Contests

With just under three weeks left until the deadline of our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest, our readers are really hitting it into high gear by turning in some awesome videos! Some of the ideas you guys come up with are really clever and a refreshing alternative to the boring "glamorized music videos" we receive daily. Wedding photographer Jaroslav Repta (based out of Bratislave, Slovakia) recently filmed an entire wedding from the perspective of his camera by mounting a GoPro Hero on his DSLR. Having started off as a wedding photographer myself, I found it really interesting to watch some of the conditions Jaroslav had to work in, and how his creative eye made the most of every situation. Weddings are tough with harsh sunlight one second and low light action the next, but Jaroslav shows how he (and tons of other fstoppers) work quick to find an interesting image. Love or hate weddings, I think everyone will get a kick out of seeing the hustle and bustle required at every wedding.

As we get closer to the deadline to enter our Behind The Scenes Contest we are seeing more and more entries, many of which are looking truly great. As I was browsing through the submissions, I noticed this one by Cory Albrechston where he demonstrates how he designed and lit a set to create the look of someone trapped under a sheet of ice. With pretty straightforward lighting and a cool idea, Cory was able to make a really unusual and eye-catching image.

It's time for another contest Fstoppers! Our Facebook Group has swelled to over 1500 active members. It's a great community and resource for photographers anywhere, as everyone can offer constructive criticism and praise for aspiring shooters. To support the group, we have partnered with the strap masters at Black Rapid and are giving away a Black Rapid SnapR 10 This nifty little bag is perfect for quick access to your compact camera while on the go. How do you win? Join the Facebook Group and submit your best image that you shot with either a point and shoot (compact mirrorless ok!) or your phone! Make sure you note that it is a contest entry in the caption or tag Fstoppers in the post. These days, great photos can be made with the smallest hardware and we want you to prove it. Contest ends January 3, 2012. Good luck!

Last month, we put up a copy of our brand new DVD, The Art Behind the Headshot up for grabs to the person who could impress Lee with their Photoshop skills. Entrants had to submit one file with both a before and after photo together to our Facebook Group. We got literally hundreds of entries, many of them really fantastic. We were very impressed with the skills of many of you. It was a tough decision, and Lee's choice may surprise you... Check the full post to see the winner and runners up.

This past month, we tasked you Fstoppers with entering your best self portrait for a chance to win a brand new Westcott Apollo Orb. Self portraits are understandably hard to judge, but I based my considerations on three aspects: 1) Well lit; 2) Concept well executed; 3) The photo tells me something about the photographer. There were many quality entries and I really enjoyed going through them. Thank you everyone who entered, as it proves what a solid group of photographers we have here. Check the full post to see the winner and the runners up.

We have a lot of contests going on each month but we wanted to give away something really special for the Holidays. What are we giving away that is so special? How about a free Apple 16GB iPad 2 and a free digital copy of Peter Hurley's The Art Behind The Headshot!
All you have to do to enter is follow @fstoppers on Twitter, and tweet the following message: "Follow @fstoppers and retweet this message to win Peter Hurley's DVD and an iPad 2 http://bit.ly/tsTufu" Make sure you tweet this message between now and the end of December 15th, 2011 because we will announce the winner the following day. Goto Peter's The Art Behind The Headshot Website for more information. Thanks to everyone who has already purchased the DVD and good luck to everyone entering the contest. NOTE: If you plan on ordering the DVD or already have purchased it, you will be refunded if you win the twitter contest.

We received over 1400 entries into our sweepstakes to win a Lowepro Photo Sport AW 200 and this morning I used a random number generator to draw our winner. Congratulations to Kara Marnell! To claim your prize, send me an email with a link to your facebook profile so I can confirm your details (this may require that you accept me as a friend). Stick around and look forward to more contests launching this month! More chances to win great prizes from awesome brands like Lowepro!

Our November Contsts, sponsored by Lowepro and Westcott, are coming to a close! You have just one more day to enter to win some great prizes. On Facebook you can win the new Peter Hurley DVD just by entering a before and after photoshop image to our group page. On the Fstoppers facebook page, just click the Contests tab, answer one question, and you're entered to win a brand new Lowepro bag. On the FS Forums, submit your best self portrait and you could win a new Westcott Apollo Orb. Just click any of the images below to go to the contest you want to enter. Hurry, all contests close tomorrow!

