Nikon d7000, nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 55mm, f/3.2, iso 400

My idea for this photo was to capture a chain reaction. Without access to nuclear material I turned to matches. It is a simple design, really, 100-plus matches in a circular candle cup with the center match lit first and the reaction began. The fire went much higher than I had anticipated, and while it is very hard to shoot in the dark at 1/1000, it is much harder to make the decision to keep snapping or blow out the flames (I kid you not, they went about 3-4+ feet in the air). I like this one the most at it seems to capture the ring of ignition right about in the middle of the burning and unburnt matches. It was fun, for all the 10 seconds it lasted, but I guess that technically is 10,000 possible shots for this contest.

Thanks,

- Keshar P. Kubal

I was at the park with my son this weekend and I thought it might be a nice setting to try and snap something for this challenge. Since I couldn't get him to sit still long enough for anything I tried playing with some leaves. The shot was captured by holding the leaves at arm's length to get the focus right, then dropping them and hoping for the best. Canon T2i with 18-55 kit lens, 1/1000, f/4, ISO400.

- Adam Gruber

This is my first entry in a Gizmodo shooting challenge - actually, it's my first ever photo entry in anything. If the shot looks familiar, it's because I read the Cambridge In Colour link and thought Lazlo's example was cool.

Photo information:
May 22, 2011
Camera: Canon
Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS
Lens: Canon
Model: EF-S 18-55mm
ISO: 800
Exposure: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 4.5
Focal Length: 30mm
Flash Used: No

- Matt Hagon

As soon as i read this week's challenge, I knew that I wanted to shoot the birds that frequent our backyard feeders. I used my Olympus Pen E-PL1 with the 40-150 zoom. Manual focus on the feeder, set my camera to shutter priority at 1/1000th of a second. Aperture maxed out at 5.6, so my camera auto-set the iso at 1600. Shot a ton of pics, and only a handful showed any real action. I chose this one because it had three different species of birds, and had the most color.

- Stephen Snider

This shot was in a small town in New York where, like New England, it has been raining for the last 3 weeks... Since no one was mowing their grass, it produced some pretty large dandelions. It turned out to be a great subject for this challenge. I used my Canon XSI at 1/1000, f/4.0, at 1600 iso, with the standard lens 18-55mm.

- Seth Porter

This photo was tough because not only was I trying to keep my Nikon D300 from falling into the Atlantic Ocean, I was balancing my 80 lb son on my shoulder. I set the continuous capture to high and caught his trip to splashdown. My intention was to get the splash but I thought this image had more of an "impact."

Nikon D300 (I love my camera)
18-135mm lens
18mm ISO 400
1/1000s-f9

I did use Photoshop to increase the saturation and removed some dis-colorization from water spot on the lens.

Thanks,

- Gil Lopez

Nikon D300s, 85mm f/3.5 micro lens, ISO 800, 1/1000, f/4.2, SB600 flash, tripod
I was very excited to try this challenge as it pushed me outside my comfort zone. I am mainly interested in macro and nature photography and rarely shoot at speeds above 1/100. I tried to think of household things which would be interesting at 1/1000; I tried the shower head and the blender before settling on striking a match. I went through about 6 or 7 boxes before achieving a result I was happy with. It turns out that even at 1/1000 a normal match strike is too fast to capture and you need to move a bit slower to capture the match at the moment of ignition. Thanks to the wife for patiently striking many, many matches for me.
More of my photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/krumholz/ and http://krungleholla.smugmug.com/

- Glenn Krumholz

Hello,

You've had many contests lately but I always run out of time to do them. This is my first submission. I thought it would be perfect to get some shots of my honey bees coming in on their "b line". However again time was not on my side. I went to the in-laws for dinner. On their deck was a humming bird feeder. Watching from inside I remembered this challenge and went and got my camera. It took many tries to get their pictures. They would sit in mid air just watching me, just out of my preset focus point for the feeder. Finally I waited them out. I like this photo for this challenge because of the shadow of the bird. I got many shots including one of the bird just sitting on the feeder looking at me. It was kinda comical because at first they would just land and as I was snapping shots away they would jump up and float just above the perch on the feeder then go back in land, they would do this for every shutter snap for about the first 20 shots.

Canon 60D with EF55-300mmIS lens. All settings on auto but the shutter speed. I also had a preset focus point. Meaning before the birds came I focus on the feeder, so when they came I could just start snapping away.

Thanks and hope you enjoy.

- Ben

Canon EOS Rebel T2i
EF 28mm 1:1.8
1/1000 sec
f/1.8
ISO 400
Subject: Fidel
That there is Fidel in mid-air during the golden hour in my apartment. I set up my T2i on a gorillapod and set the self-timer to take 10 consecutive shots at 1/1000th. It came out a bit out of focus. Before anyone starts, Fidel had a blast during this challenge as I dropped him from a low height onto the bed. (He signed a release form and he kept saying "again, again, again.")

- Yamil Arocho

Equipment Used:
Canon Rebel T2i
18-55mm lens
3x macro magnification filters
Regal Light Flash light
and the kitchen sink.

Shot at:
1/1000s
f/5.6
55mm
ISO 1600

I've been wanting to try to take some pictures of falling water since I got the camera a few months ago so this was a great opportunity to try this. I had issues with lighting so I decided to just turn on the kitchen sink and have the water fall onto the flashlight and took a multitude of shots. It worked out nicely since the only thing lit was the water. The only touch ups were to white balance and some noise reductions and sharpening.

- Faiyaz Mohammed

I shot this with my Olympus point and shoot that I turned to 1/1000. Taking it was no hard i just turned on the bathtub and this was the first picture I took right as it was hitting the bathtub floor. There is not much to say about this image.

- Corey Palmer

For this challenge I wanted to capture something in extremely fast motion. I knew I was going to the driving range with family so I thought the impact of a golf ball would be perfect. Unfortunately this is a lot harder to capture then you would think, and a golf club is moving a lot faster than what 1/1000 can catch. This picture took roughly 600 shots to capture, out of them I had only 4 shots that even featured the club. Eventually my father in laws arm got tired and we had to start cycling through the family to keep hitting balls. The lucky winner was my wife with this shot.

There was one other shot, it was the moment of impact, unfortunatly, since the club and ball are such a blur I didn't think it came out as well as this one, but I will be loading it to my flickr stream if anyone wants to see it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wizzer/ (This line can be omitted if you guys don't want the link included)

Thanks for these shooting challenges, I look forward to them every week to brush up on different techniques!

- Steve P.

Taken with my T2i in Shutter Priority Mode. I have a bunch of magnets attached to the metal frame of my desk that I'm playing with constantly as I work. I took some old hard drive magnets, the strongest ones I have, and put them on the windowsill where there was enough light. With enough tries, I was able to capture the magnets floating in limbo as they were dragged up. To increase my chances, I had the repelling charge of the magnet facing up. That way it would need to bounce around and flip over before flying away.

- Chris Smith

Hi there,

My entry for this challenge is this picture of our dog, "Timmy" (named after the Tim Hortons coffee chain here in Canada). The goal was to capture as much water coming off of him as possible while he shakes. He was pretty resistant to it at first, but after a few dog cookies he warmed up to the idea and gave us a few minutes of cooperation (and pouty faces ;) Due to time contraints this weekend and a storm rolling in this evening, we didn't have enough time to properly setup how we'd have liked, so this is the best shot of the bunch. Enjoy ;)

It was shot with a Canon T2i with a 50mm f/1.4 lens. Shot at 1/1000th, ISO800, and f/2.0, the photo was cropped and slightly touched up with iPhoto '11.

Thanks for the opportunity!

- Aaron

Hello,
I wish to submit my entry for the 1/1000 challenge.

The description of the image -

Camera - Canon EOS Rebel T1i DSLR
Lens - Canon EF-S 18-55 mm
No tripod
Shutter speed - 1/1000 sec
F-stop - f/5.6
Focal length - 55 mm
ISO - 3200
Shot on - Sat, May 21st 7 pm EDT
Location - Holland, Michigan

Story behind the shot -

There I was sitting in my balcony on a warm Saturday eve, when these beautiful birds showed up. I chased them around a small pond near my house and was sitting quietly on the lawn besides them waiting for best shot. And then they all decided to take off.. Was lucky enough to get this shot as it was kind of dark and cloudy outside.

Regards,

- Adwait Bhagwat

Hello, here is my picture for the 1/1000th contest! My husband and I each decided to enter this time because we each had separate ideas on what would look the best!

When I was about 6 years old, I made the mistake of drinking a cola while eating a mentos. I quickly discovered that it tasted so bad (to me anyways, it tastes like Root Beer.... YUCK!) and the large amounts of foam made me sick! To this day, I still cannot eat mentos or drink Root Beer without feeling sick from the memories.

So, I decided to try and make a nice picture out of a bad memory! My husband was tasked with the job of getting wet and sticky dropping the mentos into the bottle while I took the pictures... he did an ok job I think :)

We bought a cheap 6 pack of pop so I could try a couple different ways of doing it and on the third try, I got it just the way I wanted.

Taken with our Canon T2i, with our 50mm lens on my father-in-laws tripod.

Hope you like it!

- Jen

The camera used was a Canon Rebel with a stock lens. The shutter speed was 1/1000 aperture was 5.6 ISO was 1600. My brother and I set out to conquer this contest with an original idea to pop a water balloon and capture it with the 1/1000 speed. The problem quickly became the terrible quality of good 'ol Wal-Mart water balloons. We couldn't even fill them up without them popping. Soon we evolved into trying to capture the initial ignition of a match only to fail once again. Finally we moved on to this idea and successfully captured the image but with the high shutter speed we had a multitude of issues with lighting. Finally we managed to capture some acceptable images and here we are.

- Austin Rhodes

We had woken up from an afternoon nap and decided to make the bed.

LUMIX LX5
F2.0
1/1000
ISO 400

- Danny Duong

Took this shot while at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival on Saturday with my family. After 200 shots of him falling off the impossible rope latter he decided to take a ride on the swing. Thats him laughing on the left begging for more from the operator who was obviously tired.

- Zot

This week's challenge was HARD. Not so much with the execution of it, but it was really hard to find a subject that fascinated me at that speed. But luckily the marines where paying a visit to our harbor this weekend and giving shows; the perfect opportunity! They had this beautiful links helicopter doing some stunts and I just couldn't resist. As usual I used my Canon 450D and this time I used my Tamron 18 - 200mm lense. ISO was 400 and taken at F 7.1

- Chrystal Boomgaart

Gizmodo,
This shot was taken on the back porch. Convinced my self if I waited long enough i could get a good shot, regardless of my poor location. Luckily this wasp strolled along with an unexpectedly full mouth. Camera is Nikon D5000, Lens is older manual telephoto, ISO 250, WB sunny.

- Chris Foster

Hi,

I originally wanted to capture some cats flying through the air, but I think they knew what I wanted and so they refused. I had to get creative and so I went out to the backyard with my hose to see if I could get some cool water shots. This is a macro shot of the water pouring off the side of a lawn chair.

Canon T2i, EFS 18-55, 1/1000 sec (obviously), f5.6, 55mm focal point, ISO 3200 (yuck, I know, but the light sucked), and noise reduction, curve adjustment, and saturation boost in Lightroom.

- Solomon Kamman

Shot with a Canon EOS Rebel T2i with a Canon EF-S 55-250mm lens at 250mm. shutter 1/1000 sec (duh), f/5.6, ISO 250

Dear Gizmodo,

This is my second contest in a row and I am having loads of fun getting out each week to take pictures. For this week's contest, I had many ideas. I thought about water, dropping/breaking things, spinning drills and wheels, and animals. I decided to settle with this picture of the bee for my submission. I wanted to get a good picture of a bird to submit, but I learned after spending a few hours trying to get a good shot of one, that they are a pain to photograph. They will not move for a long time and then take off before you can press the shutter or get them in focus. Anyways, I had a lot of fun with this one, can't wait till next week!

- Nicholas

Gizmodo,
This shot was one of about 30 water balloons my husband and I busted to see what we could get. By far the most unique although many interesting pictures came about. Nikon D5000 with telephoto lens.

- Christi Foster

Hey Giz,

For this challenge I really wanted to capture something that could not be seen by the human eye. I first played around with photographing birds and splashing water, but it was just not giving me the "frozen in time" look I was going for. Then I came across this random coin from the bahamas and gave it a good flick. Not only did the spinning keep the coin upright, it spun it fast enough I could not see what was on it. So I took the coin outside on my balcony (giving me plenty of natural light), set out a piece a cardboard I had used for spray painting and started shooting the coin spinning. I was able to capture the coin head-on and in focus, like it was perfectly still. I also loved the shadows and the purplish color the coin is some how reflecting (all my other shots the coin was just silver), really adds to the "frozen in time" look. Enjoy!

Camera settings:
Panasonic Lumix G2 with a 14-42mm lens
SS: 1/1000
Aperture: F3.5
ISO: 200

Thanks,

- Jeff

Shot with Canon 20D, 200 ISO with a cannon lens 70.0-300.0 mm shot at 70mm with f/5.6

Taken yesterday at my nieces softball game. Found a small opening in the fence behind home plate. We lost as usual.

- Joel Caballero

Swinging Strike

For my friend's birthday, we decided to get premium seats for the baseball game Sunday before the close of this contest. I have never had the experience of taking shorts shots before and figured that the 1/1000th challenge would be excellent as I would need a shutter speed at least that fast to freeze the action of a baseball game. Throughout the course of this game I took a ton of shots trying to capture the right moment, but without knowing what I wanted the right moment to be, I took well over 400 shots on my camera's continuous mode. To be fair, it was a rather slow game compared to the previous two of the weekend series between the O's and the Nats. Event with 1/1000th of a second shutter speed, you are limited by your own human ability to react quick enough to grab the right shot, and even then you become limited by the camera's ability to take however many shots per second in continuous, mine was 3 shots/second. All in all, it was a good game with a late comeback for the home team and I walked away with some great shots and a lot learned on shooting sports events.

My camera set up was a D3100 using my AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR lens. The shot was in f/13 with the all important 1/1000 sec shutter speed and a rather high ISO of 1600. The focal length of this shot was at 220mm, and yes, the seats were awesome.

- Christopher Hecht

Date: Sunday, May 22, 2011
Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
Focal Length: 105mm
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
Aperture: f/8
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 200

This was the F-15E Strike Eagle sneak pass at the 2011 Joint Service Open House at Andrews AFB. The F-15 came in low and fast from the left of show center, and caught me a bit off guard (sort of the point of the "sneak pass"). I threw my camera up, hoping to get something resembling a decent shot with whatever settings I had from my previous shot. I managed to capture this image, showing water vapor forming above the wings, and in the center of the wingtip vortices as the pilot pulled a few G's in front of the crowd.

- Daniel Perret

I was walking around The Fullerton Arboretum on a cloudy day. The rain had just finished, however the gloomy skies still loomed above. Because of the skies I was forced to point my camera low to the ground, filling up the frame with colorful flowers instead. Before I left the arboretum, I went through the private garden section, and saw these flowers poking out of the wooden fence. I used my D7000 + 50mm f/1.8 and SB-800 to take this shot.

- Arvin Alvarez

Hello,

This is a picture of my dog Ruby. She was relaxing and enjoying a nice belly rub (after taking picture of her running and jumping). I conveniently took a picture of her at the same moment she was sitting up and sneezing. This picture was so funny I had to enter it (Sorry Ruby! Totally unflattering of you!)

I used a Sony a330, shutter speed of 1/1000 and had the rest on auto settings.

Thanks!

- Elizabeth Fleming

After 130-some pictures I got this one. Anyone who has tried to get this picture knows that getting the timing right and not having the bee fly out of focus is all luck.

Nikon D50
70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR
ISO 800
f/8
300mm

- Quentin Swager

Hi,

This Is my submission for the 1/1000 contest.
Shot on a Panasonic G1 in raw @ 400 ASA with a MC Sonnar 135 Zeiss Jena at about 5.6/8.

My wife is pretty competitive so this photo is in answer to her challenge, which was really showing me your challenge. She thinks she's a better macro photographer, but we'll let you be the judge of that. This is one of my favorite flowers in our backyard. Decided to experience with 'rain' to see what I could get. Since it's no longer the rainy season my daughter helped me with the hose to get the look I wanted.

Looking forward to the results of your contest.

- Jason Salonen

I cut the sleeve of a box of matches so that it would lie flat. I used a clamp
to hold it in place on the arm of a patio chair. That way I could strike the
match with my right hand and operate the camera's remote control with my left.
The black background is my sweatshirt draped over another chair. I took the
picture outside in very bright sunlight. Canon EOS Rebel XSi, EF-S 18-55mm
lens, 1/1000 at f10, ISO 400.

- Chris Thompson

Hi,

This is my entry for the 1/1000 contest. This photo was shot on a Panasonic G1 in raw @ 400 ASA with a MC Sonnar 135 Zeiss Jena at a 5.6. This photo is my answer to my husband's photo (the yellow straw flower), since he will not just submit to the fact that I am the better Macro photographer in the family. Actually our 8 year old daughter, who also served as my camera assistant, is truly the best photographer in our family, but she's not allowed to use this camera...yet.

Thanks,

- Jessica Salonen

So I started early on this shooting challenge and decided I would shoot water. My first shots were of a bathtub running which were too dark. I upped the ISO and they were still no good. I added the flash and they looked great! Then I realized the camera forced the shutter speed down to 1/200 so those shots were out.
I tried water from the faucet and popping a water balloon which turned out fine but it was when I just playing around in my sister-in-law's backyard in Orange, CA that a bumble bee caught my eye.
Since I don't have a very good lens, I just tried to get as close as possible. The fast shutter enabled me to get the bee in flight instead of sitting on a flower. I wish I could have got a few more of the bee before he flew away.

Tech Info:
Canon EOS REBEL T1i
EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens
ISO 3200
55mm
f/5.6
1/1000

Thanks!

- Matthew Johnson

Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 70 mm
ISO Speed 200

These guys like to raid our bird feeders so I started putting out
peanuts for them as a distraction. Of course that didn't work, they
still raided the bird feeders, but I don't really mind. They often
jump from the fence to the feeders and I thought it might make a cool
shot if i could catch one... got lucky with the timing on this. I saw
her on the fence crouching... waited... then snap! It would have been
interesting to just catch one in the air but what the hell, throw in a
Spiderman who looks like he's feeding them on purpose and that just
adds to the fun.

Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.
Thanks,

- Jim

I have had an old leaky faucet in my kitchen for far too long, while I was thinking of what to photograph I became distracted by the sound of the faucet dripping into some dirty dishes in the sink. That is how I chose my subject for the challenge. My camera is not terribly low noise at higher ISO, and it has a fixed lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.0, so I had to put a lot of light on the scene and use a higher ISO then I would have liked to.

This photo was taken with a Canon Powershot S95 using the built in lens. No flash was used, several external lights were used to illuminate the scene.

- Matt Hicks

Just purchased my new 55-250mm lens and this was a good challenge to test it out on. I live near the Missouri and as it starts to overflow the banks here more and more geese continue to gather and i happened to capture this goose in flight over the river.
Nic Peters

Canon Rebel T1i 50-250mm lens
f/5.6
ISO 800
Exposure 1/1000 sec.

- Nic Peters

This is the first Shooting Contest I've participated in, and I used my new Canon T3i with the stock 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens. The lens posed some significant limitations - even with a couple lamps set up just above the table, I had to shoot at ISO6400 & f3.5 to get enough light. As you may have guessed, this shot is of a quarter spinning atop my dining room table. I took roughly 300 shots over ~50 spins... this shot happened to be from one of my earliest spins and I could never beat it. The varying depth of my spins made it difficult to keep the coin in focus, and getting the proper angle of the coin with respect to the light source involved a great deal of luck.

Thanks!

- R Philip Stevenson

This photo was taken with a Sony DSLR-A230, f/5.6, S/1/1000, ISO-400, I decide to take the instant when the water balloons explode and the water inside the balloon kept the shape of the balloon, and I use a mirror to reflect the sun to the balloon.

- Antonio Rodriguez

Visiting some friends for a Braai on the weekend we I took along my camera hoping for some 1/1000 action and this presented the perfect opportunity when the kids started jumping on the trampoline!
Shot with Nikon D90, Colour editied in Lightroom3.
1/1000s, f4.0, ISO1600.

Cheers,

- Nils

I knew that there was an awesome fountain in Cerritos, California and I had a shot in mind. So, around 9PM, my wife and I were headed home with our 2-year-old and I asked if it would be ok to stop by the fountain. With a tired baby in the car, we dropped by and I took about 10 minutes to capture it. This was a really hard shot to capture at shutter speed 1/1000 at any reasonable ISO, so I had to up it to ISO 5000, which made it very grainy, but I got the image I wanted. When I got back in the car, my baby girl said "Good picture dada?" and I said "Yes". I showed it to her and she agreed. :)

Body: Canon EOS 5d Mk II
Lens: Canon 100m f/2.8 Macro IS
Shutter: 1/1000
Aperture: 2.8
ISO: 5000

- Joe

I've been following the challenges for a while, but never submitted to one before. I was at a friend's house for a party Saturday night and they started a fire in their fire pit. The first thing I thought of was how perfect this would be for this week's challenge. I grabbed my camera and took a total of 15 to 20 different close-ups of the fire. This picture was chosen for how the flames filled the entire frame. I like the various shapes, lines, and textures the flames made with the quick shutter speed. I also enjoy how the shades of orange and yellow pop from black background.

