Eggs! Plus Other Weekly Photo Challenges and Top Posts on Light Stalking for the Past Week

Nearly a million people visit Light Stalking each and every month and our numbers are growing.  In the midst of all this activity in our flourishing community it can be easy to miss important articles, weekly contests in the forum and other happenings on Light Stalking.  To make sure that you don't miss anything, we've decided to summarize the best of Light Stalking for the past week.

Photo of the Week

Victorian model

Congratulations to red for ‘it’s time to say goodbye…' making photo of the week!  The model and lighting are stunning.  You can comment on this photo here.

The Most Popular Stories from the Last 7 Days

These Awesome Photography Links Will Make You Waste Some Serious Time – As always, it's been an amazing week for photography.  Toad Hollow Photography makes sure to bring you the best links to photo blogs, tutorials, image collections and other special features each and every week.  Hand-collected this week are tutorials on updating to the new Lightroom 4 process version, low light photography tips, tips from a seasoned magazine photographer, applying develop settings to multiple images in Lightroom and removing halos in your HDR images.  This week, special features include a thought provoking piece called ‘The Asylum by the Lake', a stunning collection of photos shot over a 4 year period of train hopping and an article on the dangers present in a photo studio.  Also be sure to check out this week's sizable photo collection as well as some interesting photo blogs.

Exposure Bracketing: What Every Good Photographer Should Know – Like life, which hardly ever goes exactly as planned, getting the perfect exposure in one shot just doesn't always happen.  Exposure bracketing essentially entails taking multiple shots of the same scene at different exposures.  Perhaps the exposure that the camera considers proper is the one that looks best to you after all, or perhaps one of the underexposed or overexposed shots actually suits your needs.  You can also choose to merge the bracketed exposures into an HDR image in software such as Photomatix.  In any case, we no longer have to guess what exposure settings to use based on lighting conditions like photographers of old.  This may be viewed as either a positive or a negative depending on who you ask, but the ultimate goal is getting the shot you want and exposure bracketing is yet another tool to accomplish this.

How to Balance Subject and Background Exposure – A Real World Example – Wedding photos aren't always shot under the most ideal conditions.  Sometimes, the harsh-midday sun just can't be avoided or things just don't happen on schedule, leaving the photographer with only a few minutes to shoot.  Whatever the challenge, the goal is to take high-quality photos under any condition.  Despite our best efforts, we can only choose one f/stop and shutter speed setting for each photo.  So, you can have a perfectly exposed subject and blown out background or the opposite.  The helpful steps laid out in this article show a great way of balancing out the light.

14 Useful Macro Bug Photography Tutorials and Resources – Taking macro photos of small living creatures, such as bugs, presents its own unique challenges.  Firstly, bugs are usually prey for other animals and are therefore quite skittish.  They will move away at the slightest provocation.  So, the macro photographer must be quick with both movement and thought.  Having to take a lot of time fumbling with camera settings will make capturing great shots of bugs really difficult.  There are a lot of helpful tutorials published online on this subject and this article features some great ones for various skill levels.

What You Missed in the Light Stalking Community

Submit your photo to this week’s photography challenge – Eggs! Easter has recently passed us by so the topic of eggs is fitting.  This is a broad subject that can be interpreted in many ways.  Have fun being creative and show us the photos you take, or make, of eggs!

We have had some great responses to our last few photography challenges on the forum.  Last week’s photography challenge was Staged Photographs! – Staged photographs are set-up ahead of time and are the opposite of candid shots.  Share your staged photos with us in the forum.

Also, check out the Candid Shots! challenge from the week before.  Candid shots are spontaneous and not set up ahead of time at all.  Most of us take this type of photo often and it would be great to see yours in the Candid Shots challenge.

Other Weekly Photography Challenges:

View this week’s Mobile Monday Challenge.  Photos submitted must be taken on, and any editing done on a mobile device.

We’d love to chat with you! Add your opinions here:

•Photographer's Block!

•Harvest Time!

•Name that bird

•Rugby League

•Advice on the best abstract landscape I've ever seen

What Are Our Members Up To?

We have some amazing members here at Light Stalking that run the gamut from career professional photographers through to beginner enthusiast. Here’s what a few of them are up to in photography.

Great Shots Uploaded to the Light Stalking Community

easter eggs

Photo by Mikell Herrick.  Mikell can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

Photo by Ed Aldrige.  Ed can also be found on his websiteblog and Flickr.

flowers

Photo by Vera Lampero.

easter eggs

Photo by Karen Amendola.  Karen can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

If you’re not already part of the Light Stalking community then come and join the fun. We promise not to bite!

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is a professional photographer and creator of Presets Galore.

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