Small Flashes – Big Light Photo Contest

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time patching up two of my kids. My daughter fell off her bike and skinned her knee (photo above) and my youngest son wanted to see if one of his toy planes could fly. And fly it did, but the landing sucked. The plane came down and hit him in the face, right above his right eye. Lucky kid. Lucky me! Boys will be boys though.

Alright ladies and gents, it’s time to kick off another photo contest. This time around there’s one of my FlashStrap + Gel Kits up for grabs. Given the prize, I thought an appropriate theme would be Small Flashes – Big Light.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, making big light from small flashes. Thanks to Joe McNally for the idea! So in order to enter, you need to shoot a portrait using small flashes and create big, beautiful light to grace your subject with.

Now For The Rules:
The contest runs from today, June 11, 2009 until July 4, 2009. All images have to be taken during the period of the contest. Your entries will be uploaded to the SZ Photography Flickr Group. Photos will need to have EXIF data that shows the date that it was taken. Also, in order to keep honest photographers honest, you will need to include a setup shot with your subject there so that I know that you’re using small flashes and not studio strobes. I will be the only judge and all of my decisions will be final. I will judge the entries based on lighting technique, originality, and creativity.

The Goods
The chosen winner will receive a FlashStrap + Gel Kit shipped to them completely free of charge. You can read more about the kit here.

Bonus Giveaway
If you use Twitter and re-tweet my tweet about the contest, I’ll give away a FlashStrap + Gel Kit to the 25th person to re-tweet it.

Good luck with your entries and I look forward to judging them. The last contest that I ran for the MB-D80 Battery Grip had some really great photos!

Wednesday Photo News

Here’s a little of what’s going on around the photography industry:

• Energizer Ultimate Lithium and National Geographic have created their second annual Ultimate Photo contest which invites the photographer enthusiast to share photos for a chance to be judged by world-renowned photojournalist, Jim Richardson, and win a trip to the Galapagos Islands along with a spread in National Geographic Magazine. Click on the slideshow above for more details and good luck! Thanks again to Nicole over at M80 in LA for letting me know about the contest!
• Chase Jarvis has recently updated his iPhone Portfolio on his website. All the images in this particular portfolio were shot with his iPhone and processed only with native apps for the iPhone. This further proves that you don’t need an expensive camera to take great photos… it’s all about seeing.
• I’ve recently jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. Better late than never right? You can view my updates right here on the blog or you can follow me (@sjzeller) if you Twitter.
• I’m working on my full review of how Nik Software’s plugins work with Lightroom. I hope to have it up on Friday, and by Saturday at the latest.
• Last but not least, I put my 50mm f1.8 on my D90 yesterday afternoon and went out and shot for a bit. Below are a couple of images from my short time walking around out in front of my house. Hope you enjoy ‘em! Let me know what you think in the comments!