This month was so hard – there were over 125 entries to choose from! My final longlist was almost impossible to choose from (there is a screenshot of that lower down this post) and so I had to revert to technical assessments, composition and being very very tough on the “bokeh” side of the challenge. That means that some of the longlist images were STUNNING but just didn’t have the bokeh scale seen in the other images.
A frequent thing whilst going through the 125+ entries was composition. Some of the images would have walked into the top 4 or 5 had they had a little more room above, below, to the side, etc. Similarly, some of the entries lacked impact which only comes through solid composition so if you didn’t end up in the final longlist/shortlist selection, definitely check out the composition resources on here.
The video of the breakdown this month can be found here, which also includes info and judging points to note for the September challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdslwPfckuQ
The Short Short Shortlist consisted of these 7 stunning photographs with beautiful use of bokeh. They each covered a different style and had good space around the subject. The focus was perfect, the exposure, solid and the tones were bang on:
The initial longlist can be seen below. If your image is in there then you already did an amazing job!
But what is Septembers challenge? Septembers challenge is:
RAW EDIT (With a prize!)
For this challenge, you’ll have access to three RAW files, SOOC, of Bramble the Labrador (seen below). You can edit one or all of these images. Then, you’ll need to select just ONE to enter into the contest which has quite specific entry instructions…
To access the files and read the entry steps, check out this Google Drive folder here: http://bit.ly/Sept2020TDS
There is a prize for Septembers challenge. I’ve thought long and hard about this and as a team here we’ve decided to essentially up the ante on these challenges. For that reason, I’m giving the winner of this challenge £50 of my own dollar along with an hour of my time to discuss, show, teach or plan whatever you want. OH YES you read that right, the winner gets:
- £50 Amazon gift card (in your native country)
- a free online one-to-one with me on any subject
Good luck!
Can’t wait to do all this again!