Weekly Photo Contest December 30th - January 6th 2012 // New Year Cheer

[acearchie]

Weekly Photo Contest December 30th - January 6th 2012 // New Year Cheer


Topic: New Year Cheer

I don't know what you will all be up to as we hit 2012, but make sure to take your camera! Any picture signifying the changing of the year or what you were doing as the clock struck 12!

Hint: I'm a sucker for people and expressions so I tend to prefer those sorts of shots but you could be out to prove me otherwise!


Rules:

1. You may only submit one photo per contest.

2. Please do not comment on photos until after the judging has taken place.

3. The contest runs for exactly one week, starting NOW! (see time/date stamp at the start of this thread)

4. At the end of the week, The Judge (last week's winner) will choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place photo, providing as much feedback as possible. (Judge has 24 hours to make decision)

5. The 1st place Winner will start a new thread with the topic/theme of their choice, and act as the Judge for that contest.
(Winner has 48 hours to create new theme)

 

[acearchie]

I thought since now we are officially in 2012 I would bump this back to the top of the board.

I have seen some nice shots in the photo of the day threads and look forward to what people have to show!

 

[UltimaMC]

I want to get the ball rolling! This was captured right down the road from my house, the Chinese food restaurant always displays a massive ice sculpture on New Years Eve.

2012, Year of the Dragon.

 

[acearchie]

I'm scratching my head at why this hasn't had more entries as I have seen some great photo's in other thread.

Not that I think UltimateMC's is bad but it would be nice as a judge to have something to compare it with! Hence my final attempt to bump it up to the top of the board.

 

[Rich-212]

I was hoping to join in this week's competition, but am unfortunately away from home this week and not able to upload any pictures.

I'd say it was a good topic and i look forward to someone uploading some more pics!

Good luck guys!

 

[Keleko]

Sadly I have no contribution because I didn't do anything to celebrate or try to take pictures of celebrations.

 

[VirtualRain]

Here's one from our New Year's outing... snowshoeing at Hollyburn by headlamp... in this picture the group was making their way down a hill to a remote cabin by a frozen pond that was serving some New Year's Cheer!

 

[UltimaMC]

Yay another entry, nice pic VirtualRain! To be honest I didn't think my picture really qualified as "cheer" but I wanted to get the ball rolling with something.

 

[Chappers]

I think the topic was a good one but I guess everyone was celebrating and not really thinking of photos.

Hopefully someone else will jump in and give a bit more choice.

See below

 

[JAWJr]

Not sure if this is what you meant by new year cheer... But this is what I interpret it as- At the end of every year my family gathers in Carmel, south of San Francisco for the new years week. We meet at the same location and same time every night to watch the sunset. This one is of my parents in the foreground. Happy New Year to all-

 

[acearchie]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Right I'll close and do the judging tomorrow morning which is about 10 hours away for me!

If you even have a photo with an inkling of link to the topic then please enter!

 

[Blakeco123]

New year fireworks. I wasn't going to enter because all the pictures are very noisy, but what the hell.

 

[flosseR]

New years with the neighbors. It was funny that we all met in the field at the same time. we had about 100 people at a distance with the kids to watch the fireworks and we took good time since we didn't shoot them all at once.
During this i captured this "palm tree"
though it's probably too late by now

 

[acearchie]

I want to get the ball rolling! This was captured right down the road from my house, the Chinese food restaurant always displays a massive ice sculpture on New Years Eve.

2012, Year of the Dragon.

Nice photo, was the blue light coming from beneath the sculpture? I don't know if it's part of the lighting on it but I love the hint of green on the top of it's neck. It sort of hints at the colour that I would expect a dragon to be. Did you crop the photo? I am just wondering what it would have looked like if it was less tight round the face. I think this crop is probably better though.

Here's one from our New Year's outing... snowshoeing at Hollyburn by headlamp... in this picture the group was making their way down a hill to a remote cabin by a frozen pond that was serving some New Year's Cheer!

This is a great photo and really confused me to start! Looks like two photo's, one onto of the other. The exposure on the house is great but the people are a little dark but, this provides an atmosphere. Did you try boosting the shadows if it was a RAW file? I think a little more detail in the darker places would make it less likely seem like two photos. But that maybe the effect you are going for. Overall a really nice shot!