The videos keep coming in for our 2011 Fstoppers Behind The Scenes Contest as we enter the final month of submissions. Most photographers use either strobe, fluorescent, or incandescent light to mold and sculpt their subjects. German photographer Julius Ise went a completely different route and used UV blacklights along with some gelled lights for separation to produce extremely vivid images. The shoot has an overall tribal theme and I really think the blacklight look brings something to the overall vibe. I'd say this is one of my top 5 submissions so far but Julius will have to impress our judges. What do you guys think? Leave Julius your thoughts below in the comments. Also check out Julius Ise's full portfolio because it's pretty awesome as well.

Howdy and welcome to the Wednesday Rundown. This week we have some of entries from the 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest. It is amazing how great these videos are and it's great to see our readers' own work. Check out these four shoots and send them some feedback on the forum. Hurry up and finish your video before you go into a food coma over the holidays! If you have a video that you think we might like to post, please click on "submit content" above.

Hey Fstoppers! We promised a fourth contest this month, and here it is. Through December 20, enter your best image that you feel defines the theme "Reflections" and win a sick new DSLR Video Fastpack 350 AW from Lowepro. Big thanks to our friends at Lowepro for their generosity this month with the great prizes!

How to win: You must submit a photo that portrays your best interpretation of the theme "Reflections" to the discussion in our Flickr group here. The photo must be in your Flickr photostream. You can only post one image to be considered for this contest. If you post more than one submission you will not be in the running until you delete the extra submissions. The contest will come to an end on December 15, 2011 and the winner will be announced on December 20, 2011. It is free to participate and anyone can enter, but all winners outside the U.S. are expected to pay any and all shipping and handling costs associated with shipping the prize.

The Fstoppers 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest has been picking up momentum as we near the submission deadline (December 31st). We are giving away over $20,000 in prizes which is pretty exciting on it's own but I'm happy to say that things are about to get even better. We have finalized all of the judges for this competition and these four are some of the best in the industry. Check out the full post to see each of their bios.

Fstoppers.com is completely revamping how we do contests. Starting this month, we are going to be doing at least four contests a month. It's a tall order, but we are going to do our best. You already know about our Forum Contest, and to that we are adding two Facebook contests. For the first contest, the folks over at Lowepro offered a generous prize: The Photo Sport AW 200. This bag was honored with the 2011 Popular Photography POP Award for being an Outstanding Photography Product, so of course you want one! Entering is easy: 1) Like us on Facebook. You can find our page at facebook.com/thefstoppers. 2) Find the "Contest" tab under our profile photo. 3) Answer the one question by November 30, 2011. 4) You're one step closer to taking off on your own photographic adventure. With the Photo Sport AW 200, there really is no place you and your camera can't go. The second is a Facebook Group contest. We have a great group that is growing and full of photographers who share their work. Just upload a before and after image of anything you Photoshopped and tag Fstoppers in the image. Make sure your before and after are together in one photo so we don't lose any of the entries. Lee will choose his favorite of the entries and the winner gets a Peter Hurley DVD!

We just received a very interesting contest entry from Viet Q. Mac, a recent graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His buddy from Film Matters contacted him about an upcoming video production involving the 311RS and a couple Red Epics. Viet decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to create something for our BTS Contest. Although this video leaves many questions unanswered it is a beautiful look at a production of this size. To check out all of the contest entries as they come in you can keep an eye on our forum.

There are just less than 7 weeks left to submit your behind the scenes contest video. Submissions are starting to come in and it's amazing what our readers are doing through their photography. As the video submissions come in we are going to feature the standouts here on the front of Fstoppers. In Zach Hetrick's behind the scenes video, he shows how he created commercial sports portraits of The Hoosiers's track and field team. Zach takes some time at the beginning to talk a bit about the lighting setup he used and shows how you can give your group shots a punch with some nice light thanks to a few Alien Bee monoblocks. Leave your comments below if you have any questions about this shoot or simply want to give some friendly support to Zach. You can check out all the entries on the BTS Contest Forum Thread, and remember to get your submissions in early so we can share your work on the front of the site.