I took this picture with a Cannon 5D Mark ii, EF 24-105 f/4L Zoom Lens at 73mm, ISO 3200, 1/1000 at f/4.0. I shot it in RAW and used Lightroom for editing to brighten and reduce noise with the high ISO.

- Jesse Folks

Shot with a Canon EOS Rebel T3i with a Tamron 18-270mm zoom at 270mm.
I set the camera to shutter mode at 1/1000th of a second and f9 (so
I'd have some depth of field) and it auto picked ISO 640.
What I learned today: 1/1000th of a second is REALLY fast. I was
hoping to do some close ups of objects (car bumpers, bike wheels, etc)
moving very quickly through the frame, and thought that if I was
zoomed in close enough, I'd see substantial motion of the object
across the frame. But at 1/1000th, even pretty fast moving cars were
still frozen. And so I decided this week would be better suited for a
trip to the dog park :)
I saw a lady playing fetch with her (fast) dog, Luci, and I asked if I
could take some shots. She was fine with me snapping away, so I got
some good shots & made a new four-legged friend.
I took a few dozen shots, but the very first one turned out to be the
best. My eventual technique became to focus on a specific spot and
then just take pictures as she crossed through that area. However, as
this was my first shot, I was still in auto-focus mode, and as you can
probably tell, the auto-focus system wasn't quite fast enough to keep
up with her :)
Luci, fetch!

- Eric Kornblum

This shot is taken from a burst of 6 or so frames. The tricky part was to get the match to light consistently while keeping it in focus. I've seen freeze frame pictures of a match lighting before, but it was neat to capture it myself. Canon 50D, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro - 1/1000, f/4, 100mm, ISO 3200.

- Raymond Liu

Canon 550D
ISO 200
F Stop 4.5
Shutter Speed 1/1000

I was sent to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia for work and decided to get up to take photos of the sunrise from the highest point in town at Anzac Hill. This is the war memorial with the Australian flag beside it.

- Kim Louey-Gung

Heres an image I shot of Will Sutton. He's a professional Freerunner and good friend of mine, who came to visit Cambridge to explore some of the locations we have in the city. This is a shot of him flipping off a wall and over me, whilst a storm was brewing in the distance.

More of my Freerunning video and Photography work here - http://www.ampisound.com/photography

Canon 60D
Sigma 10-20mm 4/5.6 @ 10mm
ISO 100
1/1000 Sec

Thanks!

- Scott Bass

The picture was taken when the winning team of a Branboll turnament (strange swedish sport) was announced, and shows 1ms of their dance of joy.

Taken with a Nikon D3100, at ISO 400, f/9 and the 18-105mm lens at full zoom, in Lund, Sweden.

- Marek Baczynski

Shot with a Nikon D3000 and a pretty cheap Sigma lense.
ISO 800
f/ 5.6
And of course, Shutter Speed: 1/1000

When I read the description I right away was thinking about water droplets. The issue, I decided, was getting adequate lighting with such a quick shutter speed. I ended up using a clamp-on desk lamp pointed towards the water and took a water bottle, poked a tiny hole in the lid with a pin, and used that for creating a drip. Overall I'm pleased with the results. Took probably 200-300 shots and came out with I think 10-15 that I liked. The lighting kinda make it look like liquid gold :) wish I had some of that layin' around...

Thanks!

- Peter Myers

I went out the other day to get some lunch and decided as always to bring my camera with me. Seemed like a nice sunny day and I might get some nice pictures of birds at high shutter speeds for this contest! To my surprise, it started to rain cats and dogs for about 5 minutes. I quickly got out of my car in a parking lot and started shooting not caring if my camera or lens got wet/destroyed in the rain!

Luckily I got some pretty amazing shots, this being one of the best ones I captured. There's something really amazing about the violence that ensues when it rains this much in such a short period of time and the fact that you can see clear blue skies in the background adds something to it as well! This was shot with a Canon 7D and a Canon 35mm f/2 lens with the ISO at 640 and aperture at 5.6. Shutter speed at 1/1000! Used Aperture 3 to auto enhance.

- Jaspreet Monga

Hello
I took many pictures that turned out good, but didn't give a good representation of speed of the object. So on my way to my girlfriend i took some shots of skaters. Everyone can assimilate with the subject and know it was moving quick. So many good shots were taken, and it was hard to choose a final one between skateboards and bikes. Hope you like.

Hardware:
Sony a230
f/4.5
1/1000
ISO-1600
Spot Focus
Wide Balance Cloudy
Shutter priority setting

Thanks

- Félix García

Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM

Shot @ ISO100, F/5.6, 1/1000, 100mm

This image was shot last saturday morning in Lagoa Rodrigo de Feitas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A once very polluted body of water, Lagoa's water tests are now showing it's cleaner than the sand of Rio's famous beaches such as Ipanema and Copacabana. The cleanup efforts are part of Rio's preparations for the 2016 Olympic Games and is a joint initiative executed by the government and financed, in part, by Eike Batista. Mr. Batista is a brazilian tycoon that invests in infrastructure and energy and is currently number 8 in Forbes' top world billionaires list. Back to the story behind the shot, due to Lagoa's shape and predominant wind direction, the usual wakeboarding trajectory is form west to east and back. Since morning hours are usually the best, due to calmer winds, it's very challenging to set up the camera to shoot there: in one direction you are facing the rising sun, in the other you are under optimal lighting. This specific day it was partly cloudy, which helps diffuse the sun that is behind the wakeboarder in this shot. I like how the shape of the spray and how it looks backlit. The high shutter speed also freezes interesting patterns on the water from the very edge of the board that is brushing the water, passing by the boarders hand and exiting the frame.

- Bruno Oliveira

This is probably the quickest challenge i had ever completed. It was a boring rainy wednesday afternoon in Columbus until i saw the shooting challenge. So off i went to complete it. Grabbed my Nikon put the shutter speed to 1/1000 and set the aperture accordingly. Needed someone to drop the weight into the glass, so i asked my wife, who was laughing at me all through it :) It took me few times to get the right shot. But was not that tough.

Camera - Hand Held Nikon D7000
Shutter SPeed - 1/1000
Aperture - F2
ISO - 400
Post Process in Adobe LR

Cheers,

- Sid

1/1000, F4.5, ISO 400, in RAW on a Canon Rebel XTI with a 55mm lens.

Its my first entry to a shooting challenge, and I wanted to do something simple involving my personnal obsession, water. I started by dropping water from a bottle to a glass but that wasn't cool enought, so I added blue food coloring. Exposure correction in Photoshop.

- William Chabot-Labbé

Camera Body: Canon 5D MKII
Lens: Canon 24-105mm f/4L
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
F4.0

This is my first photo contest I've participated in. I've seen lot's of them before, but this one seemed pretty simple and fun. So me and my brother went out to the river in our backyard and just dropped some rocks in the water and took pictures of it. As far as technique, I focused in on the water first, then my brother held the rock directly under the lens and dropped it while I took the picture. Pretty simple, really. Then I did a little editing in Apple's Aperture to add a little something to it.

Thank you so much!

- Daniel Mallek

Hey, here is my submission.

I live in New York, it's been raining all day today.
I stopped doing photography for several years but last week I decided to get it back and started doing this 365 project as many people have done, basically take at least one photograph a day.
so I went out this afternoon and took few shots in my backyard for the raindrops, attached is my personal favorite for the few shots I've taken but here is another one that's not bad -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/xunwang/5734928519/lightbox/

Equipment used:
5D Mk II
Canon 100mm F/2.8 Macro manual focusing shot @ 1/1000 f2.8
Rain coat for my camera & lens
Rain coat for myself :)

cheers,

- Xun

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T2i
Lens: 50mm f/1.8
ISO: 1600

It is my "birthday", and I thought dancing candle flames might be nice at high speed. So when the cake was lit, instead of making a wish, and blowing out the candles, I started taking pictures. The candles very quickly started wilting, and melting together creating even bigger flames. I only had time to get off a few shots before I had to deal with the bonfire. (In the end I completely forgot to make a wish - what a waste of a year!)

- Jeremy Neiman

Water seemed to be a compelling subject to capture at high shutter speed. Given the picture on the contest announcement though, I wasn't going to head down to the beach. Then after coming back from the gardening store, this idea dawned on me. I used a remote and sprinkled water from up top. I had to experiment with different flowers. Some bounced too much. I had to keep opening the iris to get enough of the droplets in focus. The ones that are really out of focus look surreal. Shot with a Canon T2i, Focal length 50, ISO 500.

- Brian Wagner

Canon rebel xt circa 2007 with default lens that comes with it. Shooting 1/1000th @ f5.6 (I know bad).

- Stirling Hewitt

While on a train ride back from Mississippi after picking up my grandmother and spending a few days with my cousins, I admired the passing scenery as I made the journey from Hattisburg MS to Philadelphia PA. Along the way, many things caught my attention; the fact that graffiti is a constant presence around trains and rail roads in general, there is much more farmland in this country than I once thought, and the fact that a 30 hour Amtrak ride with a decently sized bedroom compartment is much more bearable and overall enjoyable than any plane ride I've ever taken. However, the one thing that stood out more than any other part of the trip was the wreckage I saw in Tuscaloosa, Alabama from the tornadoes that tore through there a few weeks past. As I am from New Jersey, I have never seen a Tornado or the damage that one can produce, however upon seeing this damage, I am much more aware how detrimental they can be. This shot was taken with my Ricoh Singlex TLS, using my f1.8 55mm lens. I had the lens at f 2.2, and about 1 full stop overexposed to get more definition inside the train car, and to enhance the blurry rose in the foreground, which I feel is symbolic of the lives recently lost. I've titled this image "Just Passing Through" because of the manner in which I came and passed the scene of destruction, the overall brevity of the situation, and because the tornado appeared and diminished in a way similar to myself.

- Daniel Locandro

Nikon D40
Nikkor 55-200mm at 68mm
ISO 200
Shutter Priority 1/1000
Aperature f/4.2

I was in the back yard trying to get a good shot of my cousin jumping off of the roof. My yorkies were running around and decided to get a picture of them while waiting for my cousin to climb back up. This is Sebastian, he is 8 years old and much more photogenic than my cousin.

- Kelly Bisby

I title this picture "Tee'd Up". It was taken on a beautiful evening at an East Tennessee golf course. I sat the camera on the ground behind the ball and used a golf tee to support the lens and adjust the height (worked great). I set me NEX-3 to 1/1000th, auto ISO, and manual focus. I used the 10 second timer with 5 shot burst. I would like to say that I got this shot on my first attempt but the truth is I was on the 18th tee box and I had tried on every tee box prior. I touched up the picture in Picasa and resized in Photoshop. As for the golf shot, Duck Hook into someones yard.

- Kris Hall

My girlfriend gave me a flint fire starter for my birthday, it was the first thing i thought of when I saw this shooting challenge. We went to my dad's which has all black walls and tried to get some shots. Timing was tough, so we resorted to continuous shooting and hoping that amongst the many black frames one would show a spark. This was the best of them. Taken with a Canon EOS 450D, 50mm f/1.8 mkII lens, wide open, iso 100. We decided on the low iso as the actual subject was very bright and already over-exposing. The image was cropped and I enhanced the colour of the smoke in Aperture. Sparks were made by me, picture taken by Zosia Bredow.

- Adam Falk

Hi,

Taken with an old Canon S30, is a compact fluorescent lamp taken in autofocus at 50 ISO, 1/1000 speed and 8F.

- Erik

I finally decided to give the Shooting Challenge a try so I grabbed my camera, got our 6-month old English Mastiff all riled up, and started taking some shots. This was my favorite; it looks like her tongue is reaching all the way to her eye!
Canon 50D, EF 28-135mm lens, 50 mm focal length, 7.1 aperture, 2500 ISO

- Ryan Harrigill

Some Like It Hot

Last night I decided to take on the 1/1000 challenge.... First I thought of all the cool liquid things I could do or things in motion/dropping or what have you. Sports was out because I was home with my son in bed. I thought for a few moments and decided I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take a nice hot photo. I gathered some items and shot away... This is my favorite of the bunch. I don't think I could have captured anything hotter. The flames almost look like a smokin' hot babe. Well, maybe not smoking, but you get my drift. =)

*I didn't do any editing to this photo other than I cropped and resized it.*

=)

Nikon D90
18-105mm Nikkor lens
S-1/1000
ISO- 800
F- 4.8
42mm

- Ashley Chavez

The other day, I found myself being chased by a rabid Republican. With nowhere to turn, I decided to take shelter at the local skate park. Not one to be fooled, the 'publican was right on my tail, and getting closer. I ran around the skate park, imploring the skaters for help. As I turned a corner, circling behind the concrete quarter pipe, I tripped and began to fall. Not wanting to destroy my new camera, the Canon 60D, I grabbed it to protect it from its perilous journey into the ground.

That is all I can remember from the incident. After I regained consciousness, an onlooker explained to me what had happened, proof of which was caught by my camera in this photo.

As I was falling, one of the skateboarders, decided he had to do something. He had to help.
With great skill and dexterity, he charged the quarter pipe - fire in his eyes. Reaching the lip of the ramp, he popped an ollie, and aimed for the crazed beast, ready to pounce on my unconscious body. He flew through the air, aiming directly at the monsters head, prepared to fight.
When the skateboard made contact with the 'publicans thick skull, he was destroyed instantly, and mysteriously vanished.

This photo, which was taken accidentally, as I was falling, and the skateboarder attacking, is the only proof of this story.

That counts as 'a few sentences,' right?

Gear used:
Canon 60D
18-135mm kit lens set @ 18mm, 1/1000 sec., F/5.7, ISO 2000
Meike Battery Grip set to stun
Canon Wide strap for rock solid support

- Seth Koberg

Name: Zac Mansfield
Camera: Canon 5D MarkII
Lens: Canon 28-300mm
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter Speed: 1/1000

I shot this picture at the Tour of AMGEN bicycle race during stage 5, about 1km from the finish line. I left a people-packed finish line for a more isolated spot along the race path to get a low angle street shot. In the picture are the riders in the lead pack. The eventual winner of stage 5 (Peter Sagan) is pictured center in the green jersey.

- Zac Mansfield

On this shot I was trying to best figure out how to do some inside shots at 1/1000. I was looking for a lot of light and realized our ceiling fan had 4 lightbulbs and was as bright as I'd be able to get. I wasn't planning on using this as my submission, but I thought it looked really cool so I stopped there. Oh, and my "tripod" was a bar stool that happened to be lying right under the ceiling fan when I was figuring all this out. I shot this photo on an Olympus E-510 with a 14-42mm zoom lens, ISO 1600, F4.0, 1/1000 sec, 14mm.

- Justin Lane

A crow in flight.

Shot Details:
Nikon D3000, 55mm, 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO-200

Cheers,

- Anup

Was out in the garden trying to get some macro shots of bugs and the like when I was ordered to do some watering.
So decided to combine the 2 tasks.
Hose pipe with thumb over the end in left hand, camera in the other.

Canon 7d
Canon 100mm macro L
F3.2
ISO500
1/1000s (obviously ;))

- Hamish Forbes

Worker Bee
Nikon D90 ISO 250, Shutter priority, center weighted w/ Nikkor 18-200mm @ full 200mm and F5.6.

I was checking our farm crops Friday and there are millions of bees in the turnip seed field. The turnip flowers smell sweeter than any rose and the bees are thriving in the 15 acres of yellow blossoms.

Even 1/1,000 doesn't capture the wings clearly - the bee's are moving constantly, chaotic while perversely methodical. They're fascinating to watch on a sunny spring day. And the one that flew into my hair was pretty patient in extricating himself with out any hard feelings.

- Jason Hunton

This was taken with my Sony HX5V at (obviously) 1/1000's of a second, ISO800, f5.0.
My idea sounded simple enough when I thought it out... however I quickly found that your arm gets quite tired shooting the ball with one hand and trying to take a picture with the other.... I then recruited the nearest family member to shoot some hoops for me. My brother, who would never turn down the opportunity to show off his basketball 'prowess' volunteered quite readily. He didn't realize how many time he'd be doing the same thing over and over again, but in the end I got what I wanted!

- Brian Coffman

I was trying home for lunch when I noticed this vulture just sitting on the gaurd rail looking at the road kill. I pulled over and took a few shots. It just stared t me for a few minutes then jumped down to start eating the squirrel. I wanted to get a different angle shot so I got out of my truck but that scared him off. As it flew away another vulture flew down from a tree behind me and buzzed me and my truck closer than 2 feet. It scared the crap out of me, those vultures have a 3 foot wing span easily. I went back and staked out the road kill with a better lens but they never came back or were watching me from a distance planning my demise. Next morning the squirrel was gone.

Camera: Canon XSi
Lens: crappy 28-105mm kit lens
Touched up a bit on Lightroom.

Thanks

- Joe

Camera: Canon EOS 350D Digital
lens: Sigma 28-105 mm
Focal Length: 56 mm
Exposure Time: 0.001s
Aperture: 5.66 / f/7.1
White Balance: auto
ISO: 800

After two days of looking for the perfect picture with a friend of mine in Soest, the Netherlands, I went back to my hometown saturday night and my parents were sitting in the backyard near the brazier enjoying the heat. I made some pictures of the fire and went to bed. The next day I looked trough my pictures and decided to send this one in as my submission.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lennart94

- Lennart de Knikker

Camera: Canon Rebel T1i
Lens: EF 50mm 1.4
ISO: 3200
f/1.8
1/1000
No flash, all manual

Heard about the challenge this Thursday from a friend. It's more of a 'right
place at the right time' or a 'create your own and hope it comes out' type of
capture. Due to limited time, I couldn't just stand around waiting for an
amazing bird to fly by (I live in the city so I'd be lucky to capture a pigeon)
so I followed my father to the bowling alley (Saturday, May 21) to see pins fly
around instead. He's an awesome bowler and knew he wouldn't let me down with
the strikes.

Thank you and can't wait to see all the submissions.

- Tina L. Pierce

Shooting Summary:

Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 18-105 mm
ISO: 1000
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/1000 sec.

My daughter encouraged me to try and enter this contest since she knows I love taking pictures. "We are pretty busy, " I told her, "plus, 1/1000 of a second is pretty quick. What is something you would like to see frozen in time in the shot?" Right away, she says my wife can throw water balloons at her while I take pictures. What a great sport! She enjoyed the few balloons thrown her way and even got to get the camera guy back with a couple to the head after we got this shot!

- Brian Knack

It was pushing 90F in Raleigh today when this idea popped in my head. I simply dropped an ice cube into a glass of water and snapped away. There was some trial and error involved before coming away with this shot. Canon T1i, EF 28-90 Lens, Aperture 1/1000 (obviously), f5.0, ISO 200.

- Matt Cockman

Photo was taken with a nikon D300 and a nikkor 75-150mm f3.5 lens. Photo shows a street performer at the East Lansing Arts Festival juggling a sword, a torch and a tomato which he took bites off while juggling. The speed of 1/1000 froze the bits of tomato falling from his mouth and hand.

- Miguel Villavicencio

This photograph was taken on May 20 2011 in Beaufort North, Carolina. This Flag was flying on the top of a maritime museum containing several artifacts associated with Blackbeard the Pirate. Blackbeard stayed at the Hammock House in the early 1700's. The Hammock House is the oldest building in Beaufort, and it is rumored that Blackbeard hung one of his wives from an oak tree on that property.

It was shot using a Panasonic Lumix-LX5 (Leica lens). ISO 400, f8, 1/1000. It was imported into and processed in Aperture 3. Additionally, B&W conversion, Film Grain simulation, and toning were done in Nik SilverEfex Pro.

- Matt Vilmany

Canon Rebel XS
Tokina 35mm F2.8 Macro Lens

Shutter Speed 1/1000 (Obviously)
ISO 200
Aperture F/2.8
No Flash
EV +1

To get this shot, I setup the camera, got it focused, and then held down the shutter release so it would rapidly fire, as I repeatedly lit the lighter. The most frustrating part of this shoot was that once I had a image I was happy with in the preview, I imported it, and discovered that I hadn't manually set the ISO, and it automatically went with 1600. The result of this was that I had a great thumbnail image, but at any high resolution it was filled with noise. Luckily, after setting everything up again, and *properly* setting up my camera this time, I ended up with an image that I think is even better.

- Cato Pedersen

Canon T2i with 70-300 lens.
F6.3 1/1000 ISO400

Usually you don't want to freeze motion of race cars because doing so makes them look static, lifeless and unexciting. In order to take a shot at 1/1000 and make it look exciting, I decided to find an area of the track where I could find these 2 million dollar machines braking hard enough to glow the rotors during daylight. These guys were also moving fast enough that the wheels weren't completely frozen in time giving a slight sense of motion. I shot the red, yellow and black Ferrari's this way and this blue colored one seemed to contrast the rotor glow the most.

