DSLRUsers.com

...something Sheila's recently posted beach shot stirred up in my mind:

What if someone took a photograph of something, anything, and posted the completely unprocessed, big RAW file (or made it available for download). The forum members would then be given time (a week?) to make the best out of the material, using any technique they want, from cropping, levels, WB, sharpening, colour conversion, b/w. Anything they can muster.

Those who think they've come up with something special can post their result (one per member) and we could elect a winner.

How does that sound? A PP competition.

Cheers
Steffen.

Steffen,
It's harder!
We still have monthly ES and it was slow down since beginning of Dec. 05, it'll be revised in Feb.
Secondly, I heard the next challenge is going to start by the end of this month.
So pls. guess, how busy we are?

IMHO - Reminds me of Mr Squiggle!!! "It's upside down Miss Jane!!"

Interesting suggestion, but a couple of issues.

What if the image posted is a raw Nikon file: how do our Canon members PP the image?

And vice versa?

WHo gets to submit the image? Who gets to choose the best treatment?


In a similar vein, one of our mods - I think it may have been Greg - suggested that we set a chain image, whereby we have a list of people who wish to participate, and one person takes a seed image, sends it to the next person who tries to replicate that image, and then sends their image on to the next person in the list, and so on.

At the end, all images are displayed in a gallery for all to view.

I like both ideas, but there are certainly logistic issues that would need to be addressed.

Sorry, contest over, I started with this.........



and finished up with this.............

kinetic,
Great play! congrats, you're the winner
I like the "pig".

mmm... can I suggest a little improvement to add a nice flashy box tie to the front ???

Kinetic - "WE ARE NOT WORTHY!!"

Best laugh I've had tonight! Great work.

Kinetic, you've won before a contest was even declared!

Gary, the chain image suggestion is fascinating.

I suppose I came up with the "who PPs best" idea by comments posted in the Critique forum. A lot of them (like 50%) are like "crop a bit here, clone a bit there, have you tried b/w or sepia, have you tried horizontal" etc. I was wondering how many top shelf images are lingering in ordinary (at first glance) shots.

I was intrigued by the idea of giving a bunch of people the same raw material and watching what they would it turn it into. I guess this is a subconscious realisation that a lot of todays photography happens away from the viewfinder...

There are technical issues with my proposal, no doubt. Whatever happened to OpenRAW?? (Hint: complain to your local Nikon or Canon rep.) Maybe a high-enough-res JPEG would work just as well?

Cheers
Steffen.

Ask Mic, one of our members, he will be a winner all the way if this proposal comes to the light.

Steffen wrote:Kinetic, you've won before a contest was even declared!

Gary, the chain image suggestion is fascinating.

I suppose I came up with the "who PPs best" idea by comments posted in the Critique forum. A lot of them (like 50%) are like "crop a bit here, clone a bit there, have you tried b/w or sepia, have you tried horizontal" etc. I was wondering how many top shelf images are lingering in ordinary (at first glance) shots.

I was intrigued by the idea of giving a bunch of people the same raw material and watching what they would it turn it into. I guess this is a subconscious realisation that a lot of todays photography happens away from the viewfinder...

There are technical issues with my proposal, no doubt. Whatever happened to OpenRAW?? (Hint: complain to your local Nikon or Canon rep.) Maybe a high-enough-res JPEG would work just as well?

Cheers
Steffen.

Steffen

While I'm not a big fan of it DNG offers a middle ground around the RAW issue.

Steffen,

Steffen wrote:I was intrigued by the idea of giving a bunch of people the same raw material and watching what they would it turn it into. I guess this is a subconscious realisation that a lot of todays photography happens away from the viewfinder...

While I understand exactly what you're saying, many of us (who have spent countless hours in a proper darkroom) might contend that this has always been the case.

Indeed, I've been known to turn out photos from a traditional darkroom, with no prior use of either a camera or film. Photograms are one thing that Photoshop (and other computer based technologies) still cannot produce.

I quite like the idea. It would be very interesting to see the different results.

Perhaps you could take a photo (in JPG or as Stubbsy has suggested, in DNG) and trial it for a week, just to see what happens.

