeze the motion of a running person successfully.
Even if you are photographing flowers in the wind you need a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion and get a sharp picture.
We can also use a slow shutter speed to enhance the feeling of motion in a picture. The picture on the left was taken at 1/60. The motion of the bike was followed as it moved pass. We call this “panning”. Read more »
