1st Prize: Lens Baby Composer – Nikon F mount from our friends over at Lens Baby this lens produces some pretty neat effects. It is however for a Nikon F mount, but retailed at $270 you could trade it/sell it  for the one that is for your camera. At any rate, what you do with it after you get is in your hands. We just want to see pictures.

2nd Prize: Wiley Lightroom 2 Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process Yes we KNOW Lightroom 3 just got released, but if you are behind the times, or have never picked up Lightroom, here is an oppurtunity to get introduced to it. The book is meant for LR2 but its basics are applied to the series, and besides you can get LR2 pretty cheap right now.

How To Enter:

Submit: into our Fuel Flickr Pool, link in the bottom of this post, or tweet us. Just use the tag #FYPcontest (see submission guidelines below for further details)

Deadline for Submissions: UPDATE: CONTEST HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO: July 31, 2010 12 MIDNIGHT EST – follow submission guidelines at bottom of post.

Winners & Submitted Photos Follow up: AUGUST 1, 2010

So you have you carrot, here is what we want from you, this months contest focus:

Sunrise. Sunset. A Case of the Diptych

We wanted to give you a focus that would allow you to spend time, create magic with light and get creative in the darkroom. The premise is simple, give us your best sunrise & sunset photos, one of each in the same photo frame, otherwise known as a diptych. Be as creative as you can, take your time and give us something special. Here are a couple great examples of Sunrise’s, Sunsets & Diptych’s (not necessarily all together, just use these for inspiration)

Sunrises:

The End by Christolakis

Heal Me by Sunrise V by Daniel Hasselberg

Coffee Rocks by Mel Brackstone

Sunsets:

Sunset Boat by Seippo

Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day by Loren Zemlicka

Desert Sunset by ahff

Diptych’s:

... and then they both went their separate ways

greenness by Donchris!

Dust & No Dust .... by Bruce Kerridge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisiswhatisee/328425731/

Submission Guidelines:

Each Month we will post a Monthly Photo Focus (also hash tagged on Twitter as #FYPcontest) on a certain subject, something to spark your creativity. An empty weekend for a photographer, is like an empty canvas, we could always use something to do when we have nothing planned right? So with this in mind we created this series, one that will get you out doing what you love. The premise is simple: snap some photos over the weekend dealing with the weekends focus, and if you send them to us, or Tweet them to us, we will post them for others to see. Having a focus will help us as artists & photographers see things that we might not always see, make us take a shot at something we might otherwise have not. In seeing other photogs chase after the same focus, it can only breed even more creativity in our own work.

At the weekends close, we will follow up our weekend focus, with what we found on the Web (including some of the photos sent from you) that falls in line with our focus. We hope you join in the fun and help us spread the creativity.

example of a tweet to us:

@fuelphotography One more submission for this week’s #FYPcontest New Life & Spring: http://bit.ly/aY1oC7

If you post your photo’s to Flickr, please make them shareable so that we can highlight you, or send us the photo & link to your work directly at:

ron @ fuelyourphotography.com

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Peter Beard - It wasn't this picture, but you get it right?

In this shot the photographer was lying on his back with a large dead python draped over his body and both of his hands holding the head to make it appear that he was being attacked.  I never forgot that image and have since searched everywhere (without luck) to find it.

I have seen many amazing photographs over the years but this photographer taught me one great lesson. If you want to survive in the jungle of great photographers, you must stand out! Thankfully he also taught me that a great self portrait can help you to do just that!

Now although I haven’t found that great python pic, I have gathered some of the best and brightest portraits from around the web and although not all of these shots are photographer’s self portraits, I thought they might help the creative juices to start flowing.

5.04 by pozzese

The Setup

What we would like to do is have some fun, and have the community participate by submitting a personal portrait that portrays something about your personality. Goofy, boring, funny, dry… If that’s who you are, it’s what we want to see.

We want each of you to take a moment of self reflection about how you want to be viewed.  It’s an important thing as a photographer, and an individual, to figure out and can be a whole lot of fun.  Besides, we are highly interested in what you have been working on.

How Does It Work?

• Please submit one personal portrait to our Fuel Your Photography Flickr pool If you don’t have Flickr, post a link in our comments below or on our Facebook page
  

• We ask that you please keep it clean.

• We ask that you make it humorous.

Touch my tra-la-la mullet by BarelyFitz

Then What Happens?

If we find your picture funny or clever, or just downright amazing, we will post your photo and do a showcase of these photos in a follow-up article. We will post those that we find fit the bill spirit of this challenge.

Ryan Muirhead

So What Do We Win?

Now don’t look at this as a challenge in the way that whoever wins gets a baseball with all the fuel editors’ signatures on it (of course that wouldn’t be that hard to do). This is a challenger for you, a personal challenge, and one that can help open you up as an artist.

The thing about self portraits of photographers, the ones that are funny, clear and different, do you know what’s great about them? It’s that we remember them and they stick with us.  They can tell us many things about the photographer, for example, they’re great at photo manipulation, easy to work with, their creative.

As the editors here at Fuel Your Photography, we are all about fun, and bringing your art to the next level. We are extending this challenge as a way for you to break free and have a little fun in the process.

So get out there and show us what you’ve got.

A Few More Examples

Below are some great examples of what we are looking for.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aknacer/3168336932/in/set-72157607074584603/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eldano/2938559121/in/set-72157605295236775/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aknacer/2855180078/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mymsie/2346095387/in/set-72157603523234190/

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

If you’d like to see your work posted on Fuel Your Photography, join now!

Neil Conway

baltazart

Wagasuki

Westy Photography

Lil a.k.a. XaosQueen

Marcelo Campiglia

Nick Peligno

Scott Wyden

Rygood

rohicks

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Please note that each photographer is only eligible for one photo to be chosen each month. This does NOT mean you can only submit one per month… in fact, please submit all of your favorites!

We look forward to seeing all of your work. The first selection will be made next Friday, July 24th.

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)