Hey everyone! My name is Jaron Schneider and I am the latest addition to the Fstoppers team. If you have been visiting our page or group on Facebook, you may recognize me. I have been tasked with running FS Interactive which is our contests and social medias. We have been getting a lot of questions asking about the contests and we apologize for the wait. However, with patience often comes great things. In addition to our ongoing 2011 BTS Video Contest, we have three monthly contests now in the rotation. More details on the other two soon to come in the next week, but this week we start things off with the return of our forum contest! You have a chance to win a Westcott Apollo Orb, an innovative revamp of the classic photographic lighting tool, the Apollo. The Orb was only officially released last month, so it's a brand new product that we are really happy to give away. Big thank you to FJ Westcott! How to Win: What do you have to do to win? Just register on the forums, find this thread, and submit your best self portrait. This first contest will be judged by myself, Lee and Patrick, but after that the winner will be the judge of the next month's contest (just like old times). The winner will also get their name and photography added to the famed Fstoppers top banner with a link to your personal website. Below is a video showing you some of the features of the Westcott Apollo Orb, and view the full post to see more images and details on the product. Good luck!

Our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest ends on December 31st which gives you a little less than 2 months to submit your video. I want to make it very clear that you SHOULD NOT wait until the 31st to submit your video because something will go wrong; it always does. Plus, videos submitted early will be posted to the front of Fstoppers and many that come in at the last minute will not get the same exposure. Stay tuned until the end of this video for a little "surprise" for all of you gear heads out there.

Things have been pretty quiet in terms of video submissions for our big 2011 BTS Contest and I know that everyone is planning to have theirs done last minute. Let me give you a little advice, DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. As submissions are posted on the forum we will be posting our favorites on Fstoppers. If you submit your video with the masses the very last day, it will not get the attention it deserves. In this submission Dave Gruentzel (who is a still photographer) decided to film a his buddy Cory Albrechtson's new fashion concept. Cory was inspired by a simple fabric print and from that came this whole shoot. Check out the full post to see the final image.

Well the title pretty much says it all and you only have 3 day left to enter! Fstoppers is excited to announce a new twitter contest where you can win one of the brand new Apple Macbook Air 11.6" Notebooks. Click Here for details on how you can enter the Fstoppers twitter contest and win this macbook. Also make sure you enter before the end of October 12th since we are announcing the winner the following day.

To all of our readers who "don't have the time" or "don't know how" to create a video for our Behind The Scenes Contest, I just wanted to point out that FS reader Robert Simpson has now submitted his 5th video (and I don't think he's done yet). Keep in mind that you still have almost 3 months to submit your video and have a shot at over $20k in prizes. In the video below (which happens to be my favorite) Robert takes us through every step of creating an interesting concept and bringing it to life. He calls it "The Little People." To check out the other 4 videos that Robert has also submitted check out the full post. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pJ-5c0uBVg<

A few weeks ago I posted a video that created a lot of unintentional buzz about poorly compositing athletes together on a football field. Well this video from Monte Isom doesn't include much photoshop but still produces a lot of great images. Monte always has a great time on his sets and hopefully you NYC readers will be able to share a drink with him tomorrow at our FS Meetup.

Ryan Enn Hughes just submited his entry for our BTSV contest and it is quite impressive. Ryan teamed up with The Big Freeze and set up 48 D700 cameras in a circle and then fired them all at once as dancers did their thing. The photographs are pretty cool on their own but the real magic happened in post during the editing phase when Ryan teamed up with sound designers at Zelig Sound to create two incredible 30 seconds videos. Obviously this is an extremely high budget project but our contest will not be judge on that so don't be discouraged if you don't have 48 $3000 cameras to play with. As always, you can check out all of the submissions to our contest as they come in here on our forum.

What's up ephers? the Fstoppers Flickr contest for September, 2011 is now live HERE. This month's prize is a Lowepro Fastpack 250 backpack. This is my bag of choice, I use it almost daily. It fits my Nikon D3s with the Nikon 70-200 VRII in the main bottom compartment, my SB-900 with it's battery pack and Nikon 24-70 up in the top compartment. Plus, I store my 13" MacBook Pro in the laptop compartment (although it'll fit up to a 17" laptop). This bag is so versatile and I LOVE it. It fits a bunch more gear than what I've mentioned here, but enough talk about the bag ... GO HERE and WIN IT! This month's theme is B&W Street Photography

I've been saving my money for months so that I can make the switch over to Profoto and take advantage of their new D1 Air Monolights. Not only are these things small and light but they are also completely wireless! You can now control your studio lights (on/off, flash power, modeling light) all from the Profoto Air Remote. You want to know what the best part is? WE ARE GIVING A SET OF THESE LIGHTS AWAY to the winner of our behind the scenes contest. Check out the full post to see 3 videos of these incredible lights in action.

