Hello Everyone!!!
THIS CHALLENGE HAS BEEN EXTENDED! The club is allowing an extension for everyone to get their work in, especially now that the holidays are over and you might have some free time to work on it. Club Challenge Info is below!
Okay everyone, it is that time again!!! So get on your creative thinking caps and start working towards the new Club Challenge Submission!!
You the club member are hearby challenged to come up with some work based on the following theme:
WildlifeWhat this means is that you have to take a photo of an animal that is from the wild. It has to be a new photo at that, so no oldies submitted okay? The challenge subject theme also can include Birds, Aquatic, Reptiles, and even Insects, which I consider wildlife, even though DA has a separate category for each of these beyond "wildlife", DA mainly does this to help narrow down searches. But, basically any animal that normally lives in nature and the wild, whether currently wild or in captivity, is an acceptable subject for you to work with.
Preferably it would be nice to see all members challenge themselves and get outside and find wildlife from the state of WI in their actual natural environments, only because this can be quite harder to do and will be a fun challenge for you. But, we will also accept animal photographs from the Zoo, that will NOT be a problem, the only requirement is that it cannot be a domesticated animal, secondly any wildlife you photograph must be alive, no carcass shots, mainly because the hardest part about photographing wildlife is the fact that they move, making you the photographer work harder to get that great shot. See it isn't called a challenge for nothing, right? lol
And most importantly, no snap shots! You must try to come up with the most artistic and visually pleasing photograph you can, so no point and shoot is allowed, try to use some of the tutorials I mention below to help bring your photography to a whole other level! You can do it and try to stay away from the automatic settings. But if you still need to use the automatic settings, then fine, but try to think out your shot, what is the best angle, lines, what tells a pleasing visual story, how are you going to capture the animal's likeness and portray it's personality?
If you need help or have any questions, please let us know!
This challenge will start today, on Memorial Day, Monday May 26th and run for just over a 2 months until
Midnight, Wed July 30th. At the end of this challenge, a club journal will be issued for the group to choose their favorites.
That should give you plenty of time to work on some of your work. You can submit up to
two pieces of work for this challenge. When ready to submit your challenge work, please just note the link to it to the club with the heading Wildlife Challenge Submission.
Current Challenge Submissions:
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Challenge Tip of the Day: For those with limited time on their hands, try taking your camera with you everywhere you go and practice your photography and/or use that time to shoot. Great times to practice or read up on tutorials could be during lunch breaks, before work, even the weekends usually leave most people with spare time on their hands, so use it wisely and try not to wait to the last minute, rushed submissions don't always turn out as you imagined.
Also don't forget, at the end of the challenge, the club will get the chance to vote on the best Wildlife Submission and the winner will get their submission featured in our club gallery and on the front page of the club. Which as we all knows, brings nothing but more exposure to you as the artist! And............most importantly
HAVE FUN BEING CREATIVE!!!
With that said, at the end of this journal entry, you will find some
DA Wildlife Features to inspire you for our Wildlife Challenge. If you notice, all of these photos are some of the best wildlife and animal photography that DA offers, but that doesn't mean that you cannot be just as creative and wonderful with your work. It just takes patience, time and creativity to get a result like this. You can do it!
Club Update: New Forum started, feel free to comment and post to your hearts content!
[link]Also, new polls coming soon, so stay in tune and watch for those, you early club members are going to help dictate how this club evolves into the awesome photographic club you want it to be!
Current active poll here:
[link]Finally, great news, our club chatroom is live, it must have members at least actively checking into it and using it, even for a little bit, if it goes 2 weeks without use, DA automatically deletes it.
Here is the link to our very own chatroom:
[link]Stop by and say hi!!, I do want to schedule at least our first club chat soon, sometime during the next week or so, so watch for a new poll coming your way soon for what time and day will be good for you!
Many club members responded to the past poll
What types of Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, News Articles, Features, would you like to see? [link] wanting to know pretty much all the basics and beyond about photography for club tutorials, etc. Well with that said, I did some digging, I figured there had to be a ton of really great photography tutorials out there, so why not do some digging and gather them up for the club to reference first. Then, once everyone has read them, we could discuss questions and comments in our forum or via comment replies to this journal entry.
Here is the direct link to all the really great photographic tutorials I found and fav'd to our club:
[link] If you really liked one, feel free to fav or comment the artist who created them for all their hard work and generosity in sharing what they know with us and the world. (Cheesy, I know but it's true!
)
I will perodically look for more tutorials and fav them as needed, I will notify you via journal entries whenever great and beneficial new tutorials are found.
With that said, club members are also more than welcome to submit tutorials themselves. I am already thinking about the first tutorial I will create for the club. For any tutorials submitted, the club member will submit it through their own gallery, then you can notify our club via a note and we can add it as a club submission, this will probably be the best way to get your tutorials to the rest of the club. Sound good?
So stay tuned, more polls will be coming your way soon since we had such a great response on the last one!!! Muhaha!
Also as an FYI, I have found that when someone comments on a poll, nothing shows up in my inbox, so I wil be making it a habit to check periodically on our polls, forums, etc for comments, sorry if I was delayed in responding to a poll comment because of not knowing you had posted anything new! lol
Also, please remember to all prospective members, to
JOIN the club, you HAVE to send a note to the club titled Join, along with place a link to the club somewhere in your journal, via our club stamp or icon. It is the only way we know who our members are, plus you HAVE to be a member to submit work for submissions, etc.
Here is a current list of our members,
[link] If you are missing, please let me know via a note or comment and I will add ya!
Those not wanting to be members and just want to watch the club gallery for submissions, you are more than welcome to do so, just please remember to fav the artist's direct work, not our club gallery submission.
Please see the following link for details on membership rules and club rules: [link]Thank you and happy photo hunting Wisconsin!!
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