The original photo would have to be something worthwhile and interesting though. No dogs, cats, ducks, pelicans, or children/babies.

Steffen wrote:Gary, the chain image suggestion is fascinating.

Steffen, the idea came from here

As Gary mentioned, there are some logistical issues, but if they could be sorted out, it could be an interesting exercise. And fun.

Kinetic, beautiful work. Good laugh.

Greg B wrote:

Steffen wrote:Gary, the chain image suggestion is fascinating.

Steffen, the idea came from here

As Gary mentioned, there are some logistical issues, but if they could be sorted out, it could be an interesting exercise. And fun.

Kinetic, beautiful work. Good laugh.

I got the idea it was almost like chinese whispers... and if you saw them lined up side by side you'd see any interesting transition...

Birddog114 wrote:Ask Mic, one of our members, he will be a winner all the way if this proposal comes to the light.

Haha, and why not? However, this wouldn't just be about photoshop skills, but also about the different things different people see in an image, and would like to have emphasised.

Cheers
Steffen.

Alpha_7 wrote:I got the idea it was almost like chinese whispers... and if you saw them lined up side by side you'd see any interesting transition...

Craig,

Exactly.

Is there enough interest in doing this?

If so, I'll talk with the mods and try to work through the logistics issues that we can foresee and see where it takes us.

Anything that promotes sharing and learning, inparticular with PP elements as it's an obvious weakness in my skill set, I'm all keen for.

Steffen wrote:

Birddog114 wrote:Ask Mic, one of our members, he will be a winner all the way if this proposal comes to the light.

Haha, and why not? However, this wouldn't just be about photoshop skills, but also about the different things different people see in an image, and would like to have emphasised.

Cheers
Steffen.

And this one too ...

???

So end up, how many comp or challenge will we have on this board?

Birddog114 wrote:So end up, how many comp or challenge will we have on this board?

I think this is self policing. If there's not enough interest in something it will just fade away. The only real way to tell is to try it I guess.

Go for it Gary.
Would be interesting to see the start and finish next to each other.
Probably best not publishing the photos until the last person has had go that way there would be no external influence.

Birddog114 wrote:So end up, how many comp or challenge will we have on this board?

Well firstly I don't think they need to be a comp or even a challenge...

There definitely shouldn't be any prizes, it should be more like an "exercise" if you want to participate you can, if not then you don't.

There are many threads where multiple people have offered their own reworked shots of other peoples work, so in esscence this already happens on a very informal basis.

Alpha_7 wrote:

Birddog114 wrote:So end up, how many comp or challenge will we have on this board?

Well firstly I don't think they need to be a comp or even a challenge...

There definitely shouldn't be any prizes, it should be more like an "exercise" if you want to participate you can, if not then you don't.

There are many threads where multiple people have offered their own reworked shots of other peoples work, so in esscence this already happens on a very informal basis.

Craig,
The ES challenge is no prize and it's a monthly excercise
The Comp is also an excercise, not sure will be prized or unprized, no guarantee.

phillipb wrote:Go for it Gary.
Would be interesting to see the start and finish next to each other.
Probably best not publishing the photos until the last person has had go that way there would be no external influence.

That would certainly be the intent. Each person would only see the immediate predeccessor image, and would go from there.

Birddog114 wrote:So end up, how many comp or challenge will we have on this board?

Thanh,

this is not a challenge.

Nor is it a competition.

It's purely a fun thing; people would be free to enter (or not) as they see fit.

I'm not sure that I see any issues ....

And as Peter correctly points out, if there's no interestfrom the members, it simply won't happen

To my mind, it would need about 15-20 members to make it fly, but with some strict requirements upon how quickly one must submit their images (48 -72 hours?) and with feedback to those waiting their turn so as to help keep interest up.

Well you get "placing's" in the Comp, which in my opinion is a form of prize or prestigue, regardless of any material donations from members (guaranteed or not).

But I can see you point, we already have a lot of lets say activities for members to participate in -- in person or 'online'. The more things there are the harder it is to logistically manage it all, but I also can see a vacant space when it comes PP style activities.. anyways it's certainly not my decision on the direction that's taken, but I'm certianly interested in the outcome.. (I'll get back to work now).