The winners of the March 2006 PhotographyBLOG Competition have been announced. The theme for March was “The Weather” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
“Storm” by Gancu
View this entry

Photobird.com one-year subscription with 100 megabytes of storage space
Kindly donated by Photobird.com.
http://www.photobird.com

There are some fantastic prizes on offer in our March 2006 Giveaway, courtesy of Vertus!

3 people will each win Fluid Mask (value: $249 / €249 / £179). Fluid Mask is a highly advanced software tool designed to make life easier for everyone who creates cut outs. Built as a plug-in to Adobe Photoshop, Fluid Mask is the new next-generation cut-out tool. Behind the product is breakthrough technology that mimics the way the eye, optic-nerve and brain perform visual processing.

All prizes kindly donated by Vertus
http://www.vertustech.com

On Monday 10th April 2006, 3 names will be randomly selected from the list of PhotographyBLOG Newsletter subscribers.

All you have to do to enter is subscribe to the PhotographyBLOG Newsletter before April 10th.

Go into any bookstore and you’ll find hundreds of Photoshop manuals and hundreds of conventional photography books, but very few titles that bring these two genres together. “Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking” by Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost is just such a book; part photo essay, part Photoshop techniques, part self-improvement. Based upon some great photos taken from commercial airplane windows, does “Window Seat” succeed in bringing together these disparate elements? Find out in my review.

Website: “Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking” Review

The 68th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Jason Scott Tilley.

“I enjoy taking photographs of people wherever I find them. This set of photographs was taken all over India after a long holiday. I have been working on a collection of images showing people in the environment they are found. They are very brief encounters with people and I try only to take a couple of frames per person and never to direct the person. This way I hope they show the mood the person was in when I found them.”

Website: Jason Scott Tilley

Here are the sample photos from my upcoming review of the new 8.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix P4, a few days before the full review is online. The Nikon Coolpix P4 is a compact digital camera with a 3.5x optical zoom lens equivalent to 36mm-126mm on a 35mm film camera, vibration reduction, aperture-priority mode and and a 2.5 inch LCD screen.

Website: Nikon Coolpix P4 Photos

The 67th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Tomasz Kubi?.

“I am an amateur photographer from Poland. I have been photographing nature for about 20 years. It is my great passion. I am photographing birds, mammals, landscapes, mushrooms. My photographic gear is a Nikon D70s and AF-S Nikkor 18-70 and Sigma 50-500 lenses.”

Website: Tomasz Kubi?

Organising, storing and managing your digital images in a coherent and logical way can seem like an unobtainable goal, especially if you already have a collection containing 1000’s of unsorted photos. “The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers” by commercial photographer Peter Krogh attempts to make sense of it all, encouraging you to tackle the problem head on by providing tried and tested methods, all explained in a clear and interesting way. Find out if I think “The DAM Book” deserves a place on your bookshelf in my latest review.

Website: “The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers” Review

The 5 megapixel, 3x zoom Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS2 is the new entry level digital camera in Panasonic’s 2006 range. The Panasonic LS2 also offers a 2 inch LCD screen and optical image stabilisation system, plus the new Venus Engine Plus processing system. The Panasonic DMC LS2 has a competitive street price of less than £160 / $200, but is it the right digital camera for you?

Website: Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS2 Review

The 66th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Sturla Strand.

“Taking black and white photographs is for me the most natural way to express myself artistically. I try to envision the subjects I am shooting without color, which I often find a distracting element. This way I can concentrate on lines, shapes, forms and shadows - the little details that people for the most part overlook. When it comes to the subjects I choose to photograph, I have found that certain places have a special kind of attraction to me. These places I visit over and over again under different lightning conditions, trying to capture them the way I want. Some of my best black and white photographs are taken only a few hundred meters from where I live. This proves the point that you do not have to travel to exotic places to find good motives. I often feel that the motives come to me, rather than the opposite. I am constantly trying to improve my photographic skills in terms of expression and motives.”

Website: Sturla Strand

The 65th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by James Shull.

“Please pardon my reluctance to attempt discussion of the more intangible aspects of photography. It’s a visual medium and I don’t have any particular social agenda with it other than sharing it with others who are so inclined. What gets me out of the house is the continual possibility that I might turn the mundane into the profound.

The enclosed 13 photos were made between 1991 and 2006. Each of them represents my desire to build a connection to the place I was at during that time. A few were made in California, some from Pennsylvania and Alabama, one from Kosovo, one from inside a bus in Macedonia. One of them was captured digitally, with all the rest being conventional. All film formats are represented, 4x5, 35mm, and 6x6. My favorite is whichever I’m using at that time.”