(I still managed to fubar the shot slightly by bumping my ISO setting to 400 when I could have gotten away with ISO 100 and a using a larger aperture at 4.5 or 5. Luckily there wasn't any increase in perceptible noise. This shot was executed much better at 1/320th panning)

- Bobby Triantos

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: 50mm 1.8
ISO: 6400
NO Flash

Grab my 7D and attached my wide opening lens, and run to the toilet where there is a water spray, take a series of shot until I am contented with what I got.

- Mars

Canon 60D
Lens: EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
50mm focal length , ISO 320, f-20

Wanted to capture both a solid and a liquid shattering together. Taken on the top of my boyfriend's apartment complex parking garage.My boyfriend dropped the glass and shards came flying at me. Luckily, the camera got in the way!

- Lindsay Kuhlenberg

This was shot at the Cherry Creek National Hare & Hound Desert Race, May 21st. Sorry... NO Rapture.

Shot with a Nikon D3s, Nikon 70-200 2.8 lens.

Shutter speed set at 1/1000, F-stop at 8, ISO set to auto (metadate says it locked on this shot at 220)

Focus was set to constant track with 0 delay.

Sorry... I forgot the above info on the previous send.

- Brad Bradley

This buzzin' bee was taken in the large scale artwork "In Memory" by Nathan Coley which is situated at Jupiter Artland, an amazing contemporary sculpture part just outside of Edinburgh, Scotland (http://www.jupiterartland.org).

It is described by the artist as: "A simple enclosure formed by poured concrete surrounding a tended graveyard with headstones and planting... [it] takes the form of a small family graveyard, the kind to be found in the grounds of many a country house or estate." (http://www.jupiterartland.org/the_works/the_artists/nathan_coley). The irony of the bee making life in the middle of a situation so closely tied up to death creates an interesting tension.

Shot on a Nikon D3000 using 35mm, f/1.8 lens, ISO 200, 1/1000 AT F/2.5

thanks

- Andy

Photo was shot using FujiFilm FinePix S5200 with and ISO setting of 200.

The photo is composed of my turtle, Bellini, peaking out from behind the flow of water into the tank from the filter. It took close to 100 shots to get him to line up properly so he wouldn't be totally obscured by the bubbles, or have the filter inlet showing behind him. While he has no problem coming up to the glass and following my across the room, or even my finger pressed up on the glass, he would not come near the camera. Which resulted in a lot of pictures of his tail. In order to better convey the 'under water' feel to the photo I took a bit of temperature away from the photo.

- Jeremy Curcio

Shot with 60D 24mm f/11 1/1000s iso200

Violet Charge

I sometimes wonder at what speed the fluorescent charge up in regard to the size. And this is perfect for this challenge. I set up the tripod to a four headed continuous light mount and mount four fluorescent with the same cool daylight color temperature but different in size. Surprisingly enough after hundreds of shots the biggest is consistently the first to charge and the last to discharge and all of them make beautiful violet and greenish color when they charge and discharge. Though I don't know the exact number but the violet charge is a lot less than the green one which I can only shot two great violet in all. And that is the best shot to represent the spiral 85w compared to 23w, 25w and spiral 25w.

- Zefanya Hanata

I took this picture at a school fundraiser. This is the school teacher getting soaked in the "Target Toss" while playing trombone.
Shot with a Cannon EOS 40D with a 75-300mm lens.

- Sarah Carruthers

Orioles on our feeder (grape jelly). This is the best shot I could get at 1/1000 in the time range of the contest. I had hoped to get the Orioles in flight, but it just didn't work out. Thanks for considering. -Brian Kelly

Camera = Canon EOS Rebel XSi
Exposure = 1/1000 @ f/8.0
Focal Length = 250mm
Speed Rating = ISO 1600
Flash = Did not fire
Lens EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS

- Brian Kelly

On vacation with my family in Kauai and getting everyone organized and out of the house before noon is simply an impossibility. Being that I'm ready to go by 9am and left waiting every morning, how do I escape frustration? With a damn fine garden surrounding me! Caught this little guy coming in for a landing.
D90 with a Sigma 150mm 2.8 macro. F/13, ISO 1000, 1/1000.

- John Petrick

After reading this weeks challenge I immediately knew I was going to shoot a hoverfly in flight or something to that effect since Macro is my passion. But late the other night and after a few cold beverages the paint splash came to me. I set up a ladder in the garage to hang my black back drop, used 4 shop lights, got an old Subwoofer and receiver and with a little help from Jack and Meg White I had some base to splatter paint up to my ceiling. After several attempts and clean ups I reviewed my photos and this one seemed to have the best focus and color. Several other shots can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooker771/ Shot with a Canon t2i with 100mm Macro 2.8 lens at f/4 and of course 1/1000. Even with the shop lights I had to bump the ISO to 800 to get the needed speed of 1/1000. I think this would work better with a flash and more DOF. My son, daughter, and myself tried to replicate this today outside using the sun instead of shop lights but I still couldn't get a better shot. But they had a "blast".

- Drew Eldridge

Hi,

it was a sunny day in Vienna (Austria) and my dog - Moni's her name - loves to "play" tennis and I love to play with my camera. So we put up a team and went out, testing some highspeed photography. At first I chased her around but the pictures lacked some power so I tried to just throw the ball straight up and took a photo of her trying to catch it midair. This may not be the best of all the photos we took but it is the one we love the most.

I used a NikonD300 with a Nikkor 18-200mm lense; ISO was at 2k; F-Stop at f/6.3; Exposure time ... well guess it :)

kind regards

- Bernhard

D90 with kit 18-105 Lens, hand held (with a few beers)
Manual, 1/1000, 200 ISO, f/5.6

Went to Suffolk Downs in Boston to watch a few races and to put a few bucks down on Preakness. Long story short, I didn't hit a single horse on Preakness. I guess the passing of Macho Man Randy Savage wasn't a sign from the heavens to bet Mucho Macho Man. Anyway, I happened to have my D90 with me. It was a sunny day and I was kicking myself for not having a NDF or UV/haze filter. There was tons of light, but a weird gray haze coming from Logan's direction. I set full manual for 1/1000 and 200 ISO. Suffolk Downs has a double fence, so I had to really zoom in on the kit lens with a non-constant f-stop. I estimate I was at f/5.6 or whatever the f-stop is at full zoom (105mm). Not too sharp, but OK considering my non-pro lens, the distance, and the beers. Horses have weird ass muscles.

- Know 1

I set up the camera on a tripod with a remote, then shot the apple with my 308 while my brave friend sat as far away (~5ft) from the camera as the remote would allow. Obviously 1/1000, f6.3 and ISO 500 on a Nikon D300 w/16-85mm.

- Clark

Got this shot of a dog from the Purina Performance Dog Show in St. Louis' Forest Park this weekend. Surprisingly the dog had only been training with the group for three weeks. Some minor exposure and cropping done to the picture.

Canon T2i
w/28-135mm lens
1/1000 sec
f/6.3
ISO 200

- Chip Moll

Just Humming Along
While sitting on my deck eating breakfast, my wife pointed to the humming birds eating at the feeder that she put out. I thought that the 1/1000 challenge could be a good speed to capture the quick nature of a humming bird. I went and grabbed my camera, tripod and remote and setup my camera. After making a few adjustments, multiple birds, and over an hour waiting for the birds, I got this shot. I like that you can even see the eye of the humming bird focused on the flower. I took this with a Canon T1i, F/5.6 and of course exposure 1/1000.

- Joshua Dersch

Dear Gizmodo,

Check out my submission for the 1/1000 of a second shooting challenge! I loved the idea of this challenge and the first thing that popped into my mind (probably due to my love of (lol)cats) was to capture my cat while playing with her toy - a bunch of feathers attached to a an elastic cord and a stick (I guess it vaguely resembles some kind of animal?). She is absolutely obessed with this thing and has all these crazy moves to catch it. While throwing the toy at her I took the pictures with my other hand and this one really came out nice, her being suspended in mid-air, not having a clue where the toy actually went. I used a Canon 7D with a 24-70 2.8L lens (focal distance 24mm) at 1/1000 with f/2.8 and ISO at 2000.

- Colin

I was filming a wedding this past weekend, and figured I would haul along my trusty Olympus Pen to snap a few pictures for this weeks contest.
Right away I started looking for items to shoot, and was drawn to the water fountain. Set my Camera to 'S' and change the shutter to 1000.
Grabbed a couple of shots. Wham bam, thank you ma'am

Did some sharpening and other post work in Aperture 3.

Olympus E-PL1
ISO 1000
37mm
f/5.6
1/1000

- MM

Entry into 1/1000 of a Second Contest

Date Shot: 5/22/2011

Equipment:
Camera: Canon Rebel Xsi
Lens: Canon EF 50mm

Shot Settings:
Exposure: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 800
Aperture: f/3.2

I couldn't have picked a worse day to shoot this challenge. It was quite cloudy and, using only natural light, I almost couldn't shoot at 1/1000th of a second. I tried several objects (water, grains, etc.) before finally settling on this odd combination of thumbtacks and champagne flutes. Enjoy!

- Sheryl Delrosario

Hi... We were flying our RC Planes at low level, due to a heavy fog...

The " Ceiling " was around 50'...

I shot this picture of one of our more adventurous Pilots, as his P-51 passed close by and was pulling up and away...

It was shot with the Canon G-12 @ 1,000th sec. at f:4 and the ISO was set at 80. The Focal Length was 21mm.

It was a pretty dim day, so I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised with this Image.

- Charlie

figured it wouldn't be much of a problem capturing some decent surf shots at 1/1000 sec but the talent in the water wasn't all that great. noticed a brown pelican headed my way so started snapping off shots as it got closer and closer until it flew straight over my head.

not quite the shot I started out expecting to take but it's an unusual angle so I'm ok with it....

Exif data
—————————————————————————————————————
Camera Nikon D3000
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture f/4.0
Focal Length 110 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
X-Resolution 1
Y-Resolution 1
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:05:22 09:41:51
YCbCr Positioning Centered
Exposure Program Unknown (0)
Date and Time (Original) 2011:05:21 07:35:44.00-07:00
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:05:21 07:35:44
Max Aperture Value 4.0
Subject Distance 17.8 m
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Light Source Unknown
Sub Sec Time Original 00
Sub Sec Time Digitized 00
Color Space Uncalibrated
Sensing Method One-chip color area
CFAPattern [Green,Blue][Red,Green]
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Auto
Digital Zoom Ratio 1
Focal Length In35mm Format 165 mm
Scene Capture Type Standard
Gain Control None
Contrast Normal
Saturation Normal
Sharpness Normal
Subject Distance Range Unknown
Compression JPEG (old-style)
XMPToolkit Image::ExifTool 8.18
Image Number 29542
Lens 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.0-5.6
Lens ID 224
Rating 5
Flash Function False
Flash Mode Off
Flash Red Eye Mode False
Flash Return No return detection

- Bob Zimway

Hi,

This is my first photo contest. I used a NikonD90 with a 18-200mm lens, using ISO 400 while shooting outside. I didn't alter the image at all after it was taken, it is straight from the camera. I decided to use my friend's dog, Misha as a subject and we tried a variety of shots of him jumping, running, but I liked the ones where she was throwing him right at the camera the best. In the shot, you can see her in the background after the throw and the subject looking at his eventual landing place. He was a good sport about it and got many treats in return.

Cheers,

- Green Kitkat

First try at the Shooting Challenge. I shot this during a local disc golf tournament with a Nikon D7000 on Shutter Priority. ISO 500.

- Matthew Osborne

Well, the photo was taken on a school party, for the end of the school year. There is not much to tell really, I was just taking photos of the performance, with my camera (Canon eos 400D) with usual lens (50mm f1.8) and settings (raw, f1.8, 1600iso). I was also one of the DJ-s during the intervals, so I had a chance to take photos from the stage and right under it (hurey :D!). By chance, one of them was taken in shutter speed 1/1000s, not the best one by far, but the focus is quite right and therefore I consider the photo as succesful (it's not that easy to catch perfect focus under such light conditions). I never took part in Gizmodo shooting challenge, and I remembered that it was "1/1000 of a Second challenge" this week, so I decided to give it a try.

- Jure Gubanc

Gizmodo Shooting Challenge:
Equipment is a Nikon D90 handheld with 50mm Nikkor 1.8D lens.

Shutter priority mode:

Aperture: f2.8

Shutter: 1/1000 second

ISO 400

Auto settings for exposure and white balance.

I like that this challenge took full advantage of my new 50 mm lens. With a nice wide aperture, it could capture the organic and almost molten quality of the water. I turned on a water hose and then played with it in front of the lens. I tried shooting it as it splashed in the pool but I found this image of the flow of water hitting the trunk of the palo verde tree to be particular striking.

Cheers,

Cory

Taken with a Canon Rebel XS, Canon 50mm f1.4 lens, Auto ISO, 1/1000 shutter obviously...

I was just watering the garden with the sprinkler and my dog Max went nuts trying to eat the water while my nephew chased him and played along. Max has done this before but never before with such vigor. They went at it for about 20 minutes, so I grabbed the camera and started shooting. This one was one of my favorites at 1/000, that showcases Max's chompers.

Check out the rest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylebenson/

- Kyle Benson

An obligatory dog going after ball shot. At this speed, most images had an unpleasing motion blur but this one, with low sunlight in Charlie's eye and a trail of earth following him as he moves sideways stood out. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM. ISO 100, 200mm, f/4, 1/1000s, stabilization on.

- Rick Bollar

Water balloon and a pin.
Canon 7D with 100mm macro lens.
f/2.8, ISO-400.

- David Lee

I took this series of shots on the day that the challenge was announced.
My boys had been throwing baseballs at a target in our yard so I thought I'd
try to capture the ball as it was hurling towards the target. I took a few
shots and was surprised at how often I could get the ball in decent focus
but my real problem was light. It was near sundown so I decided that we
would try it again another day. Well, that day just never presented itself
so here is one of the shots from day one.
Lumix GH2 with Nikon 50mm/f1.4/1000

- Tim Hammer

"I'm THIRSTY!"

This shot came by happen chance. Initially my goal was to catch my dog digging in the sand since he's a big digger, however none of those shots I got came out the way I wanted them too. So while he was drinking water, I snapped this w/out even looking through view finder to catch this left over water he didn't swallow just drooling off his tongue.

Used my Canon 550D (kit lens) in Shutter priority mode @ 1/1000 (f/3.5 & ISO 100)edited with iPhoto, I was able to give it - what I thought - unique look. Basically iPhoto has "avoid saturating the skin tones" check box and then i turned the saturation ALL the way down (which normally makes the pic black/white, in this case it's like… a faded color or something).

- Daniel Jennings

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T2i
Lens: EF 50 mm f1.4 USM
ISO: 400
aperture: f/2.2
shutter speed: 1/1000

Story:
There's something about catching water frozen in a moment that's beautifully haunting. Maybe it's because we never see experience it that way in our daily lives. In college I worked at a Starbucks, and was diligent about always pouring hot liquids carefully. There was something liberating about filling a glass without worrying about if it was going to spill.

peace, love, and cookies yo

- Matthew Ragan

See, moon rocks are national treasures and cannot be sold. Otherwise, you'll probably have NASA on your ass, just like this woman had NASA investigating her for months. [SF Gate]

The studio was the baby of J Allard, who broke up with Microsoft a year ago, and helped develop consumer electronics and experiences with products like Windows Phone 7, Xbox, Zune and the absolute flop that was the Kin. [Cnet]

Shooting Summary
Camera: Sony NEX-3
F Number: 5.6
Exposure: 1/20
Focal Length: 55

Was lucky enough to pick up Led Zeppelin I and IV at the local record shop this past week and thought it would make a good subject for the challenge. If nothing else, might make you dust off those old vinyl records and give them a spin this weekend.

- Chase Beydler

Taken with a Canon 500D. ISO was at 100 (to reduce noise), f4.5, shutter speed 3.2sec using a fixed Canon 50mm f1.8 on manual focus.

I had a big bag of small cogs from an old clock I intend to use in a fancy dress costume at some point. In the meantime I thought they'd make a nice close up photo with my new camera. I lined them up from largest to smallest on a black glass table and made sure my room was a dark as possible. Using my iPhone flash LED as a spotlight I fiddled with the camera settings to get the best detail. I like the way you can see the grease on the cogs themselves.

- David Marland

I really hope you enjoy this picture as much as we did.

Story
At the weekend we brought home a new member to the family, Hal. He has been crazy about exploring anything small all week and found him in the garden looking at the "Macro" world of ants. I was lucky that he stayed still long enough for me to quickly take this photo with my iphone, but moments after taking this he was chasing after my iphone as his next subject hehehe

Processing
I did a little color correction as is came out quite dark, but thats all

enjoy
Regards

- Karl

You're looking at a photo taken with an iPhone 4 trough a water drop - that would be the "You can always build your own macro lens" part. As I was experimenting with my camera, I came across this idea of using water drop as a macro lens. So I dropped a water drop directly onto the objective. It's a pretty clever idea, so I though I should give it a try. It worked very well as you can see. Anyway, that detail belongs to the well-known Apple stereo headset. You can see the metal net clearly, which is not so visible to you without a magnifier. This is a proof that equipment sometimes just doesn't matter ;)
- Manuel Vrhovac

Specs:
Camera model: iPhone 4
F-stop: f/2.8
Exposure time: 1/50 sec
ISO speed: 80
Focal lenght: 4mm
Metering mode: Pattern
Flash: no flash, compulsory
Technique: Super-macro

- Manuel Vrhovac

I was just bored today while cleaning out my drawers, when I come across an interesting tiny glass bottle that I received as a new years gift. It was covered in stickers, filled with beads, with a little tag and a note inside filled with random thoughts that the person decided to write down at the moment. I then thought that it would be great to photograph and quickly removed the pink turtle stickers and tag. I then proceeded to remove the note and positioned it on my windowsill. I took a few pictures using a flashlight with a random piece of paper I used as a diffuser as well as the natural ambient light that was coming through the window. The photos looked great but something was missing. With a stroke of creativity, I tore a piece of paper off of my makeshift diffuser and wrote the word "lost" on it. I carefully placed the piece of paper in the glass container with precision. I took a few more pictures but the magenta nature of the tiny beads offset the meaning that I was trying to portray. I then switch my t2i's color setting and got the perfect picture.
Exposure time is 1/15sec. at f/5.6
ISO speed is 100
Taken on a Canon t2i with a kit lens

- Michael Horwath

Eye of my Australian Bearded Dragon. His name is Stewie and I've had him for a few years and decided to test out this macro lens on him. His eye is about 1/8th of an inch in real life. All he needed was some water in a bowl and he sat still drinking it just long enough for me to catch this!
Shot with a Canon 7D with MP-E 65mm lens, ISO 200, F/8, 1/160th second shutter, 580 EX II flash and a desk lamp for light.

- Tom Molczynski

This photo was actually taken with my iPhone 4. Fedex just delievered it and I had just finished getting it set up and stuff. We had a pond in our back yard so I went around and took some photos of some tiger lilies. I also work in a photo lab and use this image for some displays and get a lot of compliments on it! I also took a photograph of an orange tiger lily.

Original Photo Dimensions:
2592x1936
Original Size:
1.75 MB
F-Stop:
f/2.4
Exposure Time:
1/794 sec.
ISO Speed:
ISO-80
Focal Length:
4 mm
Metering Mode:
Spot
Flash Mode:
No Flash,auto

- Dustin Maki

My Name is Andrew Smith. I use a Canon Eos Rebel T2i with a 18-55mm lens with a 10x attachment.

I love macro photography so this contest really hit me close to heart. I hate how people don't stop and look at things that are all around us. Some of the prettiest things in the world may be no bigger than our finger. i constantly walk around really slow looking at the ground and the bushes everything small.

- Andrew Smith

taken with my iphone 4 and a $14 wide - macro lens combo I bought from amazon

earlier that day I shot some pictures of plants in my backyard so I got the great idea of shooting the grass, and there you go, thats the result.

- Jose Carlos Moreno

While searching my office for a macro subject, I noticed light shining off my rabbit ears - which have tin foil "boosters" on them. I laid one "ear" on my desk under a fluorescent lamp and took the shot of the somewhat crumpled tin foil.

[The rabbit ears work fine for broadcast HDTV.]

Camera: Panasonic DMC-LZ7 (point & shoot)
Lens: Macro setting
Distance: ~5 inches
Aperture: f2.8
Shutter: 1/200

- Bruce Wenner

Dear Gizmodo,

Please find attached my macro shots. I am using a Nikon D700 with a 105mm lens at F4.8 1/100 sec at ISO400, shot on may 8th.

I have this macro lens for three weeks now and bought it for other reason. But once I started to test the Macro, I fell in love. I live in Curacao and the picture of the Bee is shot in my yard. I saw it flying but always wondered what that yellow pocket is on his legs. Well....I know see what we learned in biology back in the days.

Thank you for accepting my entrée.

- Terry van Ommen

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ40
ISO: 80
Aperture: 3.2
Exposure: 1/125

I was out on my front porch and happened upon a dead wasp. It looked
like a great photo opportunity and the light was perfect so I grabbed
my camera, set it to Macro, and shot away. It took a few tries to get
the perfect light but I got it eventually.