Not sure if this is what you meant by new year cheer... But this is what I interpret it as- At the end of every year my family gathers in Carmel, south of San Francisco for the new years week. We meet at the same location and same time every night to watch the sunset. This one is of my parents in the foreground. Happy New Year to all-

A nice photo, especially so as it is a good memoir of an occasion. For improvement I would suggest a diffuser for your flash to soften the light then you wouldn't get the hotspots on her cheek and chin and his forehead. Great sunset and well done for snapping as I'm sure the light was moving quickly.

New year fireworks. I wasn't going to enter because all the pictures are very noisy, but what the hell.

Were these handheld? Personally I would have preferred something else in the frame so we can really get an idea of the scale of the fireworks. Also they do not completely fit within the frame. Were you as wide as you can go on your lens? Fireworks is a difficult one, because they never seem to go exactly where you want or even expect. The noise is funnily enough not an issue for me. Even blown up it wasn't too bad. I suppose you could try increasing the blacks in your editor to render some of the background into pure black and remove some of the noise.

New years with the neighbors. It was funny that we all met in the field at the same time. we had about 100 people at a distance with the kids to watch the fireworks and we took good time since we didn't shoot them all at once.
During this i captured this "palm tree"
though it's probably too late by now

Really like this. As I said to Blakeco123 for me having something in the frame that I can use as a reference really helps me understand the scale of the fireworks. You've done this perfectly with the people. I even don't mind the motion blur of the people due to the long exposure because it's only really a few heads and someone torch/phone that is evident. Were you in bulb mode to capture all of the firework or did you know from previous ones roughly how long it would be from start to finish? Well done for getting the complete firework into the frame as well.

So here are the winners:

#1 VirtualRain
#2 flosseR
#3 UltimaMC

Sorry that the contest didn't seem to get many entries. So I hand over to VirtualRain to hopefully get some more participants!

 

[TheReef]

Here's one from our New Year's outing... snowshoeing at Hollyburn by headlamp... in this picture the group was making their way down a hill to a remote cabin by a frozen pond that was serving some New Year's Cheer!

Congratulations VirtualRain, that's a really great shot!
I like the multiple points of interest and range of colour and light, well done

 

[flosseR]

I agree, VirtualRains shot is VERY VERY nicely captured...

As far as my shot, I pre-framed everything and then did a interval shooting of 30 seconds (i think) each exposure. I am actually one of the guys in the field :=) I took 16 exposures and 8 actually are worth keeping. took 2 test shots before to see where more or less the rockets went and how high they went. Then i moved the tripod even further back and set everything up.
To get the focus, I actually asked one of the guys to put his mobile phone screen on and show me, focused on it and then set to manual and fired off


came out pretty decent.


Oh.. and no cropping AT ALL

 

[JAWJr]

Thanks to acearchie for the judging and critiques. For my shot, I'm really doing what I can with my p&s- I completely agree with you regarding a light filter- I have personally seen many situations where that tool would have been key. Looking forward to seeing my photos evolve when I acquire a dslr. Thanks again-

VirtualRain's photo really captured a nighttime new years mood, it was a truly unique shot. Great job- I look forward to the topic you choose!

 

[Blakeco123]

Were these handheld? Personally I would have preferred something else in the frame so we can really get an idea of the scale of the fireworks. Also they do not completely fit within the frame. Were you as wide as you can go on your lens? Fireworks is a difficult one, because they never seem to go exactly where you want or even expect. The noise is funnily enough not an issue for me. Even blown up it wasn't too bad. I suppose you could try increasing the blacks in your editor to render some of the background into pure black and remove some of the noise.

Yes this was actually taken on a point and shoot, not my dslr, and i didn't even have my tri-pod. Not my best moment in photography.

 

[VirtualRain]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I'll post a new contest later this evening.

 

[UltimaMC]

Nice photo, was the blue light coming from beneath the sculpture? I don't know if it's part of the lighting on it but I love the hint of green on the top of it's neck. It sort of hints at the colour that I would expect a dragon to be. Did you crop the photo? I am just wondering what it would have looked like if it was less tight round the face. I think this crop is probably better though.

The blue lighting came from adjusting the white balance of the picture for a cooling effect. A couple of colored lights were set around the base of the ice sculpture for dynamic illumination, that's why you see hints of red/green.

Thanks for judging, and congratulations VirtualRain!