Photo Challenge 9: Black & White

rymus

A type of photography thats always been very close to my heart; this extra long challenge (never let it be said I don't take good advice) will run until the 20th January. This is very much an open challenge with no specific theme. The only requirement is that the image be 100% black & white. No partial desaturations, no nifty photoshop tricks. High contrast or low, doesn't really matter. NO COLOUR!

And now for something completely different... Instead of completely wrecking my head emailing the files to me, register at http://photos.rymus.net and upload your photo (either from a file or link) directly. Note that uploaded files are subject to approval but will appear once approved by my good self. The hard limit is still 1mb but it's quite likely that'll drop by at least half in the very near future. In the mean time, anyone that does upload a 1mb image will be pistolwhipped.

Judging for this extended challenge will start on or around the 20th Jan.

Edit: Please include either your username or real name in the title of your entry.

Shrimp

B&W, it's nice, but wha? gonna be so broad... at least i'll get to enter

rymus

Shrimp wrote:

at least i'll get to enter

I'd play the saddest song in the world.. except the littlest violin in the world is currently in the shop for re-stringing.

Broad is the idea. It's an open challenge. Well, open with one restriction..

sionnach

littlest is a valid word shrimp, think before you type

DotOrg

rymus wrote:

no nifty photoshop tricks

what does that mean?

photoshop has several ways of converting to black and white from a digital raw image and they can produce very different results

rabbitinlights

On that subject, which is the simplest way to convert to B/W in CS2, is it a new HUE layer and then drop the Saturation?

Shrimp

sionnach wrote:

littlest is a valid word shrimp, think before you type

It sounded wrong, but on further inspection...

Flipflip

rabbitinlights wrote:

On that subject, which is the simplest way to convert to B/W in CS2, is it a new HUE layer and then drop the Saturation?

I think the easiest one is to go Image-Adjustments-Desaturate

I made a bit of a hames of my entry.

Someone's post in another thread said we could have 3 entries, but now i've come to the conclusion that one entry is probably all we're allowed. Also I forgot to post my camera details on your site.

I was using a Minolta Dynax 505si with 28-80mm lens, and Ilford xp2 400 film. Username on your site is "Jonny".

rymus

im not too pushed with the details of the shot.. only important info is your boards name. You may be able to log back in and remove the ones you dont want.. I'll have to take a look

Rojo

Whey, this is my first entry in one of these competitions!

Shrimp

Good luck.

Rojo

At least I think I entered.. It doesn't seem to be there! :S

rymus

it wont be until I approve it

Ravage1616

Hopefully i'll have my camera in time to enter this! good luck to everyone!

rabbitinlights

I love the "the creep - esavoie" it looks like it could have been taken from the film The Exorcist. Great shot.

captain P

My first time entering. i love black and whites. some really nice ones there already.

jaqian

Just signed up just waiting on confirmation email.

marlena

Have just submitted my photos ,looking forward to this ,Kelly

Shrimp

Submitted mine, however I had to get a new account as my first one broke.... :cool:

new account name Shrimp123

jaqian

Just submitted my photos.

slumped

Hi All

Looks like a great entry for this month - allow me to make a suggestion in relation to voting.

If we end up with 30 photos, there is a high chance that many will get no votes, and most will get 1-3 votes.

I propose that we leave the voting open as normal for 1 week (til 27th Jan) and at that stage the top 5 and ties are entered into a final vote for another week (til 5th Feb or thereabouts)

This will allow the best photos fight it out for the bragging rights.

What y'all think??

S

rymus

good.. but time consuming

slumped

rymus wrote:

good.. but time consuming

Is that time consuming in a good sort of way by any chance???

rymus

given that time = money & money = root of all evil I'd have to say time spent working on two rounds of voting = the root of all evil.

That said, if I get bored around vote day....

fluppet

slumped wrote:

I propose that we leave the voting open as normal for 1 week (til 27th Jan) and at that stage the top 5 and ties are entered into a final vote for another week (til 5th Feb or thereabouts)

That's the way they do the Urban Photo Competition over at SkyScraperCity

Diarmsquid

I've just submitted a photo twice. The first one was too big I think, so I made it smaller and submitted. First photo I've entered.

megameaty

It the first time i've submitted anything so let me know if the file is too big or doesnt work or anything. Also I can't remember what settings i used to take the photo cause i took it a while ago. Sorry!

megameaty

And one more thing...how does judging work for the compitition? Do we get to vote others photos we like? If so how, I'm all new and confused.