- James Driver

Fujifilm Finepix S6000FD, ISO 100, F2.8

Went out during the "golden hour" to take some pictures, with this challenge in mind. I went out to the schoolyard and found the most pristine dead dandelion I could find. I looked at this one really hard before taking a picture, and was pretty fascinated actually with it's construction. The fluffy things acted almost as fiber optics and illuminated in the sunlight. I put camera on SUPER macro, lined that baby up with the sun and started taking pictures and tinkering with camera settings. I got a few I thought were satisfying. It was not until I loaded them on to the computer that I realized how selective of a focus this particular one has, with the "fluffs" in focus and the core not. I did some minor color correction in iPhoto.

- Matt Gurbarg

I was looking to take a picture of a granule a salt, but couldn't get the contrast right. So I took a picture of my ballpoint pen because I noticed all the dust, ink, and detail in the tip, so I needed to take a picture of it...

Camera: Casio Exilim ZR-100
Lens: Exilim 24mm Wide Optical
ISO: Auto
No Flash

- Jacob Freeman

I shot this with my Verizon Env Touch. Its a pretty bad phone, but it has a pretty great camera with a macro setting. I'm stepping out of my garage and my foot was about 2 inches from crushing this guy. I like how the mantis looks like some sort of Godzilla monster about to take over.

- Matt Bailey

Nikon D7000 Nikon 105mm Micro f 2.8 250 sec 100 iso

- Dean Bungart

For this shot I was using a Nikon D90 and 50mm prime lens with a extension tube connected. It was shot at 200 ISO, f/1.8, at 1/60. My goal for this photo was to show tension and anxiety, and I chose to convey this through someone biting their lip. I knew I wanted to have the lips pop and look be really dramatic. I also wanted to get an overexposed look along the side of the face, so I had her stand in front of a window with direct sun and used a large aperture setting. I did a few curve corrections in photoshop and here it is.

- Matt Will

Hi,

I took this shot with my Canon 60D and 60mm Canon Macro Lense.
The setup: a vase full of sparkling water and a lime of course :-)!

As I was was shooting outside and the sun was shining, I used ISO 100.

Best,

- Rüdiger

Now, to say I love macro would be a massive understatement. My primary/walking around lens is a 100 macro, And I carry a 35 macro at all times too! I had a quick look around for stuff that would be interesting and after trying out a few I decided to go for an eye, At first I thought I'd call a friend up and tell them to call over but it's 10am, they're all at work or college, so I whipped out my camera, grabbed a HDMI cable and set up live view on one of my PC displays. Set up wireless flash for lighting and off I went, Did a little bit of editing in LR, Some gradiated filters and the like and that was pretty much it!

Pentax K-7, D FA 100mm f/2.8 Macro, f/18 (I usually always shoot 2.8 but when taking a picture of your own eye, you need as much depth as possible!), 1/180, Manual, Wireless flash at 1/8th power, ISO 320.

- Florian Stravock

Hi there, I got home early from work and it was a sunny day, so i got my equipment and went to the backyard to shoot some macros, started loooking for some flies or bees but found almost nothing worth while, so i started looking near the ground and saw this little jumping spider resting on a leaf it just sat there like it was enjoying being photographed. It was a spider day for me, only took spider shots J

Equipment used:
Canon 5D mk2
Sigma 105mm f2.8 macro
Off camera Canon 580EXII Flash

EXIF:
1/160
F/10
Iso 100
105mm

- Ruben Tavares

Was walking around the garden and i suddenly saw this frog.... was amazed by its eyes and remembered this contest. it took alot of time to make it stand still but i was able to after a couple of shots. Nikon D7000 18-105mm F/5.6 1/500 ISO 100

- Thomas Wakim

Equipment: Canon IXUS 105 (Point and Shoot)

Settings: Macro Mode and Vivid Light.

Technique: None (I don't know any)

Story behind Shot:
I work in Sydney, Australia and this picture was taken in the Minnamurra Rainforest in Budderoo National Park.
The name "Minnamurra" is aboriginal for "river of many fish".
I had gone camping over a wet weekend to this rain forest, but on the overcast day instead of fishes I found this little guy crawling along.
I didnt see him at first and when my friends started shouting to watch out,I thought some animal was about to attack from behind, than I realized that they were shouting coz I was about to crush this little guy.
I took out my cam and tried two shots. The first was out of focus and this is the second one. I don't know anything about photo editing and just cropped this image to remove my friend's hand appearing in the corner.

I always browse through all the Shooting Contests but being an absolute noob and amateur photographer, who only owns a point and shoot, have never taken the initiative to participate in one until today.

Thanks & Regards,

- Shrijeet Roy Choudhary

I follow the Giz photo challenges every week and am always blown away by what I see. It's a little intimidating. I thought I'd give this week's a try. I'll be traveling this week, so the only chance i had to get this done was last night.

This pic was taken after dark. I had a floodlight in the background to give a little bit of ambient light, but the majority of it was supplied by an off-camera canon 430EX flash with an Opteka diffuser mounted. I used a tripod and remote shutter switch for stability. Slight color corrections are the only alterations. Shot with T2i and Canon 60mm EF-S Macro lens. I've included an additional photo of the tree itself for scale.

- Michael Brock

I was walking around Peddler's Village in Pennsylvania to shoot photos of my production team who were doing "man on the street" interviews and I got distracted and started shooting other stuff. It was a very sunny afternoon and there were lots of flowers to try some macro shots and I liked this one the best. I think that the flower looks like it is generating its own light under the stem. It is cropped and auto enhanced in Aperture 3 to give the colors a little more vibrancy. I used a Nikon D7000, a Zeiss makro 50mm lens, f/4, 1/3200, ISO 200.

- John Cecilian

Photo stats:

Camera Nikon D5100
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 110
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Auto, Did not fire

This picture was taken at my grandma's house in Tennessee. This inch worm was bouncing up and down on the bird crap haha, almost as if he was smelling it or something. I thought it was very strange!

- Cody Myers

I was cleaning my M-16 the other day, admiring the wear pattern on the bolt face, and remembered that this week's shooting challenge was about macro photography. So I whipped out my Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2 with Olympus 50mm f/2.0 Macro lens, used a spotlight to get some more light on the subject, and snapped this picture. What I really like is how you can see exactly where the face of the bolt has been rubbing against the chamber of my rifle (it even wore some rings into the locking lugs!), the black ring left by the primer pocket, and little flecks of brass left behind from the thousands of rounds that have been fired through it. There's beauty in mechanical ingenuity, and those parts only get more beautiful with time and use. Settings were f/8 (aperture priority for shallow depth of field), 1/15 shutter speed, ISO 100.

- Nick Leghorn

This was an experiment I've been wanting to try for awhile. Shot with D300 + Sigma 150, ISO 400 at 1/100 f/4.5.

Used one diffused, wireless SB-800 behind the subject to illuminate me, then used a flashlight to get accurate AF. Picture is taken, flash lights me up, everything gets exposed.

- Evan Kitaljevich

My mission: to boldly seek out new lifeforms, and snub them wherever they fester. My specimen : Latrodectus hesperus. The Western Black Widow. A BLACK FREAKING WIDOW!

I was doing a daily inspection of my back yard for killer spiders for my girlfriend who found one and wanted me to make sure there weren't more. There were. It's a juvenile black widow - you can tell because it isn't black yet and it has white bands. Wonderful plumage. I gassed this one, hit it with a hammer, threw it into a little plastic bag and into the trash so my puppy wouldn't try to eat it. This spider is dead. Still. Kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Deceased. This is an ex-spider.

Photo: Nikon coolpix S570. ISO-80, 5mm focal length, 2.9 apeture. f/5.4. Cropped (and i beefed up the contrast a little) in Picasa.

- Denver Lancaster

Shooting Summary:
Canon Digital Rebel XS
1/15s
f/9.0
Canon 55-250mm IS lens @ 250mm + 50mm f/1.8
ISO 800

I wanted to photograph something small but with detail, and the only item that I could find in my apartment was this 0.7mm ball point pen. The challenge was being able to photograph the tip without using a macro lens (I don't own one). Fortunately, I've recently learned that you can make your own "poor man's" macro lens by combining your 18-55mm kit lens with the 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. In my case, I used my 55-250 zoom lens instead for some added magnification. The hardest part had to be the focusing. Even the slightest touch on the focus ring could throw the focus off too shallow or too deep on the ball point, thus not being able to capture the reflection. The image didn't come out as sharp as I wanted, but it was better than I initially expected, given the unconventional setup I used.

- Hiro Yamamoto

This is a Nudibranch, aka "sea slug". It is approximately 2cm long.
Photo was taken underwater in the Red Sea, offshore Eilat, southernmost city of Israel.
I used a Canon PowerShot A610 with a Canon underwater housing.
Since the shot was taken at 30 meters below sea level (where sunlight doesn't get its full spectrum through), I had to put the flash on, otherwise all shades of red would have turned blue.

Canon PowerShot A610
f/2.8
exposure time: 1/60 sec
focal length: 7mm
subject distance: 110mm

Thank you,

- Stav Harel

I'm in love with macro photographing, since taking flower and bug's shot is so common i decided to get close to something else.
so this is a close contact shot of our toothbrush.
i didn't have macro lens so i used reverse technique.
it's with nikon D90 - reversed lens - diaphragm is opened manually with 1/40 s shutter speed and ISO 500
hope you'll enjoy it

- D. Dawn

This shooting challenge is a favorite of mine, because a lot of my pictures are in macro mode. This picture is something I've been wanting to try for a long time: backlit translucent legos. The legos are in a glass coaster over a lamp. Underneath is a second glass coaster with some more legos, just to give some depth. I also tried a few shots with a tiny rubber dinosaur added to the lego bath, but it never looked right. The legos were good enough on their own, looking like stained glass but without the guilt. The effect was so nice, I made one of the shots the wallpaper pattern on my phone.

Equipment: HTC Evo built-in camera with a tiny magnetic macro lens from Photojojo.
ISO, etc: Don't know. Auto!

- Phil Gullett

This photo was taken with an Olympus E-PL2 Micro Thirds camera with the M.Zuiko 14-42mm lens using 1/500 sec exposure, ISO 200 and F10. These little flowers started blooming off the succulent that's encroaching up my cement patio in the backyard. It was shot around noon, and I like the way the green waxy parts of the plant sparkle in the sunlight.

- Steven Fercho

Equipment: Sony A-200 with 30mm dedicated macro lens, f/5.6, at ISO-100.
Story: Well, I found this flower so subliminally phallic, I couldn't resist taking the shot to show my lady friends!

- Ron Harris

For this contest I wanted to photograp something that has meanin to me, so I whipped out my prescious and valuable 92 yr old gold coin. I tried takin this pic with my DSLR, but quickly noticed I couldnt get as close as I wanted with my current lenses. So I decided to use my cell instead with my homemade macro lense from a disposable camera. I didnt use other countries coins as i wanted people to be able to put this shot in perspective. I think it turned out good enough.

HTC EVO 4G
5mm focal lenght
ISO - 257
WB - Auto
Disposable camera macro lense

Thanks

- Felix Garcia

I arrived at school quite early this (May 13th) morning and found I had a good millennia and a half to doddle around the school. It would be very nice to say that I went around taking pictures the whole time, but being quite forgetful I only remembered the shooting challenge as I was hustling to class! I only got one shot off and it was this drive (power walk) by shooting of the lockers. For the speed I was going I was quite impressed and went about my day quite content.

Taken with my point-and-shoot Sony HX5V in Manual Mode (because auto white balance is an idiot). ISO800, f3.5.

- Brian Coffman

This Photo was taken on the macro setting of my Canon PowerShot SD890. I stumbled upon this bee in my backyard while I was walking back to my house and noticed it didn't fly away when I stepped near it. I grabbed my camera and on further inspection discovered this was a very old bee (evident also based on the white mane) which did not have the strength to get away. I then proceeded to take a couple shots at different angles until this one emerged. The bee's positioning seemed to take on the characteristics of an antiquated king's portrait, which seemed fitting based on it's age and majestic nature.

Cheers,

- Brandon

Water drop on a dandelion. I used syringe to put a water drop to the center of
the dandelion. Natural light from the window with reflector on the other side
was used for lightning.

Nikon D7000 with Tokina AT-X 100 PRO D 100mm f/2.8: 3s, f32, ISO 100, 100mm

- Petri Damstén

Canon PowerShot SX120 IS point-and-shoot on automatic (f/3.5, 1/1250s, ISO-125).

I was out in the front yard today taking some photos of my Pontiac G8 after a car wash with a blossoming apple tree in the background. I took a random close-up of the tree and didn't even notice it came out good until I took the photos off my camera.

- Chris Andrews

I just recently purchased a 50mm lens that I've been experimenting with, but its terrible when up close to anything. I bought a magnifying filter for macro photos and used it with this lens so I could get closer, but I still had trouble focusing the way I wanted to, then I thought back to a previous photography challenge that seemed to hold the answer,the Detached Lens Photography Challenge. Detaching the lens allowed me to focus on the mangled staples being only 5 inches away. it also created an extremely harsh depth of field which I thought added character to the photo. This was shot with my shitty Canon Rebel XS using a detached 50 mm with a +4 zoom macro filter, at 800 ISO using 1/125 shutter speed at f1.8.

I've been relatively obsessed with the Gizmodo website for over a year now. It's a website that makes me feel like I belong. every time I talk about gadgets and science all my friends just shake their head and ignore me, but when I'm browsing the articles on Gizmodo I understand everything and I find that I'm not alone, there are others just as nerdy as me! So this photo is a tribute to the site that holds me together. The irony of that is that almost everything in the photo is made up of staples, bent and twisted to read a name we are all too familiar with.

- Adam

Canon 60D
20mm
2.8
1 sec exposure

I had a couple custom 0 scale train figures that I've wanted to shoot for awhile now, so I put them on a miniature train set and lit it as dramatic as possible. I used mostly small ikea lights, and for the flare I used my trusty iPhone that I held as I took the picture.

Thanks!

- John Harvatine IV

Shooting summary:
Nikon D700
MICRO NIKKOR 60mm
ISO 400
f/5.6
Rear lightin
Story:

My wife had asked me to help chop veggies for dinner. I sliced through this red pepper and chopped up the first half. When I picked up the second half, however my ‘photo sensors' buzzed alive. I took the pepper to my office/studio and tried to capture the essence of the seeds disappearing into the cavity. The red glow is from backlighting. Needless to say, I spent more time than I initially told my wife and dinner was complete by the time I returned. All in all, not a bad evening. Great dinner and a contest entry to boot!

Cheers,

- Michael J. O'Connell

Hello,

Shooting Summary -
Camera – 5D MarkII
Lens – Canon 100mm Macro
ISO – 800
Aperture – f4.5
Shutter Speed – 1/100

So I'm riding home on my bike and look down and see this little guy sitting like a hood ornament on my bike. He/She hung on till I got home....keeping in mind the Gizmodo Macro challenge I ran in and got my camera ...in the mean time he was happily spinning a web on the handle bar.

Cheers

Regards,

- Neville Sukhia

I just received mw Pinwide - it is ideal to play around with for macro photos, due to the lack of lenses there is no DOF effect (the first flower is as much in focus as is the background).
Distance to the first flower approx 1,5cm from pinhole.
No 'shop with the exception of resizing.
Equipment: Olympus E-P1, Pinwide (~f100, 22mm equiv, pinhole), 1 sec shutter, ISO 200, 2ev over exposure

- Matias Otto

Shot with:

Nikon D90
Nikon 85mm macro 1:1 Lens
1/60 sec at f/36 ISO 200

I was wandering around looking for some bugs to shoot when I came across this ant hill. I jumped down on my hands and knees and started shooting, thinking "I'll be quick and wont get covered in ants." Then as often happens when you are a shooting time seems to slip away. I was still finding ants in places ants should not be hours later...

- Lance Finch

Hi,

here's my entry for the current shooting challenge:

The subject is the tip of an old paintbrush, at a magnification of 10:1 or so. To take the photo, I put the brush in front of a window, steadied myself against a wall and played around with a few perspectives until I found this one. Framing the shot was made a little difficult by the 3mm-field-of-view, but after a few tries I ended up with this. The photo was processed using a few curves and some noise reduction in photoshop.

Camera and settings: Handheld Canon 7D at ISO800, 1/250s, manual camera flash and an inverted Sigma 10-20mm lens held in front of the camera.

Greetings,

- Robert

I used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 Point and Shoot Camera.
ISO100, F3.4, 1/30 sec

I love a plate of food that is presentable and am known to post food pics
online. While eating my dinner and taking pics of my food, I remembered
Gizmodo's Macro shot contest. I thought it was interesting to get a macro shot
of the tentacles from this grilled octopus.... Yes.. it was delicious.

Thanks,

- Ying Chi Chow

After of day of runing around for Soccer, Girl Scouts, Clarinet lesson, Math Practice, and McDonalds, needed something to wind down with, so a beer and a camera seemed reasonable. Shot taken after a brief rain that came thru Shawnee, KS on a cloudy, dreary, 50 degree day. The Dianthus had just started blooming recently, and thought it would make a good shot to experiment with, although I admit to letting the camera do most of the work!

Camera: Canon A470 7.1 megapixal
Date: 05/14/11
F stop: f/18
Exposure: 1/60 sec
ISO: 80
Focal Length: 22mm

- Steve Goetting

I have a DSLR but no macro lens or any way to shoot an object up close. My wife, however, has a Canon Powershot that I've used to take macro shots before, although it doesn't have the quality that a DSLR would have with an appropriate lens. I built my wife a fence not too long ago and haven't had a chance to sand down all the wood. The texture and splintering were interesting so I snapped a picture, quickly adjusted the contrast and color, and submitted the pic. Canon Powershot SD1100 IS, ISO 125, 1/400 shutter, F8.0.

- Ben Douglas

So i was thinking of taking some macro picture of a leaf sometime during the late afternoon. However the next morning before school the sun was hitting my winter jacket (which is what the picture is of. Don't worry it's fake fur) So i decided to bust my camera out and take a picture of the little hairs which i thought would make for a nice picture.

Canon Powershot SX110 IS
f/2.8
1/80 sec
ISO 80

- Kalden Dhatsenpa

Took this picture just using a Makeshift background from a piece of letter size printer paper. Using a Nikon 85mm Micro lens.

Used ISO 100 f/10 with 1/200 sec flash.

This was taken of a small starfish that I had collected on the beach in Texas a couple of years ago.

- James Gray

Canon Rebel XS
Tokina 35mm F2.8 Macro Lens

Shutter Speed 1/25
ISO 800
Aperture F/2.8
No Flash

I love my macro lens and was so excited to see the Photo Challenge finally be a macro challenge. I changed my mind dozens of times trying to choose a subject, but in the end turned the lens on myself. Shot with a wide open aperture to create a narrow depth of field, which created the challenge of getting the focal point and framing where I wanted. Minor touchups, including glare reduction performed in Photoshop.

- Cato Pedersen

After spending a rather fruitless hour photographing flowers in the garden I had basically stopped and put the camera away. A short while later I noticed this bee and raced inside to grab the camera before it flew off. The camera was still basically set up so I simply turned it on and then moved the camera close until the bee was in focus. I took the shot and while checking the exposure the bee departed. One shot. My biggest challenge was how much of the original to crop.

This works for me on several levels, the grain of the wood, the bee highlighted in the sun shine, the translucence of it's body, it's apparent interest in the speck of leaf and all highlighted against the colour of the wood.

Taken on a Pentax K200D, with a Sigma 28mm lens (manual focus), ISO 100, f2.8, 1/125 sec, distance to subject about 25 cm.

- Nick Smith

This is a picture of a Red Asiatic Lily in my backyard highlighting the anther
and filament of the stamen. No macro lens used, just the camera's kit lens. I
turned the autofocus off and rocked back and forth slightly to get the point of
focus where I wanted it. Shot with a Canon EOS Rebel XSi, EF-S 18-55mm lens,
f/5.6 at 1/200, ISO 100, exposure bias -.67.

- Chris Thompson

I set out to find something interesting for my first submission. I found one buttercup that had survived the lawnmowers that day in the common area near our townhouse. Hand shot with my Canon T2i 100mm macro lens at 1/800 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400.

- Michael Rothgeb

I was really excited about this challenge when I saw it. I always loved Macro Photography. Unfortunately, I dont have a very good macro lens. So I decided to take some inspiration from an earlier challenge (Free-Lensing). Ultimately, after having a conversation with a friend about the sexual nature of tools, I decided on a screw and screwdriver as my subjects. Pulled out my T1i and free lenses my 50mm 1.8. Shot in monochrome f1.8 ISO 400 and 1/100 shutter speed.

- Nikita Ostrovsky

Fujifilm s100fs — 1/1000" — F3.6 — ISO100 — 7.1mm — Velvia film simulation

I have always been fascinated by how quickly palmettos recover from fire damage. No matter how burned out a grove is, the palmetto will find a way to recover. A few days after a fire, small shoots of green will start to dot even the most blackened field. This week, I was lucky enough to find the start of this process.

- Mike Case

Shooting Summary:

Artist: Meredith Steele
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XS
Lens: EF-S 18-55 IS
F-stop 5.6 ISO 1600 no flash

This photo was taken in my jewelry design studio. The answer to the question "what the heck is that thing?!" is that it is a stainless steel dapping set that I use to hammer metal into dome shapes. The actual size of the big dapper is about 3 inches long. It can also be considered a self portrait. :)

- Meredith Steele

Nikon D90, 85mm DX macro, ISO 1250, f/18, 1/800 sec with a SB600 flash.

