NBPS Flickr Contest (Image by Evan Pagano)

Where The Wild Things Grow, originally uploaded by Evan 49.

This image has a beautiful tonal range with the foreground exposed perfectly and the sky still maintaining detail. I love the shape of the lake and the reflections. Evan did a wonderful job of taking a complicated scene and making it simple and lovely.

Audubon Birds in Focus Competition!!!

LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES!

Audubon Birds in Focus Awards: CLICK TO ENTER

DEADLINE: ENTER YOUR BIRD PHOTOS NOW until SEPT. 7, 2010!

The prize for the Youth (age 13 to 17 as of May 15, 2010) winner is an I-POD TOUCH with Audubon Guide apps, and the winner of the Amateur category wins a trip to Peru! Nature’s Best Photography is working in alliance with Audubon magazine in running this contest. The finalists will be published in both Nature’s Best Photography and Audubon magazines. Need help uploading photos?  E-mail us at:  BirdsInFocus@naturesbestphotography.com

GOOD LUCK!

NBPS Flickr contest: Lindsey Buchmann

No use without photographer’s permission under any circumstances.

original post on FlickR from HERE

“The picture was taken in Livermore California on an evening in September 2009. I used a Canon PowerShot SD1000, and I had it on the macro setting. Taken by me, (Lindsey Buchmann) at 12 years old.”
This is a really lovely shot, Lindsey! I really appreciate the way you framed the flower using the rule of thirds, and the fact that the rose is so purely pink, apparently all of the same color, is a great capture too. The image is just simply the rose, and you don’t confuse the viewer by adding any distracting elements from whatever is behind the rose in the scene. The viewer can just let their eyes follow the delightfully complex lines of the petals, and enjoy it as is.

The only suggestion I would give you for this is that in the soft blurry part in the middle [under the center part of the rose], there seems to be a bit of noise. Since this is an image you probablly could set up and sit for a while to compose, and not an instantanious moment kind of picture, you could have used a tripod, and used a slower ISO, so there would be much less noise [although if this is a jpeg file, that might be your problem too].

But other than that this is a really beautiful image, and the lighting is perfect.  Keep up the great work Lindsey!

-Emma Canfield

ENTER THE PHOTO CONTEST by August 15th

The NBPS Photo Contest closes on the 15th of August. Please send in your entries – we do not have that many at the moment, which gives you a great chance of winning up to $770 in prizes. Entry is FREE. Upload up to 20 of your images now at: http://www.naturesbeststudents.com/takeaction/

Best,
Gabby

NBPS Flickr contest: Tobias Hayashi

No use without photographer’s permission under any circumstances.

original post on FlickR from HERE

Photo Info: “This image was taken an outing with some school friends to see and observe these Eastern Water Dragons for a school project. In this image, the Water Dragon was resting on a (man-made?) log, and posing in a typical dragon pose with a slightly angled head. This one was quite tame, so no problems with getting the camera on it. Here, I decided to focus in on the head (it can be very hard work getting the whole Dragon in the frame due to the long, tapered tail). By focusing on the tail, I could bring out the details in the dragons head and neck, particularly the amazing eye. The setting had naturally very dark grey surroundings, meaning that the detail and subtle colour of the Dragon stood out very nicely. A bit of levels work in PaintShopPro post-shutter enhanced this a little bit. .”

This photo was taken on February 27, 2009 using a Canon EOS 40D.

This is a really beautiful image that Tobias has captured here. I love the monochromatic aspect of this image and how the same gray color on the Water Dragon’s scales is mimicked by the background color behind it, without it confusing the eye too much. The composition is also very well framed. Even the lighting is great, with the majority of the light falling on the subject’s face. The only thing that I think could make this a better image could be to have angled the camera above the Water Dragon a little bit more, so it was looking directly at the camera lens [or at least get his eye looking at the lens].

I do find the black border a little distracting though [which I always do]. In my opinion a digital image should never have a border around it, so we can enjoy the image as it is. [For those of you who don’t know, this has been adopted from analog photography, where the black border of the negative is often kept showing, to prove that the image wasn’t cropped in any way and that the image is pure and was fully and properly composed while shooting. It is sort of a proof that photographer was good enough to not have to rethink an image after it was captured through cropping and other types of manipulation. That being said, it seems a bit odd to have a digital image tied back to analog in this way.]

Other than that, this is a really great shot Tobias! Keep shooting!

-Emma Canfield

Next Post

Driving back from my eldest sister’s new house along a winding country lane, rich golden cornfields roll away into the distance on either side. Dark grey clouds bubble ominously overhead threatening a storm.

She has traded the water-front views of a tall Edwardian terrace for a cottage in a small village surrounded by agriculture. I was sad that she had left the old house situated on a rather quirky island. The first time I stayed over, I was woken by the sound of waders (curlews mainly) floating gently into the open window at daybreak, along with the first rays of light. Even though I have never been, it reminded me of the books I have read about Norfolk. The flatlands with big, open skies. The colours were ever changing. At times the mud was metallic blue with purple hues mixed in, only intensifying the rusty orange of a couple of old barges that had been long forgotten. In winter, we would watch the tide go out and then come in again, snaking up the muddy channels, followed by the silhouettes of barnacle geese. It was the perfect place for a painter.

Twisting and darting over the landscape on razor sharp wings, the local swallows were a highlight of summer. Just before she left, we walked to a patch of scrubland not far from the house hoping to find some wild flowers for me to photograph. Curious of the two strangers in their territory, the swallows came to investigate, whizzing all around us. One flew past just a foot from where I was standing, almost skimming the tops of the yellow flowers at my feet, its iridescent blue feathers glinting in the sun.
At night the barn owls would take over the hunt from the kestrels, while bats careered energetically through the murky blackness in search of moths. Across the still water the twinkling lights of civilization looked ever more distant.

Images from the Dominican Republic (Gabby)

A collection of images from the Dominican Republic.

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