Another one of my hair-brain ideas, but here goes!

I know the gallery is all about photography and the members personal photographs. But, I feel that in todays digital age, some of the impetus has moved away from the actual photograph and edged towards the digital darkroom, perhaps as much as 60%/40%, the 60 being the photograph. I know that all the photographs I take now go through a strenuous post processing process (coz out of the camera most of them look pretty crap! )

Photography is completely subjective and one photo can be liked equally as much as it is disliked. As such, there are many photos I see in the gallery which I consider to be average to good - but I feel that with a little post processing they could be very good. As I mentioned above about the % that is taken up in the digital darkroom, aka ps or psp or whatever, is ever increasing and is a very important part of the finished photograph. There is so much that I am still to learn about post processing and I feel that by sharing best practice and also by raising the stakes and actually using a competition as a vehicle for this, we could all learn from each other and improve our own phots in the process.

How this would work is the question. I have my own ideas but am not sure of the legalities etc. The crux of it is this - One raw photograph (converted to jpeg) being downloaded by all. Everyone edits and processes to their hearts content, then uploads their version for judging. As part of the rules each entry must have in the description the software used and a brief but susinct walkthrough to all processed used. Perhaps Mark could provide a photo or even the members could submit photos to be used (depending on copyright etc)

1. A monthly or weekly competition with or without prize (personally I think there should be no prize, as winning should be prize enough)
2. One photo available for download by all - no restrictions to post processing techniques.
3. Perhaps (if possible) a separate album to upload photos to so as not to fill everyones albums with the same photo.
4. All photos to include description of process and software used.
5. Anything else I havent thought of.

If this was possible, I feel that it would be very worthwhile to everyone. I know you can buy books on ps and watch online tutorials etc, but nothing beats being able to see the variety of possible results that can be achieved and also to have the process available of how it was done.

Just a thought.

Richard

Sounds like a good idea to me!

Anybody else interested?

Sounds like a great idea to me.

Don

I'm up for that sounds good to me

It does sounds like a gret idea. I remember mentioning that kind of thing with steewart a while ago.

I would suggest that for each round, there is a few ( say 5 or 10) pictures that we can choose from as we don't find inspiration in the same subject.

I would be willing to provide some of my raw file if needed.