This photo was an unplanned shot while attempting to take some stop-motion pictures of my honey bees flying into their hives. I had started the hives only a few weeks ago and assumed they would be a good subject for the challenge. Unfortunately most of the bees weren't flying in the overcast weather and the low light also made it difficult to shoot the volume of photos I needed to catch a bee in flight and in focus. Desperate for another subject I realized the mosquitoes bothering me represented a new opportunity. This may have been the only time I wanted a mosquito to land on me. Fortunately she couldn't get me through my jeans.

Thanks,

- Joe

I was doing my sink full of dishes when I stumbled on Tuesday's dinner: my submission for this week's challenge. (Don't judge - I'm sure you've had worse growing in your kitchen!) I tried a couple shots from overhead, but this eye level shot really put things in perspective. The mold (Google says it's Aspergillus niger) looks like trees in an alien landscape (basmati rice). Shot with a big f-stop to have more focal depth. Only corrected for color temperature and sensor dust.

1/60 sec, f/20, ISO 800, 100mm

Canon 50D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM, 580EX, Q Flash F170 ring flash

- Ray Liu

Not that this challenge will need any more macro photos of flowers, but I happened to grab these on accident. My girlfriend and I took our mothers out for a belated Mother's Day dinner to a fancy pants restaurant at the Starr Pass Resort near Tucson here and I snapped some photos of blooming cactus with no intention of participating in this week's challenge. I picked this photo because I think the focal length was the most interesting, especially since I achieved it with the not so special kit lens I had on at the time. The cactus itself becomes more of the focal point than the flowers, which I figured would be more fun than yet another up close photo of some flowers.
Shot with a Nikon D5000 w/ 18-55 kit lens @ 50mm, ISO 280, F/8, 1/60sec. The only post processing was a white balance and auto enhance adjustment in Aperture 3.

- Brett Stanton

To whom it may or may not concern,

I couldn't get to sleep (Java final in 10 hours) , so I tossed and turned until I gave up and hopped online. First thing I land on is this macro contest, so one glass of Stoli's later I'm nose to nose with my roommates black-light bulb with my new Pentax K-X. Two glasses and one confused roommate later, I'm sending you these pictures. Now hopefully I can get some sleep, cheers!

The Deets
ISO 400
Pentax K-X
Kit Lens (18-55mm AL lens)
Exposure 1/60 (I'm pretty sure...)

- Chris Frantz

Entry into Macro Photography Contest
Date Shot: 5/14/2011

Equipment:
Camera: Canon 7d
Lens: Canon EF-S 60mm 1:2.8 Macro
Flash: Canon MT-24 Twinlight Macro Flash

Shot Settings:
Exposure: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Aperture: f/11

Being an Avid Macro photographer, I loved seeing this contest, I was going to my brothers house this weekend and I knew he had a great collection of roses of varying colors. I brought my camera and went out into his yard thinking I was going to get a flower picture, instead I saw the business end of a dead yellow jacket in one flower, so I captured this picture. I also got a good 2.5x magnification shot with my MP-E macro lens of a rusty screw in an outdoor light fixture, but I let my friends decide which they liked better and this one seems to be more popular.

- David Kamminga

Birthday party weekend at my house and I was distracted by the honey do list and goal-tending all the mad kiddies thrashing about. As the day, and heat, wore on something gooey caught my eye and I remembered this weeks challenge. I'd almost let slip the opportunity to finally try out my newly acquired macro lens... and it was quickly melting away! I present my case for the best part of any Carvel cake - the Crunchies. Nikon D90, 70-180 Micro at 180mm. ISO 400, f5.6 at 1/100.

- Michael Masone

I was walking around my mom's house taking photos for fun as well as the contest. Upon returning to go inside, I discovered I accidentally locked myself out of the house and had to wait another hour before anyone was coming home to let me back in. While I waited, I sat on the patio and started taking pictures of the ants running around. They're really hard to take clear shots of - being that close you have to get them lined up perfectly in the lens. I took a few of the ant hill, but I really like the simplicity of this shot. This was taken with my Canon T2i with my Sigma 28mm f/1.8 lens in the macro mode.

- Evan Hughes

The macro shooting contest could not have come at a better time. I was to attend a tournament for a miniature table top war game focused on World War 2, and I figured that since these are in the 15mm scale (or no taller than a US dime) why not shoot macro on something so tiny to see just how much detail one can put into these guys. I took a few different pictures in macro so find one I thought would stand out and so this shot in particular is of a tank commander for the French forces painted by a friend. Since I had no actual macro lens to speak of, I used the old trick of flipping around a lens to create a macro shot. For this I used a 24mm (2.0f) AF Nikkor mounted on a reverse mount ring to my Nikon D3100. It was shot in total manual mode at ISO 400 and 1/25s, in the post-production phase I did a little tweaking that I liked and thought made a few details pop a little better.

I hope you enjoy and thanks for looking!

- Chris

So I went out and purchased some new equipment for this challenge. I had not bought anything for my camera since I got it over a year ago and decided I could get something for this challenge so I wouldn't have to eat a whole can of pringles chips! After reading all the tutorials on macro photography I bought a set of extension tubes, a reversing ring and a shutter remote. The reversing ring was the wrong size so I had to go with the extension tubes only.
This challenge turned to be incredibly difficult. I originally intended to take a picture of a flower but shooting so close up outside was too hard. The flowers kept moving and I couldn't get anything in focus. I took a lot of great photos that I really like and I ended up really enjoying macro photography. I think I will continue to work on more photos in this area.
My submission is a shot of an ornamental strawberry that I picked from my backyard and brought inside to photograph. Since I used the extension tubes, I don't know what many of my technical aspects are for the shot but I set the focal length to f/11 because I knew with the tubes, I needed more light to get in to the lens to hit the sensor.
I think the strawberry ended up looking like a bunch of red ants on a ball! Kind of crazy!
Thanks for the challenge.

Canon EOS REBEL T1i
ISO 250
f/11
1/3

- Matthew Johnson

Hi there,

I've been told by family that this entry fits more into the "abstract" category than the "macro" category, but its the only decent shot I was able to take all weekend and I really wanted to enter something! I never realized that the real challenge of macro photography was finding a suitable subject! I finally decided that I was more likely to impress a bunch of gadget geeks with a gadget picture, so here we are ;)

The image you are looking at is actually a shot of my 46" Panasonic Plasma TV set. The green "Matrix lines" are from a color spectrum image I found online. I thought it would be cool to capture a Matrix style image using nothing but the pixels of the TV.

Shot with a Canon T2i with a 50mm f/2.5 compact macro lens at ISO800, f/16 and 1/45. I balanced the Camera on a stack of Blurays discs to try to keep it steady. The image has only been straightened with iPhoto and has no other corrections or modifications done to it.

I hope you like it, even if it isn't your "typical" macro shot!

Thanks,

- Aaron

Best part about this weeks contest was learning a new method of shooting that I'm going to keep using for a long time. As I did not have a dedicated macro lens, I made a reversing ring out of a body cap and cheap UV filter so that I could use my kit lens reversed. I had a lot of fun taking pictures of everything that I could get my hands on. This may persuade me to purchase an actual macro lens sometime in the future. Canon Rebel T2i, reversed 18-55mm,1/60th, ISO 200. No post-editing other than cropping.

- Chris Morey

Allergies Please
These giant dandelions are pretty but evil! My nose is still stuffy from this adventure. This one was the only survivor in a small group of them, the others dead and wilted around it. Having a Nikon, I cannot flip the lenses or use macro tubes without having to hold the aperture open (which scares me a little!) So for now I have a really cool macro lens attachment kit. Shot with a Nikon d3000 in close up mode with a +10 macro lens attachment, ISO 100, 20mm, f/8.0 1/320 sec.

- Leslie Renee

so I went around to a number of places to find a good subject for the macro contest. surely, I'd find something that would be interesting and not a bug of some sort. I took pix of flowers, sculpture details, a pretty grody-looking fountain and yes, a few bugs. I also tossed on a combo of 2x, 4x and 10x diopters to get super-close to everything I shot. after some post on all the pix, I really didn't like any of them (except, *sigh*, one bug which I almost submitted). so I looked around the house for something that might be more interesting and very unlikely someone else would send in. therefore, I present to you: yasai fumi furikake rice seasoning....

——————————————————————-
Exif data

Camera Nikon D3000
Exposure 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Return detected
X-Resolution 1
Y-Resolution 1
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:05:15 21:49:58
YCbCr Positioning Centered
Exposure Program Unknown (0)
Date and Time (Original) 2011:05:15 20:35:40.00-07:00
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:05:15 20:35:40
Max Aperture Value 5.7
Subject Distance 0.28 m
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Light Source Unknown
Sub Sec Time Original 00
Sub Sec Time Digitized 00
Color Space Uncalibrated
Sensing Method One-chip color area
CFAPattern [Green,Blue][Red,Green]
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Auto
Digital Zoom Ratio 1
Focal Length In35mm Format 82 mm
Scene Capture Type Standard
Gain Control None
Contrast Normal
Saturation Normal
Sharpness Normal
Subject Distance Range
Unknown
Compression JPEG (old-style)
XMPToolkit Image::ExifTool 8.18
Image Number 28968
Lens 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6
Lens ID 154
Flash Function
False
Flash Mode On
Flash Red Eye Mode False
Flash Return Return detected

- Bob Zimway

Nikon D7000; 105mm micro lens @f/9; 1/800s; a little levels, contrast and colour adjustment.

"I for one welcome our new insect overlords"
The timing of this challenge couldn't have been better as my new lens only arrived Monday. After a quick look around found an old cicada moulting and this was the result. Between the cobwebs, the uniform golden colour and slightly decomposed look I expected to see something explode from its chest at any moment. Sadly it didn't happen and no tiny Ripley running around either!

- Tom Wood

"Please don't show this to Darth..."

I love macro photography, so when I heard Giz was having a "macro" photo challenge, I knew I had to enter. First, I grabbed everything mini I could find and headed out into the world. I took a number of shots in and around Santa Cruz, California, but this candid portrait of two stormtroopers getting their photos taken was a shoe in. I really strived to make the 5" tall action figures look life-sized by shooting low with shallow focus. Minor color editing was done in post and I added a flash/lens flare in Photoshop. Oh, and if you were wondering, yes, that is Admiral Ackbar taking the shot. Canon 5D Mark II, Nikkor 55mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 160, 580EX flash fired.

- Doug Smith

Canon 40D
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Kenko Extension Tubes
Aperture Priority - 1/13 sec @ F22
Slight sharpening, contrast and color correction done in Canon Digital Photo Professional.
Resized in Photoshop Elements 6

This is a photo of water droplets on a double flowering tulip in front of my house a little before sunset. I used a tripod to stabilize the camera due to the small aperture and slow shutter speed. I wanted to get as much depth of field as possible. I used a spray bottle to apply the water droplets and then tried to find an interesting composition with a splash of color. I love how the sunlight goes in the right side of each droplet as a small pinhole of light and then is refracted out the left side of each droplet.

- Doug Peterson

Taken on an Olympus E-620 with a Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro at f2.8, 1/160s shutter, ISO 800.

I love macro photography and for a while I'd been wanting to try taking a closeup that filled the whole frame with just texture. I decided to take some aluminium foil, crinkle it up and unfold it to get this shot. I pulled up my window blinds to get some light on the foil and and opened the aperture to close up the depth of field.

- Mike Kouxommone

This was taken at the rose gardens in Piedmont CA. It was taken with a Nikon D90, AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm lens 1/160s F/300 and ISO 200.

- Tatiana Ortega

Hi Mark,

This was taken at the rose gardens in Piedmont CA. Tatiana and I went through the rose garden trading off the same camera on our photo safari. It was a nice day out in the sun enjoying time together.

This was taken with a Nikon D90, AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm lens 1/200s F/14 ISO 200.

Thank you,

- Rob

Hi,

One of the plants in my garden is taken over by lice. But yesterday, this guy came to the rescue (and brought a few friends along too).
Instead of actively hunting for the lice (which are covering the bottom side of the leaves), they patiently wait on top of the leaves until one silly louse comes in their direction. Then, in a few seconds, it's all over for the louse.

I used a Nikon D700 with a 105 mm micro lens. Because the lady bugs are so tiny, I used an extension ring, to boost the magnification to 1,25:1
I also used a flash, which I dimmed to avoid too much reflection in the shield.
Camera settings were F16, ISO320, 1/100 sec
In Photo Shop, I cut out 2560 x 1900 of the original
I used auto-contrast in Photoshop, which I then dimmed to 65%.
Then I made a 970px resized copy
I ‘smart sharpened' the 2560 image a tad with ‘lens blur', 102% and 0,7 pixels
I ‘smart sharpened' the 970 image a tad with ‘lens blur', 102% and 0,2 pixels

Enjoy the viewing of all the submissions!

Bye,

- Hans

Shot on a rebel t2i with 580 EXII and medium sized beauty dish. I was thinking of different subjects all week for this challenge,I wanted something very simple. This is what I found. This green was from a salad mix from fresh and easy.

Light room editing for BW.

- Jordan Dunn

This is a macro shot of one of the tubes for my CR Developments Romulus tube amp. The shot was taken with my Canon 40D with my Lens Baby Composer with the 4x and 10x macro adaptors and the f22 aperture disc. The image was exposed for 2.5 seconds at ISO 500. This shot was rather difficult to take as the f22 aperture disc meant very little light would get through to the viewfinder. I had to shine a flash light on the subject while composing the shot just to see what I was doing.

- Ryan Kane

My Lucky Cat desk toy in a mini zen garden. I had my camera on a tripod with a flash on sync cord, which I held directly above the subject. For scale reference, the cat is 1.75" tall. And yes, the face is cracked. It was like that when my friend gave it to me. Hopefully that won't have any averse effects on my luck.
Canon 7D, Tamron 90mm Macro, 1/250 at f/13, 100 ISO, Vivitar flash at 1/16 power

- Angelico Tolentino

Bon appétit

I was cooking over the weekend when the idea to draw a smiley on a yellow lentil struck me. I immediately took out a pen drew a smiley and used my $10 pringles setup for macro photography. Since the backgound was not so vivid, I decided to place the single lentil on a plate of paprika powder. The hardest challenge was to make this single lentil stand up in a mound of paprika powder and take a picture close enough without sneezing. I had to order food to go that day but the picture was well worth it.

Equipment
Camera - Canon T2i
Home made macro lens using 50 mm Canon lens.
Edited using Adobe Photoshop.

- Archana Kannan

For this shooting challenge I used a set of magnetic buckyballs, which I keep at my desk to keep me occupied at times. I have always found them mesmerizing, particularly their many reflections off of each other in this cylindrical shape as you can see in this photo. To get some of the effects I wanted for this shot I shined a flashlight through the cylinder to create a bokeh type effect and better illuminate the reflections seen within the magnetic balls.

The shot was taken with my Canon S95, ISO 80, f/2, 1/60 sec., and a focal length of 6mm.

Thank you,

- Lysle Turnbeaugh

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS

ISO: 80
Shutter: 1/1250
F/8.0
AWB

I decided to tackle this Giz Shooting Challenge because macro photography is a favorite of mine. I spent the better part of a sunny Saturday trying to find some suitable subjects for this shot, and of course I came home without so much as a decent flower shot. So I started snapping a few pics around the house, and thought it might be interesting to take a cool blown out shot of the inside of my desk lamp, and what do ya know? Thanks to the auto-exposure of my simple point-and-shoot, I got a nicely exposed and sharp photo of my incredibly bright lightbulb. Success was a few feet from where I started the challenge, figures.

- Spencer Wilde

I was sitting at my desk Sunday night thinking "damn another shooting challenge I missed" but I picked up my camera and shot stuff at my desk. This is just a wooden necklace. I used the reverse lens technique to get the macro, where you turn the lens around and use the rear elements as front elements. Nikon D7000 50mm f/1.8 ISO 320 1/60

- Aman Singh

Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Canon Macro Lens EF 100mm
f/2.8, 1/100 second
Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX

Coincidentally, I chose to rent out a macro lens and ring flash this week from school which worked out perfectly for this shooting challenge. This shot was made more difficult than it normally would be because I took this shot myself using a tripod and tethered capture software on my computer. I would take a burst of pictures while moving my head slowly closer and farther from the camera and then (while trying not to move) review the pictures on my computer to figure out how close I was to the correct position. After many attempts I got this shot which was focused correctly and captured the ring flash pretty much in the center of my pupil. I've always wanted a macro shot of my eye and it's interesting to see the nuances of my iris.

- Sean Gottschalk

(T1i, Canon 100mm Macro, f/3.5, 1/100,ISO 400,) I had just setup my tripod so I could take some shots of the rusty fire hydrant in front of my house and spotted this little guy. He was running so fast it was almost impossible to keep him in frame.

- Nick Ehrmann

My dad, brother and I went out exploring the other day. We found ourselves in an antique shop and my dad found this intense looking dragon. It doesn't really go with his extensive collection of jazz men but I didn't give him too much grief about it because I figured it would make for some cool pictures. Luckily this week's contest was macro. I set up my camera on a table and used a long exposure to attempt to capture the dragon doing it's fire thing. It didn't quite turn out how I pictured it but it's still an interesting shot.

Canon T2i
18-135 lens
10 Exposure
ISO 100
f 5.6

- Jay Johnson

I don't have a macro lens so I used the double lens method. Originally I thought taking a picture of an eye would be interesting. I soon realized that one needs a lot of light (i.e. the flash) when using this double lens method. My wife wasn't too fond of the flash going off right next to her eye so I resorted to taking the tripod out and using a mirror and my camera's live view mode to take a few pictures of my own eye. Even with this trick it was very difficult since the camera was struggling to auto focus and I was trying to get the lens reflection centered in my eye just right. No photoshop, just tweaking of the color.

Pentax k-x with kit 18-55mm and smc pentax-a 50mm f/1.7
1/30s
47mm
f/7.0
ISO:200

- Shawn Nicholas

Hi there,

First a disclaimer - I've absolutely been passionate about macro photography since I was a kid. Unfortunately growing up I left the hobby behind me for about 20 years and am now just getting back. Since this is my first entry into the shooting challenge, I was looking for a subject that would be memorable — at least to me. I settled on my favorite pen, a Monteverde I acquired some time ago. I've been fascinated by the details of these instruments since I first saw my grandfather using one in the 1950's.

What better excuse did I need to go shopping for a Nikkor macro lens for my D7000? No luck, however, came my way as no one local had the new 85mm in stock. I ended up using my older Sony HDR-SR11 HandyCam in picture mode at 10.2 MP.

Shot after shot, I wasn't happy - until I applied a light pencil sketch. It seemed somehow appropriate to pencil a pen. (groan)

Exif below:
Date Created: 5/15/2011 11:43:48 PM
Date Modified: 5/15/2011 11:25:10 PM
File Size: 1.50 MB
Image Size: 3680 x 2760
File Info 2
Date Shot: 5/15/2011 23:25:11
Camera Info
Device: HDR-SR11
Focal Length: 11.8mm
Exposure
Aperture: F/2
Shutter Speed: 1/30s
Exposure Mode: Programmed Auto
Exposure Comp.: 0EV

- John Stroud

Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: AFS Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G
More: Nikon BR-2A Reverse Ring Adapter
Settings: ISO-100, f/?, 1/125s, Manual Flash Mode
Story: Read about the contest on Gizmodo, and was absolutely thrilled that finally I was going to get a chance to play around with some macro photography. So I headed out into the garden, straight to the most bug-infested spot, and looked around. Spotted this fly sitting on a petal, completely still, and took the opportunity to get the shot. Desaturated everything but blues and purples in Adobe Camera Raw as Post-Processing.

- Salman Arif

Shot with a Canon T3i using a 70-300mm lens (at 300mm) with a Raynox
250 (2.5x magnification) lens attachment at f45.
I had originally wanted to get a shot of my cat's eye (beautiful
colors), but she absolutely wasn't cooperating... The next organic
object that caught my attention was a dead leaf, as I liked the
intricate vein patterns, but then I noticed a dead leaf right next to
a fully green one, and the contrast in colors & patterns caught my
eye.

- Eric Kornblum

Nikon D200 24–70 2.8–3.5 Micro-Nikkor Manual Focus.
Shot it at 70mm Macro setting, f8 at 1/15.
I was bummed I don't have a good macro. Only an old manual focus. It also had been raining here. Went out anyway and decided to go out, stumbled upon this grass and this table and hopefully made a winner.

- Vince Wilcox

yo!

"Strawberry and Milk" - a slice of strawberry with condensed milk in a white bowl at my deck.

Camera: iPhone 3Gs
Lens: Close-Up Lens for phone camera
App: Photoshop Express

Salamat,

- Nathaniel Abuan

I took this shot over the weekend after taking a hundred shots of some disturbing insects. On saturday it rained for several hours, and afterwards before it started getting dark I thought I'd give my macro lens one last chance to shine and went out to the porch. This is a picture of a hanging plant. I call it "The beauty after the storm". The world always looks a little better after it's been cleaned off. It was taken with my Sony A55 with a 100 mm f2.8 macro lens that I borrowed from a friend. Exposure was 1/25 of a sec at f /11. ISO was set to 200.

