Practical Photography Competition Entry



These photos are my 3 entries in the first round of the 2004 Practical Photography Competition. I nearly didn’t bother entering, as the closing date is 2nd February, I was tired last night and I would have preferred to play a round of Tiger Woods 2004 golf on the PS2 (not that I’m addicted to it or anything).
Fortunately I made myself dig out some photos to fit the theme of “Patterns in the Landscape”. These images were all originally shot in colour, the first 2 on the Canon EOS 10D and the last one on negative film. I thought I would try converting them to black and white to help concentrate on the pattern, and I think all 3 shots have definitely benefited from the conversion. The first two in particular have printed out well on the Epson Stylus Photo 2100 printer on Ilford Smooth Pearl paper - the 3rd one looks a little soft and I probably shouldn’t have entered it.
I don’t think there’s a winner here, but entering the compeititon has had the happy side-effect of showing all 3 photos in a better, black and white light. I’ll definitely be trying out this conversion on some more shots to see if they are improved too.
For all those who are interested, I used a Photoshop action called “Johny’s B&W Package V2.0” to do the conversion from colour to black and white, available as a free download here:
http://www.jakerlund.net/index.php



#1 Ian Burley
Mark - are you going to enter the latest two stages of the dp-now.com Greek Gods photo contest?

The closing date should be midnight Saturday (last day of January, but I'll accept entries up to Monday).
The themes are Hephaestus - fire, heat and metal work, plus, Zeus - who is the Greek god related to thunderstorms and the weather. Should be an easy one, that!
Entry details are here: http://dp-now.com/archives/000485b.html
So that's £1,000 worth of prizes up for grabs by Monday... and then the chance of the big £2,000 overall prize.
Ian
7:26 pm - Friday, January 30, 2004
#2 Bill
Great looking b&w photos! I have not had a chance to print any b&w photos from my Epson 2200 printer. Hopefully I will soon!
Bill
3:04 pm - Sunday, February 1, 2004