The winners of Blottr’s Your View photography competition have been announced. The winning image of the “Workplace” category (see above) was captured by Stephen Wheatley, a volunteer from the Royal National Lifeguard Institution.

Canon UK has launched its 2011/2012 Winter Cashback with offers on 18 models across their EOS, IXUS and PowerShot camera ranges, Legria camcorders, Pixma and Pixma Pro printers. The promotion runs until 25 January 2012, and all claims must be received by 24 February. The offers are valid on purchases made in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland only. Click through / scroll down for a detailed list of the promotional products.

The new Silver Shadows 2 black-and-white toolkit is now available for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Compatible with Lightroom 1, 2 and 3 for PC and Mac, the plug-in has been re-mastered and expanded to include over 100 refined black-and-white presets. “It’s been four years since Silver Shadows 1 was introduced,” says developer and photographer Gavin Seim. “Version 1 was powerful, but it’s nothing compared to the delicate hand-chiseled granite that makes up Silver Shadows 2.” The plug-in is available now for immediate download at the introductory price of $45. After November 30th the price will be $54.

Jessops has opened its fourth Centre of Excellence store in the heart of London. Located at 129-131 Oxford Street, the showcases a customer friendly layout enabling customers to test and trial an extensive range of cameras, camcorders, accessories and Jessops photo products. Additionally, the store’s shop-in-shop design allows the customer to browse by brand, including Canon, Nikon, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Pentax and Tamron. The in-store large format printer is able to produce posters and canvases up to 44” wide, and you can also create onsite photobooks all within one hour. The store is open from 9am till 9pm Monday through Saturday, and from 11am till 5pm on Sunday.

Xpro Software has released version 1.43 of GeniuX Art. The latest release contains over two dozen new features plus a host of improvements and bug fixes. Available for Windows, GeniuX Art sells for €149. Click through / scroll down for a video demonstration and a detailed list of bug fixes, improvements and new features in version 1.43.

The new Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 features the fastest speeds and largest capacities that Kingston has to offer in a USB Flash drive. Its high-speed eight-channel architecture provides USB 3.0 data transfer rates of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write. The DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 will be available in 64GB (£110.76), 128GB (£199.44) and 256GB capacities. The suggested retail price of the 256GB version - which can store as much data as ten Blu-ray Discs or fifty-four DVDs - has yet to be communicated.

CyberLink has launched its new Video & Photo Creative Collection. This bundle includes both the award-winning PowerDirector 10 video editing software and the new PhotoDirector 2011 raw converter and image editor, which offers native rendering of raw files from Canon and Nikon cameras. The CyberLink Video & Photo Creative Collection is available today and can be purchased from the CyberLink online store for £114.99.

Nikon has released firmware updates for the three VR lenses in its new 1 Nikkor line-up. Version 1.01 for the 1 Nikkor VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 superzoom resolves an issue that in some rare cases caused images to be blurred when shot immediately after the camera was shaken or moved quickly. Version 1.02 for the 1 Nikkor VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 standard zoom (read review) and the 1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 telezoom (read review) fixes a bug related to the recording of the aperture value in the image metadata. You can download the firmware updates from the websites below.

Website: 1 NIKKOR VR 10-100mm f/4.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM L Firmware Update 1.01
Website: 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 L Firmware Update 1.02
Website: 1 NIKKOR VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 L Firmware Update 1.02

Tiffen has updated its Dfx filter suite to add compatibility with Avid Media Composer v6, Symphony v6, and NewsCutter v10, as well as support for a number of new (and older) Sony digital cameras. The newly supported models include the A550, A580, A700, A850, A900, NEX-3, NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-C3, SLT-A33, A35, A55, A65 and A77. There is also a new adjustable brush slider that covers large areas, and new blur controls for theDfx Paint Mask tool that gives more control over blending and transitioning. The Tiffen Dfx 3 photo plug-in, which is compatible with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, is available today at an introductory price of $199.95. The standalone version of Tiffen Dfx retails for $169.95.

International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) is reminding interested photographers that the deadline for this year’s competition is fast approaching. You have until the end of this month (that is, Wednesday, 30th November) to submit your best photographs that fit into one of the following categories: The Beauty of Plants, Beautiful Gardens, Wildlife Havens, Breathing Spaces, Bountiful Earth, Fragile Landscapes and Greening the City. The top prize is £5000 and category winners will also be awarded cash prizes. Full details of how to enter the competition can be found online at the website below.