Thank you and I hope you'll accept my late submission.

- Daniel Koch

There's a really simple story behind this picture. I just got home from college, and my mom (the best cook in the world) wanted to make me a home cooked meal like she always used to. She decided to make tacos, one of my personal favorites. Everyone knows you can't have tacos without guacamole, so I snapped this picture of an avocado as she was preparing it. This was shot with a Nikon D300, Micro-Nikkor 60mm at f/3.5 ISO 1000, at 1/200th of a second.

- Jimmy Jorgensen

Enclosed you will find my entries for the Macro Shooting Challenge...

The enclosed image "Spray Face 1" is the result of shooting a section of a spray paint can that had been run over in the street. When I first spotted the can I was drawn to the glass ball that had pierced through the can and how much it resembled an eye socket. I then copied the section of the can and flipped it to complete the face...

P.S. The glass ball is what rattles around in the can when you shake a can of spray paint...

Camera: Nikon FM 55mm Macro Film: Fuji Velvia 50

- Gary Stubelick

I've been inspired recently by some photographic illusions, so I wanted to try my hand at it. This shot was not photoshopped (except for typical white balancing and cropping).

nikon d5000, stock lens
f9, 1/120, iso 200

- dee m'lee

One mushroom was harmed in the making of this photo.

Shot Details:
Nikon D3000, with a reversed 50mm 1.8.

Cheers,

- Anup

Hi Gizmodo,

it was raining buckets and i thought it would be great to take a shot of a raindrop. Sadly i have no macro lens. So i took my old Canon 18-55 3.5-5.3 and holded it backwards to my 550d.
I went outside like this and took about 50 photos to get the perfect drop. After that i was completley wet but it was fun and worth.
Best regards from Germany Andi

Info:

1/4000 sec
55mm backwards
iso 6400
f shoud be 5.3 but i'm not sure
lens Canon 18-55mm 3.5-5.3
Canon 550d

- Andi

Hi,

Please find entry attached. A little back story...

I won't lie... I took quite a few shots for this contest. Old coins, flowers, finger prints, mouldy jam... Even a lego mans eye?! But in the end I loved this shot the most. I took it whilst testing the 'front to front' technique I used. It is the title bar of the Gizmodo web page showing 'Shooting Challenge: Macro'. I like that you can see the individual colours making up the pixels on the screen.

Canon 400D. Lenses were a Canon EF 70-300 with an OM series Zuiko 50mm f1.8 reversed (taped!) on the front . 1/60th at f5.6 and f1.8. ISO 400.

Thanks,

- Michael Dean

Hi Gizmodo :)

I made this photo using a Canon 550D with the 18-55mm kit lens (1/60, 55mm, ISO 200, f/5.6). I bounced the built-in flash off the ceiling with a white card.
This is a small figurine(don't know if this is the right word) of a pirate, whose head has fallen off and glued several times during the years (you can see the crack below his mouth). The photo is kind of a mix from the previous contests. It's a macro portrait taken from the first attempt (i made quite a few photos but I liked the first one the most).

Regards,

- Victor Stanchev

Nikon D5000
f/3
1/640 s
ISO 250

My golden hour macro fixed gear.

We had a lot of fun shooting all kinds of bugs and spiders but none of them were as nice as my fixed gear glistening in the early evening sun.

Thank you.

- Christopher Phillips

Took this photo in the garden was a nice sunny day :) sony nex 5 3.5 1/2500 iso 1600

- Sam Ross

I was walking in a Forest and wanted to take some Flower pictures. With a little luck, i found this little chap sitting on a tiny flower. Fortunately, he was quite patient with me, and he did not mind be shot several times :-)
The Picture is taken with a Nikon D300. The mounted Lens was the 105 macro from Nikkor.
Aperture F11, Shutter speed 1/125 ISO 200, SB900, handheld
Best regards

- Markus

I was very keen to see the results for this contest as I'm sure there will be so many exellent examples!
For me it was a bit difficult as I don't have a Macro lens but am so used to shooting DSLR, that when I had to use the P&S I all of a sudden felt that I had no real chance (I guess we'll see :) ) but nevertheless I was very impressed with how close the P&S comes.
This is a piece of an LCD screen.
Camera Panasonic, Lumix DMC TZ-7.
Shot in Macro zoom mode
4.1 mm @ f4.0, ISO 100.

Cheers

- Nils

I call this "Old home" :), I used a d5000 body with a 50mm 1.8d at f/16 with extension tubes, iso of 1600, shutter speed of 4 seconds. I recently got the ext tubes for macro of flowers, but since macro is so narrowly used for either insects or flowers I figure I have to find another subject.

- Winston Roxas

Photo Description:
After days of relentless rain, I captured this picture on a foggy morning after the weather finally cut to a light drizzle. I was amazed at the detail in the branch and the drops of rain hanging from the spider webs. Kneeling in the rain soaked grass, I used my Nikon D3100 set at a shutter speed of 1/125s, aperture f/5.6, and ISO 100. I enjoyed this photo most because it showed that nature's beauty persists even on rainy days, we just need to look a little closer.

This is my first submission so I apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank You,

- Casey

This shot is of a Serviceberry bush, taken in the Washoe Valley in northern Nevada. As far as equipment, I was shooting with a Nikon D300, using an 18-200mm lens, and crouching down to get the right angle and the right light to get the shot. I found this flower while I was on a short day hike with my wife and son at a location called Deadman's Creek. I chose this particular shot because it helps to showcase the fact that while I do live in the Nevada desert, it's not all just barren rocks and sagebrush out here.

Technical Details:
ISO 200
Focal Length 200mm
Nikon D300
18-200mm f/3.5 - f/5.6

- Dave Freeman

When I decided to submit a photo for this challenge, I swore I would not use a bug. Bugs are so trite. But I found this guy dying in the lawn while I was doing my pre-mowing walk through. I placed him on a patio so that he wouldn't get chopped to bits. He was near death and hardly able to move when I spread myself out on the ground to take this shot. Good choice because the lizards I was planning on using were far less cooperative this weekend.

Canon 5D MkII, Sigma EF 50mm Compact Macro, 1/20, f/20, ISO800.

- Terry Brownell

I live in East TN and currently we are having some great mornings filled with a heavy Dew. I got out early before sunrise on a search for anything dew covered as that tends to make everything look a little more spectacular and sometimes Alien. I took what I thought were several good photos and put them on my facebook for my friends to pick which to submit to Gizmodo. After they had a chance to vote I ended up choosing this photo (that didnt even get one vote from them). While its probably not my best shot from the morning, I guess I chose it because I had never seen a damsel fly with such a large accumulation of dew under its belly. This one was thrashing around trying to dislodge it from its chest and I snapped this pic just as it crashed into the leaf. However, the dew never came off and it wasnt until it lost its balance and fell from the grass blade that the large drop fell off. I have several photos of this sequence on this photos flickr page seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooker771/5718945732/ I shoot all of my macro photos handheld and this one was no exception. I took this with the Canon T2i using the 100mm 2.8 and 2 Opteka Extension tubes. I had my 430EX on a Hakuba LH-1 flash bracket with a homemade paper towel diffuser, shot at ISO 200 f/11 and 1/200. No crop was needed but I did sharpen this in Lightroom.

- Drew Eldridge

I took this photo using an Olympus SP-55OUZ, it's not a professional camera of anything so it's not that great and it's not interchangeable lens. To take the picture I just set it on macro and took about 50 shots until it was just right, but before i took like 100 pictures of flowers until I thought of my dog and that she would make a great picture. The picture is the eye of my amazing 9 year old Australian Shepherd named Sydney, she's the best, which is why she stayed so still with a camera in her face!

- Corey Palmer

Dear Gizmodo,

I was in granville island in vancouver and had some free time yesterday afternoon. I was looking at doing some landscape photography of the cirrus clouds and decided I would try the photography challenge with macro. I have always thought that pink is such a vibrant colour that is under utilizaed in photography. I ended up using a canon 60d, shutter speed 1/200. f 5.6, 200mm focal length, iso 100,

- John Mastrella

Canon EOS 550D
Tamron AF 70-300MM F/4-5.6 LD Macro
f/13
1/1240sec
ISO-1600
300mm

I shot this wasp yesterday on a sunny day in my back garden. I got this little old wooden table in my garden which seams to attract wasps, everytime the sun shines several wasp are working in shifts on eating my table ;-). I believe they use the wood for building their nests.

Kind regards,

- Luc van Soest

Shooting Summary
Camera: Nikon D3000
Lens: 18-55mm
Exposure: 1/50 sec
ISO: 100
Taken using a lens reverser so no aperture info.

I figure most of the macro photos in this contest will be flowers and I wanted to do something more original, but after a light rain, these orange tulips with a light dusting of raindrops were too beautiful to pass up. Thanks!

- Rachel Weiss

Camera : Canon rebel T2i.
Lens : Canon 60mm USM Macro
F : 2.8
Speed : 250
ISO : 800

Title : That 70's Groovy Legos, baby !
History behind the shoot :

I was looking for the usual suspects of macro photography, but the weather is getting colder around here, and today we had some rain, very overcast skies and so on... So, no Bugs, No flowers, No color full things. I turn my attention to a old and rusty fence, and after a few exploratory shots, I found this twisted and rusty wire quite interesting for a macro picture.

Cheers !

- José Gustavo Z. Rosa

Canon T2i, ISO 200, 100mm, f/5, 1/160

I went out with the intention of capturing an insect in it's natural habitat... after an hour long search, I have NO IDEA where all the insects went for the day... none were to be found near my home :-S.

With that idea out the window, I went for flowers and dandelions with excellent results. Ultimately, however, this very dirty traffic cone in Coolidge Corner (that maybe didn't even require the 100mm macro lens) ended up being my favorite for submission.

Can't wait to see the results of this one! Macro lenses are sick.

- Diego Jimenez

Lousy weather in Montréal, I said to myself let's take a walk outside anyway and see what macroworld as to offer for Gizmodo's shooting challenge.

I took 28 shots of mainly flowers with water drops around my house, this one is not a flower... but it stands out because of the ambiance and background. I came back with a smile and damp shoes!

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 105mm micro f5.6 1/125sec ISO 400

Processed in a lightroom preset.

Thank you

- Jean-Charles Labelle d.d.

This weeks challenge, was, well, a challenge. I do not have (yet) a macro lens for my Canon EOS Rebel T2i. In fact, the only lens I have is the 18 to 55 mm lens that came with the camera, so I am rather limited to the amount of magnification I could get. To compensate for this I tried taking photos through a magnifying glass. That was some what successful, but not satisfactory. The focal depth was just too narrow to be clear.

Subject matter was also difficult. I wanted something that is not ordinary in that it is something most people probably (I hope) never really see. Most marco photography is usually a close-up of something familiar, but it is the closeness that makes it unfamiliar. Then I had an idea. A while back I had taken some of my sons' Play-Doh to the office to make ammo for a little catapult I had for a while. I had forgotten about it, and then when cleaning out a filing cabinet, I found it. When I opened the can, I found the red Play-Doh covered in these whitish clear crystals that have grown out of (or did they precipitate from outgassing on to?) the Play-Doh. It was something very different, and rather interesting. So I had my youngest to search his closet for a can of Play-Doh that has crystallized. He found two cans, one white, one black. The white one just did not photograph well, but the black one worked.

Now I had to figure out how to get a good photo. I played with various methods of lighting, but was not satisfied. Then I remembered seeing something on Gizmodo a while back on making a circular light rig for macro shooting. Three years ago I bought several battery operated LED Light Strings for Halloween (I float them with a number of helium balloons on moonless Halloween nights). So I took some card board from a recent purchase, and cut out a strip and formed a circle out of it to fit the lens of my camera. I then tapped the led string to the card board to create a circular light (http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthays/5723145763). I took a number of shots, but still was not completely satisfied. I then remembered the A-DEP setting on the camera. I tried switching to that from Manual to increase the depth of field of the photo, and began to play again with the lighting until I got a shot I liked. So I present clear to white crystals (that look strongly of gypsum or selenite crystals) that have grown from black Play-Doh.

John Hays
Rio Rico, Arizona

Dates

Taken on May 15, 2011 at 11.53am MST
Posted to Flickr May 15, 2011 at 12.56PM MST
Exif data

Camera Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure 0.3
Aperture f/36.0
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 3200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Orientation Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution 350 dpi
Y-Resolution 350 dpi
Software Digital Photo Professional
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:05:15 11:53:08
Artist John Hays
YCbCr Positioning Centered
Copyright Copyright by John E. Hays, 2011
Date and Time (Original) 2011:05:15 11:53:08
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:05:15 11:53:08
Color Space sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution 5728.176796 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution 5808.403361 dpi
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Auto
Scene Capture Type Standard
Macro Mode Normal
Self Timer 2 s
Quality Fine
Canon Flash Mode Off
Continuous Drive Single
Focus Mode AI Focus AF
Canon Image Size Large
Easy Mode Manual
Digital Zoom Unknown (-1)
Contrast Normal
Saturation Normal
Camera ISO Auto
Metering Mode Evaluative
Focus Range Not Known
Canon Exposure Mode Depth-of-field AE
Lens Type Unknown (-1)
Short Focal 18 mm
Focal Units 1/mm
Max Aperture 5.7
Min Aperture 36
Flash Bits (none)
Zoom Source Width 0
Zoom Target Width 0
Manual Flash Output n/a
Color Tone Normal
SRAWQuality n/a
Focal Plane XSize 226.11 mm
Focal Plane YSize 500.13 mm
Auto ISO 100
Base ISO 0
Measured EV 0.00
Target Aperture 36
Target Exposure Time 0.3
White Balance Auto
Slow Shutter None
Sequence Number 0
Optical Zoom Code n/a
Flash Guide Number 0
Flash Exposure Comp 0
Auto Exposure Bracketing Off
AEBBracket Value 0
Control Mode n/a
Bulb Duration 0
Camera Type Unknown (0)
NDFilter Unknown (-1)
Canon Firmware Version Firmware Version 1.0.9
File Number 0
Owner Name John Hays
Serial Number 0722331245
Canon Model ID Unknown (0x80000270)
AFMode Multi-point AF
Num AFPoints 9
Valid AFPoints 9
AFArea Widths 129 129 129 181 222 181 129 129 129
AFArea Heights 172 172 172 117 221 117 172 172 172
AFPoints Selected (none)
Bracket Mode Off
Bracket Value 0
Bracket Shot Number 0
Raw Jpg Size Large
WBBracket Mode Off
WBBracket Value AB 0
WBBracket Value GM 0
Live View Shooting Off
Flash Exposure Lock Off
Lens Model EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Internal Serial Number VA0704443
Tone Curve Standard
Sharpness 3
Sharpness Frequency n/a
Sensor Red Level 0
Sensor Blue Level 0
White Balance Red 0
White Balance Blue 0
Color Temperature 5200
Picture Style Standard
Digital Gain 0
WBShift AB 0
WBShift GM 0
Measured RGGB 408 1024 1024 862
Color Space sRGB
Sensor Width 5344 (152-5335 used)
Sensor Height 3516 (56-3511 used)
Black Mask Left Border 0
Black Mask Top Border 0
Black Mask Right Border 0
Black Mask Bottom Border 0
Peripheral Lighting On
Peripheral Lighting Value 32
Exposure Level Increments 1/3 Stop
ISOExpansion Off
Flash Sync Speed Av Auto
High ISONoise Reduction Off
Highlight Tone Priority Disable
AFAssist Beam Emits
Mirror Lockup Disable
Shutter Button AFOn Button Metering + AF start
Set Button When Shooting Normal (disabled)
LCDDisplay At Power On Display
Add Original Decision Data Off
Related Image Width 5184
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Compression JPEG (old-style)

- John Hays

Shot with a Canon T1i with an EF-s18-55mm kit lens at a focal length
of 55mm. 0.5 sec exposure at f8, ISO 100 bouncing an external flash
off a sheet of paper to the right. This was done for a dailyshoot.com
photo a couple of days ago. My wife had received some new Malabrigo
yarn colors to demo for them so I thought this would make a good shot.

- Adam Drennan

Rain fell just before I set out to search for some tiny nature's models to pose for the Gizmodo Macro challenge. I noticed the peony buds were crawling with life and were just about perfect for the challenge; small black ants were crawling all around the peony buds, enjoying their life in abundance of sweet resin exuded on the flower buds and water drops. I snapped a few photos and in the end chose to send this one.

Settings: Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 100mm lens, ISO 800, f5.6, 1/250sec, 100mm

- Janja Nikolic

My preference would have been to go out and get a picture of the wasps building a nest outside, but my six year-old wanted to take LEGO pictures. The challenge here was increasing the depth of field enough to get some of the background behind this fight. I ended up closing the lens to f32 and setting a 5.0 second time exposure. The flashes served to give some highlights to the minifigs. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM. ISO 400, 100mm, f/32, 5.0s, stabilization off, three Canon 580EXII Speedlites (master flash off, two slaves), remote shutter release, light tent.

- Rick Bollar

This is my first shooting challenge and it was a good excuse to brush the dust off of my macro lens. I don't use it nearly as much as I should. I was just walking around the outside of my house taking pictures of some of the plants that are in bloom. The bleeding hearts caught my eye and this was the result. Shot with a Canon XSI, Canon EF 100mm Macro, ISO: 800, F/2.8, Exposure: 0.5 secs, Canon 430EX Speedlite.

- Jesse Butler

This leaf is from a squash plant start. It had just opened a few days ago and I liked all the little hairs on it. I wanted to accentuate them and ended up back lighting the leaf causing the hairs to glow. I used a small spot light that I hand held about a foot directly behind the leaf. Even though my hand should be visible in the frame the brightness of the light caused it to fade into the black. The only post processing I've done is a crop, sharpen, and a slight exposure adjustment. Canon T2i, 55mm, f/20, 1/40 sec, ISO 100.

- Ben Hugeback

Nikon D60
Sigma 105mm Macro
Zeikos36mm, 20mm and 12mm extension tubes
SB 600 Flash
ISO 400
f/13
1/200

I was super excited about this challenge as I got a macro lens a couple months ago. I wanted to get some crazy close-ups, so I went out and picked up some relatively inexpensive extension tubes. I had seen some cool shots in the past of flowers refracted in water droplets and set out to capture my own. I used an eye dropper to create the droplets on a leaf, positioned my camera on a tripod so it was shooting slightly up at the droplets and held the flower behind and slightly above the droplet. Getting the droplets to stay on the leaf and finding the correct angle was a painstaking process - I spent about 4 hours setting up and shooting. I had a bunch of good captures but decided I wanted to do something a little different than the standard macro refraction. I set up a shot that I liked with the three droplets, held a pink flower behind it and used a remote to trigger the shutter. I duplicated the shot two more times holding a blue flower then an orange flower behind the droplets. I stacked the images in Photoshop and used layer masks to bring out the three different colored flowers. I tried to represent all the different colored flowers in the background, but blending them together looked bad so I just went with the pink one. Pretty pleased with the final result.

- John

Hi Gizmodo!

Canon EOS 400D
Canon Standard 18-55mm reversed using reversing ring
ISO 400
Exposure time 1/20

This idea came out of another weekly photo competition, the theme being 'Balloons', so I spent a great fun filled afternoon trying to take photos of balloons!

This lead to my close up shot entered for the Macro competition. I really liked the vibrant blue of the image, and abstract lines of the composition, which doesn't reveal itself straight away.

Many thanks,

- Kathryn

Spring is here which means it is Macro season. I took a lot of pictures of tiny bugs and nice flowers but they just didn't appeal to me. Spring in the Midwest also means that it is dandelion season. I decided to take some shots of this one and out of all the pictures today this dandelion was the most compelling to me. It's probably also the reason why my whole family is sneezing and sniffling but that's another story… I used my Nikon D7000 and my new Tamron 60mm Macro lens. I really like the lens by the way. I used the manual setting, f/13, ISO 100 and 1/250s for the shutter. The smaller aperture allowed the background to fade away into a nice green/black void that I like. The smaller picture is untouched, no post processing, and the larger one is sharpened a bit. Thanks.

- Pete

Camera: Canon 400D
Lens: 18-55mm (with reversing ring)
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/100

Flower Stigma and Petal

On this shot I used a reversing ring to reverse the lens thereby creating a macro zoom. The only drawback is the depth of field is extremely narrow and reversing the lens means all focus has to be done manually. What caught my eye is the fantastic colours that the flower produce. They seem to have a glowing fluorescent quality to them.

- Jason Stanley

I shot this with an 19-55mm Canon lens reversed for the macro effect. It is very tricky getting it into focus. This is the center of a daisy.

- Jennifer Bartels

I took this with my Canon T2i and 18-135mm zoom lens

After looking forward to the summer for months I finally got home to our lakehouse in Texas, and got to go out on a boat ride. The sun was setting over the lake, the wind was blowing, and as we zipped along I found myself staring at this little bolt that held part of the boat together, so I took a picture of it.