Website: James Shull

First announced in the Autumn of 2005, the Canon IXUS 55 is an ultra-compact, lifestyle digital camera that offers a lot more than just good looks. The IXUS 55 features a 3x optical zoom lens, 5 megapixel sensor, Canon’s DIGIC II image processor (as used on their high-end digital SLRs) and a 2.5 inch LCD monitor. So is the Canon IXUS 55 still a good buy today? Read on to find out.

Website: Canon Digital IXUS 55 Review

Here are the sample photos from my upcoming review of the new 5 megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS2, a few days before the full review is online. The Panasonic LS2 is a fairly compact digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens equivalent to 35mm to 105mm on a 35mm film camera, optical image stabilzer and and a 2 inch LCD screen.

Website: Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS2 Photos

Our good friend, Vincent Oliver over at Photo-i.co.uk, has expanded beyond his website and setup a publishing division called photo-iDVD. This division will produce and publish a series of DVDs on digital photography. The first, a guide to digital photography, was launched at the London Book Fair (5 –7 March, 2006). and is now available online for £14.99.

The “A guide to digital photography” DVD shows you how to get the best results from your digital camera by means of exclusive assignments shot on location. The pictures are manipulated in Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, (an easy to use application for digital photography), and are in the form of a fully animated screen movie. (Subsequent DVDs, available from summer 2006, will use Photoshop CS2).

Website: “A Guide to Digital Photography” DVD

I have updated my daily photo website, Everyday Eye (http://www.everydayeye.com), with some fresh new images taken at last weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in central London, just in time for the main event which takes place today. Take a look and let me know what you think by leaving some comments. All photos taken with the Canon EOS 5D DSLR (for all the anoraks out there)...

The February 2006 Giveaway has now ended - here are the 3 lucky winners who each win a prize kindly donated by DxO Labs.

kate t-s has won DxO Optics Pro Elite (value: $US 299 / € 249 / £ 199)

Mike Rubin has won DxO Optics Pro Standard (value: $US 149 / € 124 / £ 99)

Jon Steffan won DxO Optics Pro Starter (value: $US 79 / € 64 / £ 49)

Don’t worry if you didn’t win this time - a brand new contest for March will be starting very soon!

We’ve teamed up with ACDSee to offer you a 15% discount on ACDSee Pro Photo! The regular price is $129.99, but you can now buy ACDSee Pro for just $110.49 by clicking this link.

ACDSee Pro Photo Manager gives users full RAW support, RAW processing and lightning speed in every facet of digital photography management—from initial photo capture to final print. This software is quick, easy to learn and gives users the power to view, organize, edit, process, publish and archive image files with the world-class precision and control that professional photographers demand. ACDSee Pro is truly an end-to-end solution for all your photography workflow needs.

Website: Get 15% Off ACDSee Pro Photo

The winners of the February 2006 PhotographyBLOG Competition have now been decided. The theme for February was “Shadows” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
“Street Dancing Shadow” by SDR
View this entry

1 x 36x24” Artist Canvas Print of a Photo of Your Choice
Kindly donated by Pixel Outpost.
http://www.pixeloutpost.com

PMA 2006: PMA 2006 turned out to be as much about the future as the present, with some of the hottest new products just being prototypes or mockups, rather than the real deal. Consequently you won’t be able to get your hands on quite a lot of the kit that has been announced until May, June, or even 6 months later in the case of the Panasonic DMC-L1 and the as yet un-named 10 megapixel Pentax DSLR. In fact, of all the products listed in our Hot Top 10 for PMA 2006, only 2 of them are available to buy today (Bibble Labs 4.6 and Muvee). Carry on reading to find out which products made our top 10…

PMA 2006: The first ever digital camera that I bought was the Minolta DiMAGE 5 bridge-style camera, so-called because it “bridged” the gap between a smaller compact digital camera and a larger digital SLR. Now it seems that the bridge camera has become something of a dying breed, at least for those manufacturers with DSLRs in their product range.

Here are the sample photos from my upcoming review of the 5 megapixel Canon Digital IXUS 55, a few days before the full review is online. The Canon IXUS 55 is a very compact, stylish digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens, DIGIC II image processor and a 2.5 inch LCD screen.

Website: Canon Digital IXUS 55 Photos