Community Info

Community Information

Below is information about the "Photo Challenge" community on LiveJournal. To join this community, click here. You may leave the community at any time.

User:

photochallenge (744229)

Photo Challenge
for peeps who love to take pictures.

View all userpics

Website:

The Photochallenge Website

E-mail:

ljdiva

gmail.com

About:

NEW COMMUNITY MEMBERS PLEASE READ THIS FIRST BEFORE POSTING! THANK YOU!

New Rule: Posting your photo. When you upload your photo (to wherever you host your images)
if at all possible please name the photo ljusername_challengeid.jpg (Example: webdiva_125.jpg)
this saves me time when saving the photos so I don't have to rename. Also please save your
photos as jpg files, not bmp, png or gif. If you use a photo hosting place that renames your
photo and you have no control over that, do not worry about it, just do this if you are able.
Thanks for understanding!

Welcome to Photo Challenge. Here you can post pictures from your digital cameras, scanned
in photos or webcams but it's with a difference because there is a challenge involved.

Ahh why the challenge? Well here is how it works:

Every Thursday:

Photochallenge
Gallery

Every Tuesday:

Voting ends and the winners of the last weeks competition are announced.
Basically it's best just to join in and you will catch the drift. Most importantly have fun!

This weeks theme (challenge number 1) is:

Imperfection

You may not enter a photo that you have previously entered.

IMPORTANT GUIDELINES ON POSTING

Mild nudity is ok, just no porn, or pictures that may offend! If your picture
contains mild nudity or is graphic in nature, it MUST be put behind an lj-cut and you must warn the user that nudity or something offensive is behind the cut. Please have the courtesy
to do this for those who might view pictures from work.

Please don't post stolen pictures. All pictures should be taken by YOU.

You may not post a photo that was entered in a previous challenge if it ranked in the top 3.

If you want opinions on what photo you should post do not post asking for opinions in this community. Do it in your own journal.

Please use the <lj-cut> tag if you are posting pictures bigger than 450 pixels X
450 pixels or you are posting more than one photo.. We have to consider people with slower connections to the internet as well as not messing up the layouts of everyone's friend's pages with huge pictures.

So if the width OR the height is OVER 450 pixels, cut it or your post will be removed.

If you don't know how to use <lj-cut> then please look at the FAQ by clicking here
(look at number 3 on the list). Thank you!

When posting pictures please put the challenge number as the topic or within the post
so it's easier for me.

If you would like to submit your picture into the competition please make sure you post
it by 9pm(EST), 6pm (PST) on Thursdays (That's 2am(GMT)Friday). Otherwise you will be too late to
enter.

Please only post one picture per challenge. You may NOT change your photo after you have you have
posted. Your first photo will be entered even if you switch it. Any other pictures you may have please
just use a text based link to the picture rather than posting the picture to the group. This helps
me to find the ones for the competition gallery. If you want to post a picture but don't want
it entered please notate that and put it BEHIND a CUT, otherwise I will assume it's your entry.

If you want to advertise a community here, ask first.

All important messages will be in the community memories!

Photo Editing Rules

Photo Editing Guidelines: The intention of photochallenge is to highlight
photography. Any editing should be used to correct the image, not completely change it.
Digital cameras often don't capture color depth or allow you to create a black and white
photo. Film cameras are limited by the quality of the print, which ofter has the same color
problems. Your changes should only correct these problems. Remember, what you see through
your viewfinder is what you should enter, not what you can do with your computer.

You can adjust as follows:

Brightness and Contrast changes are allowed.

Black and white - you can take a color picture and make it black and white, but the
entire image must be black and white.

Saturation - within normal ranges. You can correct to the way the subject originally
appeared, but not change it's appearance. For instance, if you shot a bright, red apple but
your shot didn't fully capture the apple's true red, you can fix it. You cannot, however,
make it more red than it was originally. Furthermore, you can only change the saturation
on the entire image. You cannot change the saturation to highlight one aspect. If you shot
that same red apple, you can not keep it red and desaturate the rest of the image (see
example of what is not accepted here.

Color Changes - you can not alter or change any color/hue of the original subject (with
the exception of turning the entire photo black and white as stated above). For example,
if someone's shirt started purple, it must stay purple. You cannot make someone's eyes blue,
if they started brown.

Dodging and Burning - Spot dodging and burning (lightening and darkening) is allowed.

Cropping within your photo is allowed.

Adding Borders - Adding a border to your photo is acceptable.

Copyright - you can add your copyright information to the image, preferably not to obscure the image.

No filters except those that are meant to preserve the integrity of the image and/or
reduce the effects of noise, scratches, etc, specifically Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, and Dust
& Scratches filters.

All filters must be applied to the whole of the image.

Any photo submitted outside of these guidelines will not be entered in the weekly competition.

IMPORTANT!!! the ABOVE rules apply to dark room developing as well. The EXACT same
rules apply. You can do color correction etc. but you may not manipulate the photo
beyond the rules stated above.

Some useful Links

If you need somewhere to host your photos try http://www.fotopic.net.

Also don't forget to check out our website at http://www.pbase.com/klee36/photochallenge

Other stuff
This community was initially created by webkin and is currently maintained by kaylee who kindly took over for webdiva.

Here are some banners to put in our journals and userinfo to make people aware of the community.
I would be very grateful if members would put one of the banners below into their journal/lj userinfo.
Thanks. I have put an example of the code you would need to use to link to the image. I am linking
the image back to the community userinfo which explains what the community is all about!

To put this banner in your journal you will need to use the following code, please copy and paste
it into your userinfo or journal:
<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=photochallenge" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.webdiva.org/pc/images/1.jpg" border="0"></a>

To put this banner in your journal you will need to use the following code, please copy and paste
it into your userinfo or journal:
<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=photochallenge" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.webdiva.org/pc/images/2.gif" border="0"></a>

I hope lots of people user the banners to help promote the group! Please let me know if you use one
of them on your journal so I can see that people are using them!

Into music? Like writing songs? Check out songchallenge! What's it about? Here's a bit of info... "Every two weeks (or one week if it comes to that), everyone in the community is invited/cajoled to write (and upload) an ORIGINAL SONG to certain specifications and one song would be judged the winner by the members of the community. Production values won't matter - it just has to be a passable recording of the song idea within the set boundaries."
Check out the user info page for more.