- Allison Boos

It was great timing for a macro challenge because I was planning on visiting my girlfriend's place where her parents' award winning garden was. On top of that it was a rainy weekend so (in between raining periods) I had great lighting to take pictures of the garden. The property is on Lake Huron which meant a lot of wind and a lot of trouble getting any flowers or leaves to sit still. I was playing around with aperture priority mode for most of the day but I think this shot was just the "close-up" option on the mode dial. My girlfriend thinks that the flower in the photo is a daffodil but we're not entirely sure.
Canon Rebel T2i, Sigma 17-70mm lens, f/4, 1/100sec, ISO-160

- Mike Nyman

I shot these with my canon t1i and my 50mm f1.8 lens. I read the article about spacers and magnifiers, and decided I wanted to try something like that, but I didn't want to buy or make a spacer, so I freelensed instead. The picture is of a valve spring from a Subaru Forester lit by a flashlight shining through some sunglasses.

- Jason Fairchild

Once again this weekend I was camping at my friends land up in Vermont, and decided to use the setting for the photo challenge. This picture is of a glass bottle, most likely 30+ years old that we found down by the abandoned and now grown over former campsite. It has been sitting on the same log since I started visiting the land a few years ago (and most likely many years before that), and has a fully formed ecosystem growing inside of it.

Photo was taken with a Panasonic GF1, at f/1.7, 1/125, and ISO-100. It is in square format because that is the fastest way I can shoot 1:1.

- Ben Ozug

I took this in my front yard Saturday morning after work using a Nikon D300 w/Nikkor 16-85mm VR. Settings were ISO200, f8, 1/500/s and 85mm. The bee's were moving way too much to even think about a tripod and manual focus, so it is hand help with manual exposure but auto focus.

- Clark White

These little garden spiders, (no clue as to species but they are about 1/4 inch in length from tip of back leg to tip of foreleg, have a Steel Your Face looking marking on their abdomen, see picture in the original Macro Shooting Challenge thread for detail), caught this image after spider caught fly and a short burst of rain, really like how it turned out.

Sony SLT-A33 w/ kit lense and a 10X macro filter, color corrected and enhanced saturation in Sony PMB.
F 5.6
Lens Focal Length 55 mm
Shutter Speed 1/160 sec
ISO 640

- Felonious Max

Hi... Took this on the one sunny day in weeks... I was strolling around in Ravenswood Park in Gloucester, MA

hoping to catch a bug off guard... Actually I was just hoping to see a bug, because the temp's have been averaging around 50'

with lots of rain so far this spring... not good bug weather... any way... I was shooting this flower and, up the stalk came this Ant...

I was shooting with my Canon 60D, with a 100mm Tokina 2.8 macro lens... the ISO was 100 ... at F/5 and 100th of a second...

Distance to the Ant from the Lens, was 300mm. I had the camera mounted on a Manfrotto Pistol Grip Ball Head, on a Manfrotto Tripod.

I was able to record quite a few Insects over the course of the morning... but I ended up liking this one more than any of the others.

- Charlie

Shot with a Canon EOS Rebel T2i with an EFS 55-250mm lens with a exposure of 1/400 sec at f/6.3 and an ISO of 2000.

I've seen the photo challenge every week and have either never had the time to take a picture or have had a great one on file that is too old to use. This week, I decided that I would finally get outside and get a picture. I love macro photography, and I love taking pictures of flowers. I think that they are so different up close and it make you appreciate the intricacy of some flowers when you can see them as if you were their size. I took about 100 photos and decided that I liked this one the best since it had a bright red insect in it which went nicely with the blue and purple. I had a really hard time choosing just one photo to submit. In the end, this was what the rest of my family liked the best.

Thanks,

- Nicholas

Nikon D3100, Kit Lens with cheapo .65x wide angle camcorder lens held in front of it, ISO-1600

Finally said to hell with the point and shoots. Splurged on a D3100 and haven't looked back.

I was trying to get the cheerio but ended up getting his thumb print in focus. Oh well, I still think it is an awesome shot.

Thx

- Nick Peach

Greetings,

I like to keep things simple, so going outside and hunting for a cool bug to shoot or a flower was not part of my plan. So I took something off my desk and took a much closer look.

What you are looking at is a cheap tote bag that I picked up from CES. Then to even get a deeper look, I added a drop of water that magnifies the fabric below it.

NO post work, as it.

Took on a Sony SLT-A55V Alpha.
Lens: 30mm f2.8 Macro SAM (Great little lens)
ISO-100
F/22 (like DOF)
Desk lap for light, you can see it on the water drop in the middle.

- Derek Van Beber

I found this fly on the outside wall of my house, waiting for the Vancouver rain to stop.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikon 105mm AF-D f/2.8
ISO: 800
Exposure: 1/400 sec at f/7.1
Flash: did not fire

- Sam To

Here, in the southern U.S., this week's shooting challenge coincides with the appearance of "The Great Southern Brood" of periodical cicadas. For 13 years, these critters have been developing underground, waiting to emerge by the billions to molt into their final form, find a mate, and continue the great cycle of life.
Nikon D70s, 60mm Micro-Nikkor with 6T closeup lens, ISO 720, 1/125sec at f/4.

- Mark Reddick

Perhaps it's just me, but as a rather heavy-handed pianist, there are few things I enjoy more in sheet music than permission to play louder.... Just reaching those points in the music where it demands more! More!!! Forte. It's just more fun that way — and here is one such moment.

Nikon D5000 with reversed 50mm prime, 1/100, F/2.4...ish

- Ted Monchamp

Joints on a crab body. Found while walking around on a fisherman's beach on the island Curacao.

Sony DSC-F828
ISO 64
Focal length: The f828 lens was at full extend (200mm equiv) and i reversed an Olympus OM Zuiko 50mm at f1.4 on it. Which is the cause of the vignetting there too.

- Omar Kuwas

Hello Gizmodo,

A friend of mine was getting tattooed this weekend and I was shooting away documenting his monumental occasion of him getting tattooed for the first time. I was snapping away with my 50mm and wondered if I could flip my lens, manually hold it over the sensor and shoot away to capture the needle going in and out. I couldn't ask the artist to stop in one spot so I followed him and adjusted my position to get the focus as best I could. I figured there would be some motion blurring with all the factors (holding the lens while shooting, me moving and the artist moving) but I ended up with his shot with the needle pushing the ink into the skin. I thought it was interesting to capture something moving so fast.

The white line is the needle, gray blur is the ink coming out of the tattoo gun.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 50/1.4 flipped
F: N/A
Exp: 1/250
ISO: 400

Cheers,

- Mike Thompson

Hey Gizmodo,
I've been following your photography contest for something like a year now, and have finally gotten up the time/courage for a submission. Not my best, but it's something I like.

Photo setup:
Canon Xti
Canon EF 100-300mm lens.
Tiffen stackable close up lenses: +4 and +2 stacked and attached. +1 still in the bag.
Settings: 1/125, F/11, ISO: 200

Story: My wife gave birth to our first child, a little girl, about four months ago and she's been the center of my photography since. We were at a spring time carnival type event this weekend, and we were taking a break under at large white tent when I seized the opportunity of my daughter's nap. Instead of noticing her cuteness, photo nerd had taken over my brain and I rather noticed the diffusing qualities of the tent on her face. I threw my closeups on my lens of choice at the time (telephoto) and played around. The eyelash photos turned out pretty good and the ear photos were nice, but it was the nose, complete with dried bugger bits, that really got me. So for my first photo submission: my 4 month old daughter's snout. I own no real editing software, so only some lighting adjustments were made to the photo.

Thanks,

- Steven Shelton

I wasn't going to try this challenge primarily because the forecast
was calling for rain all weekend. I some how found my self walking
around the local arboretum looking at the new flowers. I was getting
tired of lugging around my tripod and decided to take it off and take
some hand held photos. While taking this shot I didn't think much of
it and after looking at it on the display (very small on the S2 Pro) I
figured it was just an ok shot. When I got home it turned out to be
one of the best shots of my day. I took this photo with my Fuji S2 Pro
and my 55-200mm at f22 1/20 with some slight modifications to make it
get closer. I had to crop the image a bit since my add-on got in the
picture but still a nice shot.

- Michael Bailey

Bereft of any specialized macro equipment, I decided to shoot a photo as close I could focus and crop it down later. This shot is of a pocket-watch my grandfather gave me. The photo was taken with a Canon T2i and a 18-55mm kit lens. I attempted to make a macro flash diffuser using a poster tube, rubber bands, and wax paper. This did not work very well with the pop-up flash. This particular shot was lit by taking that make-shift flash diffuser and putting it over a mag light.

Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 500
Focal Length: 55mm
Aperture: f/8.0

- Davy Allred

Hi Gizmodo!

I had been trying for a few days to get a nice macro image, but was epicly failing and getting fuzzy images(of stuff that's incredibly boring anyways). Eventually my bestfriend recommended a new way so I could reduce the shaking... and it worked! So for my submission I used my Canon 450D and my 1.8 50mm lens. Besides that I also inverted a 1.4 50mm lens on top of the one attached to the camera body. ISO was at 800, exposure was 1/30sec at f2.2 and I also used flash. Additionally I put the wasp(which I had previously killed, with an electrical tennis racket, this morning) on top of a my iPhone after I had turned on the flashlight at about 45%

- Crystal Boomgaart

Shot with Nikon D70, sigma 28-135mm macro lens, f5.6, ISO 1250 (I didn't have a tripod with me, and it was sort of dim).

Every day, I arrive at the building where I work, stroll through the lobby, and push a button to summon an elevator. Each day, I patiently wait for the elevator, ready to start my workday, and each day I walk into the elevator, push the button for floor 2, and lean against the elevator wall, not remembering that the walls are carpeted with this godforsaken material. I don't know what it was with architecture and interior design in the '70s, but I'd love to meet the person who thought an office elevator would somehow be more appealing when covered with carpeting that has the texture of scratchy fur. Often, I start my day wondering if a pack of feral cats gave their lives to cover the barren walls of our elevators.

- Zameer Abedin

Nikon D700
105mm
ISO 320
f/18
1.3 seconds

I've fallen in love with toy photos. This macro challenge presented an opportunity to use a toy car we found in a drawer last week. A few more items grabbed from nearby and this miniature dream world was created.

- Jacqui Roy

I saw this dandelion puff ball in my yard and so I went out and picked it
before it more seeds spread around the yard. Looking at it I thought it
would make an interesting macro shot as there was some interesting geometry
in the arrangement of the seeds and filaments. So I started photographing
and came up with this shot. I took four photos, slightly adjusting the
focus each time, to get the various depths in focus. I then used a stacking
program I found on the web to merge everything together into single photo
with pretty nice depth of field. I hope the use of CombineZM which is a
free program to do the merging of the four photos into one is within the
rules of the contest.

Camera was Nikon D90 with 60mm Nikkor Micro lens

- Duane Sager

This was a tough pick for me. I shot some fantastic flower shots
(IMO) and a few other interesting items but decided against submitting any
of them because I figured that the subject matter would probably be well
covered by others. On top of that, my kids liked this one the best (go
figure) We have been getting quite a lot of rain and these mushrooms are
coming up everywhere. Mushrooms and Mario/I needed some color.
Shot with Lumix GH2, Nikkor 55mm Macro (110 mm effective focal length) ISO
160 f8 (+or-) 1/30th sec.

- Tim Hammer

This photo was taken with a backwards Canon 50mm f/1.8 held onto the front of my Canon XTi, ISO 800, 1/80s. Because I wear glasses, I'm always struggling with getting in-focus shots without the use of autofocus, and this shot was no exception. No matter what I tried I kept feeling that I wasn't getting sharp images. Of course the fact that I had the lens on the camera backwards probably wasn't helping matters. :) The setup here was basically my camera on a tripod in front of a table, with the watch (LUM-TEC Combat B3, one of my favorite) sitting under a bright desk lamp a couple inches from the lens. The hardest part was probably getting the watch face close to parallel with the lens - the shallow depth of field afforded by f/1.8 made getting a lot of the watch face in-focus difficult.

- Shaun Wrightson

Al Jazeera already has a live streaming app available for Android, but a new full featured Al Jazeera English app has hit the Android Market and includes all the content from the website, breaking news alerts, free live video of their broadcast and the ability to send your media to Al Jazeera. Free. [Android Market]

Once collected the data is parsed, keywords are all flagged and organized for immediate action. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.

Instead, the NSA often collects so much data that it simply cannot analyze it all. In fact, every six hours, the NSA pulls in an estimated 74 terabytes worth of raw data. That's roughly the same amount as is stored in the The Library of Congress' digital archives.

[Baltimore Sun via Popular Science]

Hey, My friend and local DJ called me up and said that he needed some promotional pictures done, We'd been planning them for a while but neither of us really had time, but we agreed after work on Sunday that it was happening this week. Today, we got in his car and drove out to and old abandoned factory in our town, and climbed up what I can only assume was once a water tower. The old factory grounds, come construction site, can be seen in the background with the blurry silhouette of a digger working as the sun was setting. He had recently gotten the tattoo you see on his forearm and I wanted to incorporate that, and I saw a few cinder blocks lying around so I set up this shot and after a few attempts, it worked out pretty well!

Pentax K-7, D FA 100mm f/2.8 Macro @ 2.8, ISO 125, 1/160, Wireless Flash (AF-360FGZ) @ 16th power), Manual.

- Florian Stravock

I was at my nieces softball game with my 3 year old daughter Lucy. She was not impressed with high school softball so she was wandering around the stands getting into mischief. At one point she was 2 rows below me and not paying attention so I framed the shot, focused and called her name. As soon as she looked up I pressed the shutter. Taken with my Nikon D40, 55-200 kit lens at F/4.2, 1/500, ISO 200.

- Matt Ferri

Hello Gizmodo,

We are two travel blogger for www.for91days.com currently spending our 3 month in Buenos Aires. I would like to introduce you to Juan Carlos Balvidares, the "Caminante Argentino", who's been around the world, sharing his music beyond the borders of his native land. We met him in front of the Recoleta Cemetery, where he was performing. Finding out that I'm from Germany, he told me that he's been there and also walked across the rest of the world, making money by playing his original songs on the streets.

Shot with the Canon 7d, 50mm prim lens, f 3.2 at 1/80

Hope I win ;)

- Juergen

The story behind this picture is quite obvious, it's a portrait of my girlfriend and our first born son. Personally, I think it's a good portrait because her eyes emit all the love a mother can feel for her child. The picture was taken the second day after he was born (04/11/2011) so I know the picture doesn't qualify for the rule that says that the picture has to be taken since this contest was announced, but I find it such nice portrait that I just had to submit it.

Kind regards

Equipment:
KODAK EASYSHARE Z1015 IS DIGITAL CAMERA
f/4,6
shutter 1/40 sec
ISO 80
No flash, no tripod

Belgium

- Peter

This shot is of my grandfather at a going away party for my cousin. Her husband was near retirement from the Navy, and they were moving to Texas. While he may not enjoy the profile with wrinkles, those wrinkles have a story to tell. My grandfather retired from the Air Force and served six tours in Korea and Vietnam.

Camera Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS
Exposure 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 400

- Jillian Jordan

Dear Gizmodo,

I went shooting with my friend the day of the contest. We walked around for a while until we passed by a bridge. I figured that was as good a place as any to snap some photos. I told my friend to focus on something gloomy, then to look at the camera. Out of the two shots we took on the bridge, this was my favorite. It was taken with a Canon 60D, and a Canon 50mm f/1.8, at 100ISO, 1/100 shutter speed, and f/1.8.

- Guy Singer

Nikon D70

Nikkor 18-70 mm

My grandma was cooking dinner when I hurried upstairs, grabbed my camera and, started to snap some pictures.

I don't really remember all the ISO, F-stop, and shutter speed settings. I also am not sure of how to reduce the image quality, so I'm just sending the cropped version of the picture.

- Noah Cho

Sony a33 w/ stock 18-55 lens, no tripod.
Shutter 1/1000, Aperture 3.5, ISO 100. Using the Aperture Proprity setting.
Also used PicNik photo editor to give it a little more contrast and for resizing

Just got to Las Vegas the night prior, I woke up and saw the shooting challenge, I'm a serious and total noob at photography but since I always wanted to do one of them and just recently got a nice camera, I figured why not. We went out for a hike in Red Rock Canyon, I was practicing and messing around with the Aperture settings to try to make a cool looking picture.

Thank you very much,

- Thomas R. Laske

This was shot on a canon t2i. Stock lens.

It was taken when he found out that he was accepted into the U of BC school of nursing.

- Ryan Markkula

My setup:
Nikon D5000
Nikkor 35mm f/1.8
ISO 200
1/250 exposure

I took my little boy to the park today and he was all too happy to pose for a portrait inside the big yellow tunnel on the playground. This one (of many taken that day) was my favorite. The coloring inside that tube was so interesting, and the look on his face tells an interesting story.

- Rachel Edwards

Camera: Canon T3i
Lens: 18-55mm
ISO: 2000
f/3.5 1/40s

Took this picture of my girlfriend at our university. She loves playing piano so I decided that there's no better way to capture her character than a portrait in front of a grand piano.

- Jonathan Nguyen

Camera: Canon 40D
Lens: 50mm f/1.4
Shutter: 1/160
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 100

Until We Meet Again

For this photo I was going for a certain feeling and emotion, of someone missing and longing for somebody else. It was actually rather challenging to get the pose and look that I really thought that conveyed that. After some various poses I asked the model if she had anybody on her mind and heart. She actually talked about her grandmother who recently passed away and began to tear up. I asked her to think of her grandmother and I would just take some photos. I took the formality of the shot and let her just go with her emotion and this is the resulting photo. The only post processing was the standard sharpening to compensate for the typical softness and straight B&W.

- Bryan Schmidt

Shot on my Canon t2i with an ISO of 3200 with an 18-55mm lens shot at 55mm, f/5.6, 1/60th of a second.

My roommate (yes, we're in college), ordered this ridiculous shirt online and we decided to have a photo shoot. The goal of the photo shoot was to make my roommate look like as "cool" as possible (hence the ciggarette and sunglasses) but we ended up getting a great picture out of it. Shot against a wall in our dorm, with natural and artificial light (as you can see in the glasses), and partially retouched in Aperture. Neither of us smoke, by the way. The cigarette was only added for looks.

- Jimmy Jorgensen

Equipment: Nikon D40x w/ 18-200mm lens shot at 36mm, ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/60 sec.

The guy in the photo is named Andrew and is the guitarist for a local band called Carbon Black here in South Carolina. I did a photo shoot of the band at a run down brick building near a creek. This building was two stories tall but with no roof or a second floor board. The shoot just finished up and I noticed a sewage pipe sticking out of the wall in the basement portion of the building. I thought instantly that would be nice to frame each of the members portrait against. No significance really with it being a sewage pipe. It just happened to be there and a lightbulb went off. Andrew (in the photo) is very charismatic, animated figure but in this photo he is caught in a calm state for that 1/60th of a second. I love that contrast of characteristics.

- Brandon Pendred

There isn't any exciting story behind this,i asked my boyfriend to pose for me and after shooting from different angels he got angry and frowned at me witch cause this photo :D
By the way I don't know if i should call this photo THE SCAR (witch is kinda like harry potter's H scar) or THE FROWN :D
I used Nikon D90 on f/5.6 1/6s iso:1000
Hope you'll like it

- Sahar

Shot with a Canon 5D MKII, 85mm/1.2, ISO100

Subsequent to a series of events I still don't fully understand (yes, alcohol was a factor),
I found myself in a hotel room (note the vintage vinyl wallpaper in the background) around the corner from my house.
With a beautiful girl.
And a camera.

So, what do I do?
I shoot a portrait, nerd out a bit and email a couple of JPEGs to Gizmodo.

Sometimes portraits speak as much to the essence of the photographer as the subject. [sigh].

- Peter Lytwyniuk

Photo taken yesterday in ValueVillage, Ontario Canada. My girlfriend is quite taken with vintage sewing magazines.
Even though the majority of the magazines are quite quite laughable.
Taken on Leica X1, f/2.8 iso 800.

- Ian Pettigrew

Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-70mm
Zoom: 70mm
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/100
F/: 4

After I saw the Photo Challenge this week in my Gizmodo feed, I was really excited. Mainly because I had taken a trip with my friend this past weekend and had some fun with my camera. I was playing the "Hey I'm going to take a candid Facebook photo shot so keep doing what you're doing" while she was playing the "Oh god! Please don't! NO, NO, NO!". This shot was a total accident because of her repeated attempts to stop me from taking her picture. As I was clicking away this beautiful shot just came to life. I did a little editing in Photoshop, only some minor lighting changes and the Black & White.

- Ryan Friend

Photo shot with an iPhone 4, using Camera +, zero editing.

So my Mom was bathing my younger brother, he is wearing this hilarious yet cute duckling towel. She just had put it on him and was walking into the living room and saw the shot! I told her to stop and just really quickly took this photo, he looked almost amazed as I took his picture! The white balance was alittle wacky but I think overall, it makes for the shot.

- Joshua L'Esperance

Hello Gizmodo! Longtime lurker here with my submission, please see attached.

The Equipment:

Camera | SIGMA DP2s
Lens | Fixed focus 24.2mm
Photographer | Edmond Handwerker
Subject | Miss Columbia, Queen of Queens (I swear, that's his name)

The Settings:

ISO | 200
Aperture | f4.5
Shutter Speed | 1/100

The Story:

Walking through Central Park yesterday and I run into this character...