Over seventy winning and highly commended images from CIWEM’s Environmental Photographer of the Year 2011 competition will go on display at a free exhibition held from 6-17 December at London’s SW1 Gallery. Selected from over 10,000 images, The Environmental Photographer of the Year is an international showcase for the very best in environmental photography.  The competition honours amateur and professional photographers who use their ability to raise awareness of environmental and social issues. The SW1 Gallery is located at 12 Cardinal Walk, Roof Garden Level, Cardinal Place, London.

A Somerset-based start-up called Phlib is offering a range of magnetic photo frames that hold multiple photographs in an array and make them look as if they’re floating off the wall. Available in a number of colours, Phlib are lightweight metal frames that come complete with powerful little magnets to hold your prints in place. Priced from £27.50, Phlib frames are available through the website below.

Website: Phlib

Canon U,S,A, has posted an update on the availability of the Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM, 500mm f/4L IS II USM and 200?400mm f/4L IS USM EXTENDER lenses. The company is basically saying that the launch of the lenses, whose development was first announced more than a year ago, has been delayed until further notice, adding that “additional information regarding the shipping date of each lens will be made available as soon as possible”. The 500mm and 600mm lenses have MSRPs of $10,499 and $12,999, respectively.

Today is the 224th birthday of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, inventor and namesake of the first commercially viable photographic process, the daguerrotype. While the world’s first known photograph was taken by another Frenchman called Nicéphore Niépce - who later joined forces with Daguerre - it was Daguerre who perfected the process; which involved the creation of a direct positive image on a silvered copper plate through exposure, development and fixation. The French government subsequently acquired the rights from Daguerre in exchange for a lifetime pension, and went on to present the process as a gift to mankind on 19 August 1839. Today, Google is celebrating Daguerre’s birthday with a doodle featuring a stylised black-and-white family portrait.

Hannah Millard a freelance wedding photographer has been crowned Best New Wedding Photographer in the first-ever Hitched.co.uk Breakthrough Awards (HBAs). The HBAs is an award scheme which recognises the creativity and talent of newcomers to the wedding market using expert judges and a transparent voting system to identify the best new work of 2011. After receiving her certificate Hannah said “Entering the hitched.co.uk Breakthrough Awards was a great opportunity for me to review my work to date. As with many businesses the focus has to be forward-facing but by looking back at my portfolio I could see how my business has developed. This was the first award scheme I have entered and to win through a process of both expert selection and public voting is especially rewarding.”

The Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh has issued a call for entries for its international photography competition Fellowship 12. Each entrant has to submit eight images from a cohesive, exhibition-ready body of work created within the past three years, accompanied by a CV in PDF format. The deadline for entries is 15 January 2012, at 11:59:59 pm EST. Toe enter, visit the website below. Do note that entry fees apply.

Topaz Labs have released a major update to their Topaz Adjust Photoshop plug-in. Version 5 includes an intuitive selective adjustment brush, over 100 new presets for a faster workflow, effect stacking, transparency control, a new finishing touches tab and a number of other user-requested features.“For Adjust 5, our challenge was to make it better without taking anything away from the success of the previous version. We were able to take our recent technological advances in user interface customization and program architecture, introduced in our recent B&W Effects and Lens Effects programs, and blend them with the existing Adjust infrastructure,” said Jawad Malik, developer for Topaz Labs. The plug-in retails for $49.99 and is also available as part of the $299.99 Topaz Photoshop Bundle.

Nikon’s iP-PJ Transfer App enables users of the Nikon Coolpix S1200pj digital compact camera to project content stored on an iPhone or iPod touch using the camera’s built-in projector. Until now, content that could be projected using an iOS device and the Coolpix S1200pj was limited to slideshows and the streaming of YouTube videos but the iP-PJ also enables projection of individual photos and thumbnails. Available now, the app is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Olympus has released firmware updates for the Olympus PEN Lite and PEN Mini, also known as the Olympus E-PL3 and E-PM1. Version 1.1 for both models improves reliability while using an Eye-Fi card. You can update the camera firmware from within the Digital Camera Updater software, while the camera connected to the computer.