Howdy and welcome to the Wednesday Rundown. This week we have four BTS videos for the contest. We have some unique ideas coming in. Check out the BTS Contest forum post for more details and postings from the photographers. If you have a video that you think we might like to post, please click on "submit content" above.

We are two weeks into our 2011 BTS contest and the entries are starting to trickle in. I just watched Robert Simpson's video called "Small World" and I was really impressed with the results. Robert used a D70 and kit lens in conjunction with some pretty interesting Photoshop techniques to create a very unique looking image. To keep an eye on all of the contest entries as they come in you can check out the the contest section on our forum.

Hey everyone, the Fstoppers Flickr contest for August, 2011 is in full swing HERE. This month you can win a Lowepro Fastpack 250 bakpack. This is my bag of choice, I use it almost daily. It fits my Nikon D3s with the Nikon 70-200 VRII in the main bottom compartment, my SB-900 with it's battery pack and Nikon 24-70 up in the top compartment. PLUS I store my 13" MacBook Pro in the laptop compartment (although it'll fit up to a 17" laptop). This bag is solid and I LOVE it, and it fits a bunch more, but enough talk about the bag ... GO HERE and WIN IT! This month's theme is WONDER

Within 24 hours of announcing the Fstoppers 2011 Behind The Scenes Video Contest, we were shocked to already have our first submission. Marc Kuyer from Holland had an idea to have small model cars battling each other like they were straight out of Rock and Roll Racing (super cult classic). Marc does a good job outlining his plans and showing you all the photoshopping that went into this final image. Of course we'd love to see everyone on camera but sometimes with language barriers you may have to stick with subtitles and text. So I guess it's safe to say right now Marc has taken the lead in our contest. If no one else steps up to the plate he will be moving on from small speed lights to a full studio worth of equipment!

Giving back to photographers has always been a big part of what makes Fstoppers such a great community. Soon after we launched last year, Lee and I decided it would be fun to see what you, our readers, would come up with. Our first Fstoppers Behind the Scenes Video Contest was a tremendous success with over 90 BTS videos submitted by the FS online community (we even added Sean to our team after seeing his video)! Last year we gave away a Canon 7D as the winning prize but this year is going to blow that out of the water as we have over $20,000 in prizes. Want to find out what you have to do to win all this gear? Click the Full Post for the current 2011 Fstoppers Behind The Scenes Contest!

Details inside.

Starting today, our Fstopper's Monthly Photo Contest in the forums will begin and end in the middle of the month. This month's prize is a Photoflex Starflash 150 Monolight and your own custom banner at the top of the FS site. The July contest is up and running and will end on August 15th, 2011.

Happy July everyone, just in case you didn't know, Fstoppers has a FLICKR GROUP! So join it ... now, go do it! And in this Flickr group of ours we run a monthly contest with some really great guest judges. Last month Noam Galai did us the honors, and this month it will be Drew Gurian. For those of you who don't know Drew, he is the dreamer that birthed the Flash Bus Tour, and is Joe McNally's right hand man. Check out his work at www.DrewGurian.com. This month's contest theme is HEAT, and Lowepro is hooking the lucky winner up with a Lowepro Classified 250 AW which is an awesome bag for the photojournalist or street shooter inside us all. Go submit and have a blast creating! -Corey Melton

Here at Fstoppers we are kicking off summer with 2 ways to win some hot prizes. In our Flickr group you have the chance to win a Lowepro Pro Roller x100 Case in our Behind The Scenes contest. Last month was our 1st Flickr contest and we had 440 entries! Thank you to everyone for making the contest such a success. You can also head over to our Forum's June Photo Contest to win a StarLite Digital Kit from Photoflex. This month's theme is "Sand". So put on some SPF 50, find yourself a beach or desert and have fun creating. Good luck everyone!

Happy Memorial Day everybody! Just want to remind everyone that we have 2 awesome photo contests going on here at Fstoppers, where we are giving away 3 big prizes. Be sure to head over to our brand new Flickr Group Contest and submit your favorite shot from your photostream to win a Lowepro Sport 200 AW Backpack. Also, we have our Monthly Photo Contest going on in our forums where you can win a Photoflex 42" Multidisc and a Black Rapid Sport Strap. But hurry up, because you only have 36 hours left. Submissions to both contests end at 11:59pm on May 31st. GOOD LUCK!