Shrimp

Ok, as this one has loads of entries the voting might be done differently but as far as i know it's going to be use voting for the photos. One vote each and you vote for your fav. Simple really. voting starts 20th of Jan I think.

megameaty

Thanks. Why don't we just get 2 votes each then we won't have to drag it out for so long and surely a definite winner will come out of it. We could state our first and second preference and the person whos photo you choose 1st will get 2votes and 2nd will get 1vote. That seems fair to me although I am pretty bad at maths so maybe its not....

Shrimp

nice one...

ha, rymus would be ... ehh.. too busy??

rymus

yeah sure, 2 votes each.. Just pm Cloud there, I'm sure he'll be only too willing to modify the vbulletin script to allow each user 2 votes. No bother at all..

having 2 votes each would be like having 20 votes each, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference at the end of the day. You get one vote, you pick your favorite and that's it.

megameaty

Sorry,
I've never voted before I thought it was just a matter of emailing someone.

In fairness having two votes would make a difference and I only really suggested it cause slumped was worried people wouldnt get any votes and the votes would be too spread out. That wouldn't happen if twice the amount of people voted or in this case we all got two votes.

rymus

see heres the thing.. if twice the number of people voted, some photos would still get no votes. If two hundred times the number of people voted, every photo might get at least one vote, but who's to say? You could go down the road of telling people who to vote for, but we haven't gone completely communist here yet.

The idea slumped put forward will be getting a trial run this month to see how it goes.

Gordon

rymus wrote:

yeah sure, 2 votes each.. Just pm Cloud there, I'm sure he'll be only too willing to modify the vbulletin script to allow each user 2 votes. No bother at all..

lol

You could try making the poll multiple choice though. Not sure if that would help. I personally think that it's better off with people having one vote though.

eas

maybe we're loosing the point here - there are no prizes involved, as far as I can see this is only for fun anyhow - why are we confusing things for rymus?

rymus

aha! the very point! If there was a cash prize I'd be expecting all the trauma.

I had a devilish plan to charge a piffling entry fee, payable by paypal, and then award the winner with something like a years pro flickr account or a few porn mags but as with everything else on the internet, theres very little trust and too much organisation in it. Unless we can get boards to sponsor a prize of course.. pm cloud about that too while you're at it.

dalk

Is registration working at photos.rymus.net?

Havent received the confirmation email to activate the account after 3 hours...

rymus

it's working alright

dalk

Thought maybe i'd entered the email address incorrectly, but then i tried registering again with a another user name and got:

Another user has already registered with the email address you entered

Which was me. So email was correct first time. So looks like the email is really taking its time arriving...

EDIT:

Re-registered with a different name. Worked perfectly.

I verified the email address i used originally as working fine (with test emails from 2 accounts). Does the site have a problem with yahoo.com addresses?

rymus

dalk wrote:

Does the site have a problem with yahoo.com addresses?

Not that I know of... but thats not to say it doesnt.

dalk

Dosen't matter now anyway...

I've uploaded an image.

captain P

dalk wrote:

Thought maybe i'd entered the email address incorrectly, but then i tried registering again with a another user name and got:

Another user has already registered with the email address you entered

Which was me. So email was correct first time. So looks like the email is really taking its time arriving...

EDIT:

Re-registered with a different name. Worked perfectly.

I verified the email address i used originally as working fine (with test emails from 2 accounts). Does the site have a problem with yahoo.com addresses?

same happened to me but with a gmail address, i reregistered with another gmail address and it worked fine

440Hz

Ok im new to all this, just found the photo challenge and would like to give it a go. When I go to register at this site do I need to use my boards handle so that the photo can be associated with me here? Sorry if that sounds thick, just wanna check first before I mess it up.

rymus

yeah, use your boards name. Also, stick your boards name in the title of whatever photo you upload

gerire

Wow just had a look through all the pictures there is some real qualite images there.
Dam you talented people!!

rymus

that's it... entries are closed. Anything entered after now will be binned.

Also, anyone that registered on photos.rymus.net but hasn't activated their account will be deleted.

evilhomer

Entered for the first time, love B&W photos.
The quality is really good.
I really like rymus's photo.
whats with the black on both sides of the photo??

rymus

vigenetting(sp?) from a rusted metal fence

eas

i was wondering about your shot as well rymus -

whats the textured background?

very strong entry BTW!