*Congratulations to Billyburg! Our first semi-annual Flickr Photo Blog Challenge Winner.

Evening Glow by billyburg

 

“Evening Glow” by billyburg (visit and see more from billyburg HERE)

Our first giveaway winner has been decided by you guys.  With a combined effort between my site and Heather and Mat’s site Mirrorlessons (visit them HERE), billyburg has compiled the most votes, and is your first semi annual Flickr Photo Blog Challenge Winner.

Congratulations billyburg, and thank you to everyone who voted, and submitted over the last six months.

Billyburg has won a custom built T&T Garda wrist strap (see more HERE) as well as a Topaz Plugin of his  choice!  We hope to continue to build our community through these fun, free monthly challenges, and if you’ve not yet submitted, you have a chance monthly.  The winner of each month’s challenge gets to choose the theme for the next month while getting exposure both here and on Heather and Mat’s site.

Find us on Flickr:

TRP Flickr Group

Mirrorlessons Flickr Group

Thanks again to Heather and Mat for a fun and successful hosting of 6 months worth of challenges.  Here’s to our next 6 months and beyond.

All the best, and happy shooting!

Tyson

*Time to vote! Choose the Champion

challenge6month

Hello and welcome to our first, semi-annual giveaway vote, where you can choose who has provided us with the best overall image from our first 6 monthly challenges, is granted our undying adoration and given some free stuff as well.  Over the last 6 months, Heather, Mat and I have coordinated a monthly, dual blog challenge here and on Heather and Mat’s site Mirrorlessons where a theme is presented at the beginning of each month.  Anyone can submit an image into our theme specific Flickr group discussion threads for consideration.  At the end of the month, Heather, Mat and I choose an image that we each feel best exemplifies that theme and open it up for a vote.  The winner of that vote then gets to choose the next theme, and we begin again.  It has been a fun way to get to know and interact with many more photographers here and through Flickr, hopefully also translating into inspiration for many of us.  When we started this, we’d merely hoped that we could find a way to further build a community while gaining and hopefully providing some fun inspiration as a way to share our images with a wider audience.  It has been working and we’re thrilled with the connections made and beautiful imagery we’ve seen presented through these monthly challenges.

This brings us to our first giveaway vote!  The fine folks at Topaz Labs, creators of many very awesome software programs and plugins, have offered a free program of the winners choice.  I will also be building a custom Garda Wrist Strap for said winner with a few different color choices, not quite yet available for purchase and the title of our first, Semi-Annual Challenge Champion.

Let the vote commence!  Please come in and vote for your favorite image.

Continue reading

*Monthly Flickr Photo Blog Challenge #7; “Frames”

Underpass by Stephen Worden

“Underpass” by and © Stephen Worden (billyburg)  See more from Stephen HERE

Welcome to our 7th monthly challenge folks!  My how the time has flown by.  If you’re new to our challenges, the winner from our previous month, in this case Stephen Worden (billyburg on flickr) gets to choose the theme for the following month.  This month’s theme is “Frames”.

There are no rules, and the theme is open to interpretation.  The only real caveat is that Heather and Mat from Mirrorlessons along with myself, get to choose our three favorite images from all of the submissions.  We then post those three to both sites and open it up for a vote.  Everyone then gets to choose which image and photographer wins and goes on to choose the next month’s theme.

The exciting part is that we have compiled our first 6 monthly winners and will be posting another vote soon.  The 6 previous monthly winning images will be voted on by any and everyone to determine our readers favorite overall image from the last 6 monthly challenges with the winner receiving a free Topaz Plugin of their choice (DeNoise, Clarity, ReMask, Adjust, any of them!!!) and a custom, hand built Garda Wriststrap from yours truly.  Who knows what we’ll be able to giveaway next time, but I already have some emails out there and some irons in the fire…

We will be working to do a giveaway after each 6 months worth of challenges, so the next cycle begins today!

To submit, just share your chosen image to both the TRP Flickr Group Thread HERE and the Mirrorlessons Flickr Group Thread HERE and stay tuned.

Each monthly challenge runs through the end of the current month, and the vote starts on the first day of the next month, running for 5 days, then the cycle resets and we start anew!  This has been a great way for us to both challenge each other, but also get to know one another.  I’ve really enjoyed doing this with Heather and Mat and feel that working with such friendly, talented and courteous people such as Heather, Mat and the many cool folks who have submitted over the last 6 months makes the time spent maintaining and creating content for this site worth while.  It’s one thing to gain readers, clicks, etc, but I didn’t start this site to be a job.  I started it because I love photography and talking about photography, so thank you to all who are reading this, and I challenge you to get more involved in our continually growing community here, on Mirrorlessons and Flickr!

Go forth and rock it.

Happy shooting,

T

*Congratulations to billyburg for winning our August Flickr Photo Blog Challenge, Animals!

Evening Glow by billyburg

“Evening Glow” by billyburg, visit and see more HERE

Congratulations billyburg, and thank you to everyone who submitted images this last month. Billyburg’s image of two sheep, basking in the light from a low sitting sun, one staring off into a foggy, defocused beyond while the other keeps tabs on the viewer has risen to, and won the challenge.  See more from billyburg and follow him on Flickr here.

Being that this concludes our 6th monthly challenge, and after billyburg gives us our challenge theme for September, we will be posting a vote with our 6 monthly winners up to this point battling it out for our adoration and the title of ultimate Mirrorlessons/TRP Flickr Photo Blog Challenge semi-annual Champion!

Stay tuned for the vote which will take place both here, and on Mirrorlessons.  Heather, Mat and myself will be posting within the next week or so.  The winner of our 6 month champion’s vote will win a Topaz Plugin of their choice and a custom, hand built camera wrist strap.

Thank you Heather and Mat, everyone who has participated and to all those who have voted and kept up with this new way to get more and more of us connected and networking.  If you’ve not yet joined in, stay tuned, sign up to receive articles and challenges as they post by entering your email at the top right of the page, join up with us on Flickr (the TRP Group HERE and the Mirrorlessons Group HERE), find us on Facebook (TRP HERE and Mirrorlessons HERE) and on Twitter (TRP HERE and Mirrorlessons HERE) to stay abreast of new reviews, comparisons, tips, tricks, contests and giveaways.

As always, thanks everyone for the read, and happy shooting!

Tyson