Hey everyone, Corey Melton here. Last Monday we kicked off our new Flickr group with a killer contest to win a Lowepro Photo Sport 200 AW! We had over 225 submissions within the first 30 hours, which was by far the most successful contest Fstoppers has ever seen. Then on Thursday afternoon, without warning, the contest was deleted with all of our other posts and threads in the group. We don't know what happened and neither does Flickr (at least they haven't been able to tell us yet) so we have decided to give the contest another go. We have read Flickr's terms and conditions and we are within ALL guidelines, there is no foreseen reason why this should happen again. So find your favorite shot in your photostream and post it NOW!!

Every month here at Fstoppers we run a photo contest that is judged by one of our readers. We'd like to congratulate Adam Sund for winning the April Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest. Click the previous link to see his winning photograph and watch for his banner at the top of the site to see more of Adam's work.

As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Adam has chosen "Underneath". Just like Adam, this month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a large Photoflex 42" Multidisc Reflector which is great for location and studio uses. The winner will also receive a Black Rapid Sport Strap. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Adam not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the May Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

Every month here at Fstoppers we run a photo contest that is judged by one of our readers. We'd like to congratulate Jim Dillahey for winning the March Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest. Click the previous link to see his winning photograph and watch for his banner at the top of the site to see more of Jim's work.

As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Jim has chosen "CONFIDENCE". Just like Jim, this month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a HUGE Photoflex White and Gold Reflector which is great for location and studio uses. The winner will also get to choose a custom camera strap from Riley G Designworks who are making some of the coolest photography straps I've ever seen. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Jim not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the April Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

It's almost April which means that two of our photo contests are about to wrap up. The March Photoshop Contest challenges you to create the best tshirt graphic art of Noam's Stolen Scream for a Think Tank Photo Bag as well as a custom shirt featuring your design. For the March Photography Contest you can submit your best interpretation of the theme "COLLABORATION" and win a Photoflex Starlight and a custom banner on the top of Fstoppers.com! The chances of winning either contest are really good because only a few dozen people have entered so far. Click on the links above to submit your entry and as long as you have it posted before 6am Eastern Time then you will be eligible. And remember Noam is judging his contest and February winner Julius will be judging the Photo Contest. Good luck to all!

It's almost the end of the month which means entries to the March Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest are due! Previous winner Julius picked the theme "COLLABORATION," and as part of his prize, he will be picking the March winner. The winner of this month's contest will also judge and pick the theme for April, get their own rotating banner at the top of Fstoppers for a month, and win a Photoflex Starlite QL constant light for photography and video. Not everyone has been as creative with the theme "collaboration" as I would have hoped but that means it's still anyone's game on who will win. Good luck to all!

This months Fstoppers Photoshop contest is all about helping Noam Galai (The Stolen Scream). His image was stolen hundreds of times and to make a small portion of his money back he is selling a few of his personal "scream designs" in his scream store (both Patrick and I have already been sporting a couple of his shirts around town). The winner of this months contest will win a shirt with his or her design and an Urban Design 70 bag from Think Tank. Learn all of the details and download the high res image here on the forum.

The Stolen Scream 5 Days ago we released The Stolen Scream, a story about Noam Galai's stolen photographs. So far, it has been viewed by over 130,000 people and hundreds of websites have already picked up the story. As you know, Noam has made almost no money from his images being used around the world but I think that we can help him in a small way. How you can help We have decided to make the Fstoppers March Photoshop Contest a t-shirt/graphics contest to support Noam. If you want to donate your talent to help Noam, please download either his original image, or the graphic image of his scream and create your own design from it. Once you create a graphic, post it here on our forum. At the end of the month Noam himself will choose his favorite graphic and it will be sold in his scream store. All proceeds from the design will go to Noam but the winner will receive a t-shirt with his or her winning design on it plus an Urban Design 70 bag from Think Tank. If you don't have the time or the talent to be a part of the contest, you can still help by sharing this contest on Twitter or Facebook. You can also support Noam by purchasing his original scream designs.

Every month here at Fstoppers we run a photo contest that is judged by one of our readers. We'd like to congratulate Julius Koivistoinen for winning the February Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest. Click the previous link to see his winning photograph and watch for his banner at the top of the site to see more of Julius's work. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Julius has chosen "COLLABORATION". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a Photoflex Starlite QL constant light which is our goto light for video and shallow depth of field portraits. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Julius not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the March Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

It's the end of the month which means it's almost time to judge the monthly Fstoppers Forum photo contest. The response for this month has been really great and I can't wait to see who wins it and takes home some new gear. The final submissions will be valid until Midnight (EST) on March 1st so be sure to submit now rather than later. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Frank has chosen "Birth". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a Photoflex Octodome Extra Small Kit which is our goto soft light for location shooting. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Jan winner Frank Lin and not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the February Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

Every month here at Fstoppers we run a photo contest that is judged by one of our readers. We'd like to congratulate Frank Lin for winning the January Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest. Click the previous link to see his winning photograph and watch for his banner at the top of the site to see more of Frank's work. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Frank has chosen "BIRTH". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a Photoflex Octodome Extra Small Kit which is our goto soft light for location shooting. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Frank not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the February Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

This month you will be editing an image by Josh Branstetter. As usual, there are no rules and I will pick my favorite on February 15th. The winner will receive a Think Tank Urban Disguise 70. Download the high res image by clicking here, and post your edited images on our forum here. I think this image has incredible photoshop potential and I can't wait to see what you guys can come up with.

It's the end of the month which means it's almost time to judge the monthly Fstoppers Forum photo contest. The response for this month has been really great and I can't wait to see who wins it and takes home some new gear. The final submissions will be valid until Midnight (EST) on Feb 1st so be sure to submit now rather than later. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Jay has chosen "Power". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a Photoflex Octodome Extra Small Kit which is our goto soft light for location shooting. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Dec winner Jay Malone and not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the January Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

One of the first early adapters of DSLR video for professional use was Shane Hurlbut of Terminator Salvation, The Guardian, The Last 3 Minutes fame. A few days ago he released a really well shot commercial for the US Marines and decided to make a short contest out of it. The video has over 27 frames shot on various Canon 5D, 7D, and 1D cameras as they do every cinemagraphic move possible. I'm thinking we might get a BTS video of the filming of this commercial after the contest is done but in the meantime Shane is going to give away a free copy of Adobe's CS5 Production Premium Suite to whoever correctly guesses what camera shot what footage. You can head over to the contest page for more details and the entries will be accepted until the end of Jan 26th, 2011.

A few days ago we finished up another Fstoppers Photoshop Contest and I am happy to announce that Billy Coker won with his hilarious, and extremely well executed, edit of Patrick's basketball image. We were by no means expecting to pick a "funny" edit but we honestly felt that this edit had the most creativity and raw Photoshop skill. It's time to start the next contest but I couldn't figure out what image to Photoshop so I am reaching out to all of you. If you have an image that you think has great Photoshop potential post it here on our forum. In 3 days I will pick my favorite image to begin the next contest.

Last month we tested out our first ever Photoshop Contest, and it was a great success. So we have decided to start a monthly photoshop contest so everyone can get in on the action. Think Tank has offered up prizes for at least 6 months of photoshop contests, and submissions are almost due for the January 2011 contest. If you didn't know, this month we challenged you to edit this basketball image from the Pocket Wizard TT5 Test Shoot. If you've watched the video then you know that fellow Fstoppers reader Jaymes Poudrier did a pretty fantastic job of editing my shots but I want to see what you can do. Feel free to manipulate this photograph any way you see fit, and at the end of Jan 15th I will pick a winner. The reward is going to be a new Think Tank Disguise 70 Pro camera bag which is really great for quick on the go shooters. One word to the wise; there are no rules for this contest but I'm a fan of mainstream and marketable photographs. Anyone can participate but if you are outside of North America you will have to pay for any shipping or handling that Think Tank might encounter. Post all your images over at the January 2011 Photoshop Contest Forum and good luck!

Congratulations to Jay Malone for winning the December Fstoppers Forum Photo Contest. Click the previous link to see his winning photograph and watch for his banner at the top of the site to see more of Jay's portrait work. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme and Jay has chosen "Power". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above and also a Photoflex Octodome Extra Small Kit which is our goto soft light for location shooting. As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Jay not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the January Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!