"Excuse me, sir - "
"Miss," he interjected, with a flail of his hands. "Miss Columbia, Queen de la Queens es mi nombre!"
"Miss Columbia, I always see you around New York City, especially marching in the parades." I commented.
"I love the parades," he started, "but I was kicked out of the Saint Patrick's Day parade because they told me they do not want gays in the parade."
"That's terrible. I'm sorry to hear that" I said, and then he interrupted my sympathy with this gem of a line:
"But I told the police officer that I'm not gay, I'm a lesbian!" as he flapped his dress.

Clearly he has told this joke a million times over, and as much as I want to say he is a jolly man, there's something very tears-of-a-clown in this photo of him I snagged. (He asked me for a dollar, but I ended up giving him two in exchange for a little photo shoot)...

Anyway, I snapped all these photos of him smiling, pretending he was in a pageant, laughing and then there was a moment of hesitation in his aura, and that's the photo I chose to submit. To me, that sadness and uncertainty is the true essence of his character. Not because I want it to be, nor because that's how I want to "paint" him to be, but because we all wear masks and every now and then we slip. He goes against the grain of society every day by being who he choses to be. Something has to be said about the weight of that burden. To me, his eyes speak that burden in volumes.

Meanwhile, I have to say, he is certainly rocking the Gizmodo-look with his CD-R earring.

Thanks for taking the time to review my submission!

Oh, and please ignore my EXIF data - for some reason my camera is set to January of 2010 - CLEARLY this photo was not taken then (as this was Central Park, yesterday)...I think the date resets every time I swap the battery. Sigma should fix that.

All the best and good luck to all the finalists!

- Edmond Handwerker

Equipment: Canon 7D w/ 50mm 1.4 Lens

Camera Settings: ISO 400 50mm f/4.5 1/500sec

Story: When my friend Gabriela opted out of the traditional church
wedding and decided to get married in Vegas so I thought to myself
"this would be an excellent chance to take some portraits of the
characters you see in Vegas." This is my entry. I took well over 400
shots but when I looked at all my pictures this one stood out. My
friend decided to do a 50's wedding theme and got married at "The
Little White Wedding Chapel" in Vegas. Another friend of ours decided
to take his electric guitar and portable amp to play outside the
chapel. I took this while we were waiting and he was on a cigarette
break.

- Carlos Martinelli

My nephew baby Zach
I find one of the hardest things is to shoot a newborn baby. As they get a little older, hand puppets and toys will get toddlers to look up and smile. Infants on the other hand do not smile, and do not hold still. This was a hard shot to do, all morning he was flopping all over the place and crying. When I had my sister hold him he would stop crying, however you could not see detailed characteristics. We then came up with the idea to lay him on her arm, and shoot him from the side. What we got I would consider priceless.

Canon 60D
43mm
f/4.5
ISO 100
Flash Fired

Edited with CS5

- Joshua Young

Shot on a 7D with a 24-70 2.8L, Shot @ f/2.8 ISO 1000, 1/80. We just moved my fiances grandparents out of their home in New Orleans and this was the last picture of her Grandma sitting in the living room of their old home before they had to leave. She was sitting on a bench talking about her friends and memories she had made there.

- L Yamen

There's always been an intense desire to capture the candidness of a person even when shooting portraiture. Expression should come from emotion, not training or direction.
Shot with Hasselblad 500cm through Zeiss Planar 50mm at f/2.8 on Ilford Delta 3200 in A12 back with natural light and developed at my local 1-hour photo who thankfully still develops 120. Scanned negative. There is no substitute to the beauty and soul that only analog photography can capture. I hope that someday people return to the art and craftsmanship of shooting on film, developing and creating handmade silver gelatin prints.

Yours Humbly,

- Vigo

I'm a Dental Intern from Sulaymania -Kurdistan /Iraq, we went out on a group picnic to a place called Merga Pan near the city , Suddenly I noticed that one of my colleges was staring at the water that passing in front of us and she was really captured by it , and I think that this photo is expressing exactly what she feeling in that moment .

the photo is taking using Sony A55 SLT ,handheld , ISO100, F/4.5, 1/250 using kit lens 18-55mm, cropped a little much in iPhoto .
also to mention that this is my first submission to giz ,and about a week ago I purchased my first DSLR (technically SLT)

thanks

- Dastan Taher

Hello,

Shot Details:
Nikon D3000 with kit lens. 1/320 sec, f5, some post-processing.

Story:
On the weekends, I wander off to the terrace of my apartment building to take some shots. Usually the area is closed as it is not allowed for the residents to go there (not sure why the rule is in place). But luckily, the caretaker doesn't mind if I go there for half an hour when he opens the area to do some chores.
So for this challenge, I couldn't think of a better person to shoot than this cool guy. Unsurprisingly, he readily agreed to pose for 10 minutes.

Take care,

- Anup

This photo was shot using a Canon D60, with a 50mm lens, an f-stop of 1.8, an ISO of 400, and a shutter speed of 1/30. I decided to take pictures of friends at an open market. This one came out the best, which is surprising cause this person usually keeps breaking the fourth wall.

- Max Barnett

Hello Giz!

This is my first entry into the weekly shooting challenges (although I've read and tried the majority of them). I was walking through the Eno River state park with my girlfriend this last thursday, and thought the gorgeous scenery would make for a nice backdrop in a portrait of her. After several shots and the hot sun bearing down on us we decided to lay out for a while next to the creek we were walking by.
While she was laying down I realized that a horizontal portrait could make for a nifty photo. After some coercing of my model she posed in a few more positions as she laid, and the resulting shot was my favorite. She's always taking naps out in the sun and I wanted to capture that dream-like, in between sleep and waking feeling one gets when basking in the sun. I had a great time trying out this challenge and experimenting with portraits to try and capture a certain emotion from the subject.

I used a Canon 60D and Canon 24-70 F/2.8 L lens with an exposure of 1/1250 @ f2.8 and ISO of 100.

- Dylan Welter

Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
ISO: 100
1/60

Hi My Name is Diego, I'm a Graphic Designer and Photographer. Now about the photo Me and My Girlfriend (The subject) were walking our dogs (we have 4 pugs and a chow chow) when she leaned on a gate while waiting for them to do their business and the way the wind was blowing made her hair look great I knew that later the sun would be hitting that spot just right. So when went back home got my gear and went back to the spot, it took a couple of tries to get the right shot but finally I got the one below and I thought it looked great. Afterwards the owners of the house where we were shooting came out and asked what we were doing after explaining they mentioned that they were looking for a photographer for their daughters sweet sixteen. So all in all great day!

- Diego Casaravilla

Equipment Used:
Olympus OM-1 (Shutter Speed range: Bulb-1/1000)
F. Zuiko 50mm F1.8 Lens (Aperture range: 1.8-16)
Kodak Professional B/W400CN Film

Camera Settings Used:
Shutter Speed: 1/60
Aperture Setting: 2.8
Film Setting: 400 Speed

As a child, my mom would use the camera described for everything from family get togethers to sporting events. I recently (within the past 6 months) verbally expressed an interest in photography to mom and told her that I wanted to learn how to take photographs. She gave me her camera because A) she wasn't using it anymore, B) she realized that I'm a broke college student and couldn't afford anything outside of basic point and shoot, and C) she feels that film cameras give you better quality products than their digital counterparts. Regardless of her reasoning, I was a-ok with getting a free camera.

After a few months of self-teaching and many trial and error results, I felt confident in my abilities to work with color film. However, from everything I've read, the real challenge for 35mm cameras was working with black and white film. As an aspiring photographer, I believe that I should take on any challenge while working on becoming proficient in my new found hobby. As a result, I decided to meander around the city's botanical gardens because they have a Japanese garden sponsored by their sister city Hitachi, Japan, and I thought that it was funny to work on honing my skills with a 35mm camera in a traditional Japanese landscape. Of all the pictures I took at the gardens, the attached one is my favourite from the roll. I had my subject ("Anne") strike various poses, but the all felt like they had a defined "staged" feeling that you would find flipping through a copy of "Cosmo" or something similar. With this one, while it was planned, it has a more genuine and authentic feel; it shows Anne's as a familiar face that you've known for ages while maintaining a realistic aspect from having to work a long day. Furthermore, it suggests that anyone viewing the picture could see her occupying a coffee shop or waiting to board an uptown bound N-train. Additionally, the attached photo of Anne was taken at my house at roughly 1830 on 5/6/11 with just the ambiant light provided from a setting sun. The camera settings used help differentiate Anne from the background and makes you easily notice her features while providing an inviting and personal touch. Furthermore, as you can probably tell, there have been no modifications or enhancements made to the photo once it was digitalized for this competition. I would like to thank you guys for taking your time to view my submission and allowing me to participate in the competition.

Cheers!

- Michael Griffin

When I started up all this photography stuff, I told myself that I wasn't going to take pictures of people, only objects and landscapes. Well, I also want to do these shooting challenges so I decided to try this contest. The other issue I had was that I was hesitant to post of photo of my four year old son on the internet for all to see. That being said, I wanted to make sure that my entry fit the criteria but still obscured my son's face a little.
I set up the shot with a small bedside lamp sitting in my son's toy grocery cart to get it to the same height as his face. I had him stand against the wall and asked him not to smile. Of course, that just made him smile. I played around with shutter speed and was able to get 10-15 shots taken before he lost interest.
This was the best of the bunch.

Tech Info:
Canon EOS Rebel T1i on tripod
ISO 1600
29mm
f/4.5
1/250

Thanks,

- Matthew Johnson

For this shot, I used a Nikon D90, 50 1.4/g, ISO 100, shutter speed 1/125. The lighting was a softbox boomed above him.

My grandparents live very far away in Taiwan (I live in Washington), so for Mother's Day, they requested that I take photos of my brothers and send them over because they want to see how they've been growing up. Unfortunately for them, my little brother is notorious for not being able to smile in front of a camera. We resorted to the old tactics of someone standing behind me to make him laugh, and for some odd reason he tried to contain the laughs, and this is one of the pictures that I got. It also happened to be my favorite, even compared to the ones where he was actually laughing.

- Jared Chang

The Bottle and Him

This is my first attempt at niore-esque portrait/picture. I wanted to focus on the man behind the bottle, while keeping the bottle prominent. After all the bottle can rule the man, but it is the man that is always blamed for their actions. He wants to break the bottle, before it breaks him...

For making this picture, I got the help of a friend (who was very kind!), a halogen lamp, an open bottle of whiskey (Talisker), Canon 550D (T2i), 100mm 2.8L, stopped at 2.8 with 1/30sec exposure, and ISO 200. I knew what I wanted, so I set it up in my livingroom and took 8 handheld shots, this was the last one. I developed it in Canon DPP and made it monochrome. I added a bit of vignetting in Lightroom.

- Rahul

Canon EOS 550D with EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens, 1/60 sec at f2.8, ISO1600

This is my birthmum, Debbie. I was adopted 32 years ago, and I found her again when I was 20. Sunday was Mother's Day in New Zealand, and I took her out for brunch with my brothers - her two younger sons. It's cool to have the connection with her (and them) and to be in touch with people I share genes with. I thought she had the right sort of face for this challenge, so I brought my camera along to brunch.

- Russell Dear

Good News Everyone!

This will be my first shooting challenge and I'm excited to finally submit something. So I found out yesterday morning that a friend needed some photos for graduation announcements for her son. I told her I'm not a professional photographer by any means, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once.

So I grabbed my barely used D5000 and told her we could meet up at the local park. Her son really didn't want to take any photos, but after awhile he warmed up to the idea and we snagged quite a few. The photo was taken with a 55-200mm lens with a F4.8 aperture with 1/640 exposure at 122mm. It was bright out (would have killed for more cloud cover) so I was using the custom ISO on the D5000 so I could have a really wide open aperture and reduce the depth of field.

From start to print, it took us about six hours to shoot, pick the photos that they liked and send it off to walmart to be printed. I'm happy that I get to use my new camera and put some of the photography skills I learned from an AP photographer to use.

Thanks for listening to my story (hopefully in the voice of Farnsworth)

- Robert Brown

The following shot was taken handheld from a Canon 60D with a Canon EF 85mm F1.8 lens.

Settings were f3.5 at 1/1000, ISO 100.

I'm a month into my foray with digital photography, and love every moment of it. I was asked to do some portraits for a scholarship program's yearbook, and this subject had won the title of "Best Hair." Taken on Cinco De Mayo, it was a beautiful day in Cincinnati, and the sombrero'd man captured within the bokeh makes the shot even better for me.

I'm not sure that my dimensions are correct for this contest…but I hope this still qualifies.

Best,

- Carlo

Hello Gizmodo,

This is my first submission to the shooting challenge. (insert huge YAYYYYY here)

This is my friend, mentor, brother and sometimes surrogate father Willie Baronet. I have known him for years and have seen his compassion shine through for people. Within Dallas and other Texas cities there is a huge homeless population and over time Willie has purchased cardboard homeless signs from them. It has opened opportunities for him to connect with the person instead of just handing them money. The person gets an opportunity to tell a little bit about their life and feel heard, they get some financial assistance and Willie gets to take a memento of their connection.

He has met countless homeless people over the years and it has developed into a passion to bring awareness about homelessness. He uses these signs in his art and created a project (weareallhomeless.org) to raise awareness about homelessness, and provide information and resources to people who want to help. He is a very fun, energetic man and when he speaks/acts on his passions I can see it in his face. For the photo I wanted to capture that and I think I did.

Thank you guys for inspiring me, I look forward to more challenges!!!

Elements: Natural light, Willie Baronet, Signs
Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 50/1.4
F: 4
Exp: 1/80
ISO: 200

Cheers,

- Mike Thompson

This portrait was taken the evening of May 7, 2011 after the last performance of "Footfalls and other plays by Samuel Beckett" at Kent State University, Trumbull Campus. I was taking a few extra production photos of the different one acts, when I had the urge to take a "Beckett-ish" portrait of our director, Cleric Costes. I had brought a less assuming camera model as I had not planned on taking "important" pictures; but as soon as I snapped the picture I saw the power I had captured; the quiet nature, the deep thoughts of a Beckett enthusiast. I posted the pictures on my facebook photography page "Liz Conrad Photography" and Cleric immediately used it as his profile picture. As a professional photographer, the biggest compliment I can get is when people can see and feel what I see and feel upon viewing the portrait. I received such a compliment from a facebook viewer when she stated , "Your picture reminds me of Arthur Miller. The best part of this picture is that it reflects your inner playwright without saying a word. I see strength, vision, and the capacity to create. Your expression is pensive and determined all at once. Extraordinary." Needless to say, I was moved as my photography was appreciated for its raw nature and deeper meaning.

The information on the photo is as follows:
Device Model: Kodak Z650 Zoom digital camera
Focal Length: 19.4
F number: 3.2
Exposure time: 1/60

Permission was given through the subject, Cleric Costes, on May 8, 2011 to use his image in this contest.

Thank you for your consideration of my work.

Sincerely,

- Liz Conrad

The Story:
It's been a while since I last did some portrait photography, and this challenge came about at the right moment. The weather not being great, I decided to take some indoor pics of my wife, against the differently colored walls in our house. Somehow, the colors weren't very impressive, so I decided to use an incandescent table lamp to get the orange glow against the purple backdrop - the highlights on her hair really helped! I took a bunch of different shots, most of them of the full face. But somehow, the abstract feel of this cropped photo, and the subtle expressions won my approval!

The Equipment:
Canon Rebel T2i
EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens
F/2, 1/30 sec exposure
ISO - 400

- Sunil Seepuri

Subject: Eden Elizabeth
Camera: Nikon D50 w/ stock wide angle Nikkor lens

Story:
I was taking pictures of my wife and 5-week old daughter for our first Mother's Day. A walk downtown and beautiful weather provided an excellent photoshoot. My wife wanted a closeup of our little girl and this was the result. I thought the black-and-white would show off well.

This is my first submission for a Shooting Challenge. I have been wanting to jump in, and now I finally have the chance.

- Jared Huguet

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS
Exposure Time: 1/30 sec.
Aperture Value: 5.00 EV (f/5.7)
ISO Speed Rating: 100
Focal Length: 55.0 mm

I saw my niece and nephew today for the first time in about close to a year. So we went on an adventure to the zoo and took silly pictures.

- Gretchen Hargrove

I have a Nikon D5000 that I just love.

It was senior prom night for my friend's daughter Kassandra. She had her hair and makeup done professionally as if this was her wedding day. She was now a woman, not the teenaged girl I had photographed 2 years ago for her Quinceanera. The braces are gone, and she has a more mature look about her. In just a few weeks, she will be leaving high school behind and starting college!

For this shot, I stood about 5 feet away and using my 18-200 Sigma zoom len, zoomed in and took this shot. It was light out and the ISO was 250, speed 1/125, aperture F5.6.

- Rhonda Lemke

This is a cute portrait of my girlfriend taken in a nearby park. It was a beautiful day!

Canon 5D Mark II
50mm lens
f 5
1/125
ISO 100

- Michael Durr

This week was a good one to finally experiment with Portraits which is something I haven't done much of in the past. I used my fiance as a model and we tried a few different locations around Brookline, MA. This was the best shot out of the bunch. I used a tripod mounted Canon Rebel XSi EFS18-55mm lens at f/5.6, 1/13, ISO 400. I used the a plastic spoon to diffuse the flash since I don't have anything to give a soft flash look. It worked out perfect that she was stuck outside today in the sun and that made a little sunburn on her face to add to the color.

- Seth Porter

When I saw this challenge and considered that Mother's Day was Sunday, I decided to catch a picture of my ma, happy w/ a mostly finished glass of merlot in a fisheye lens, she took a little coaxing but got in the spirit, LOVE MY MA. Happy Mother's Day.

Specs

SLT-A33 w/ kit lense and fisheye filter.

Max Aperture: F4.0
Lens Focal Length: 22.0mm
ISO: 100

- Felonious Max

Hello - this is my first submission to one of these shooting challenges, however I have meant to enter many many times. I received a Canon Rebel 2Ti for Christmas this year and figure I should probably start figuring out how to use it. This photo was taken with the lens that came with the camera on Tv set to 1/4000. I dimmed the lights in the basement and used the flash to wash out my model and add some sheen to the guitar. I then did all of the editing in Gimp. The model, by they way, is my girlfriend - who didn't take near as much talking into as I thought. Hopefully I'll be able to submit to some of the future challenges and really learn how to take photos!

- Colin Graham

Rock and Roll Reflections

Shot with Canon T2i, kit lens, f 3.5 1/4000 @ 200 ISO.
I was pretty excited to try out this particular challenge as I have for all intensive purposes zero experience with any form of portrait photography outside of the random candid here and there. After thinking for a while about some sort of interesting shot and not getting very far, I switched focus to thinking about interesting individuals I know that'd be willing to be the subject. I approached my manager and asked if he'd be interested in helping out. Knowing that back in his teenage days he was in a band and is to this day a pretty talented musician (even though he denies it) I thought music, rock in particular, should play a role in the portrait. I live in Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is minutes from work so I figured that'd be a great venue. He also has some great aviators which I thought would be perfect to grab the reflection of the Rock Hall and have downtown in the background. We took a quick trip down there during a period of nice weather and got the shot. Did some post work, desaturating the color in the image a bit and bumping up the contrast but that's about it.

- Rob Lohr

Are you a Sinner or Saint?

Sometimes we all have to wonder who if anyone is looking down on us and judging our ways! This photo was shot in heaven on a kinda cloudy day! This man bestowed upon me a valuable clue to life! He said "Always click at the precise moment, because the moment is fleeting and will not pass again"! He also said "Don't wear dirty underwear". I will never forget his valuable lessons.

Leica M9
50mm 2.0
1/60 ISO 1250 f4.0

- James Hale

The lovely Hannah poses for a shot, looking equally beautiful and creepy.

Shot with a Canon D90, 50mm lens F1.8, outdoor (natural) lighting.

- Tashina Jirikovic-Reynolds

I was just trying to play around with silhouettes and learn proper exposure with a bright background and was frustrated with most of my results since I was doing this without a tripod, and this was probably the best shot to come out of the whole experience. Rebel T1i, 18-55mm kit lens - f5.6 - ISO 100 - 1/60

- Micah Gerber

Shooting summary:
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: 35MM Prime Lens
ISO: 200
Aperture: 1.8

Story: This portrait was done whilst testing a location to see how I could make use of the available light. To avoid a contre-jour I opted for a reflector (it can be distinguished it in the model's eye as small white spots). A small smoke machine was also used to capture the light rays seen in the back and also to create a glowing effect around the model. Other than that, I used Photoshop to adjust the curves of the image and to add grain so that the image would look as if shot on film.

Website: http://codrutsebastiannegut.blogspot.com/

- Codrut Negut

I was taking pictures with my girl friend for her senior portraits and i am just learning how to take HDR picture so i experimented with a few of her photos. For this picture i used my Sony NEX-VG10 and i took this with the HDR setting that is in the menu and tweaked it a bit in photoshop. I really like how this picture turned out so i think i will keeping using that HDR setting because before now my attempts at taking HDR photos have been quite unsuccessful.

- Dan Jarvis

Shot with a Nikon D7000, a Nikon 18-200 VR Lens. Focal Length 200mm = 300mm, aperture 6.3, ISO 100. Edited in Aperture and Silver Effects Pro. This shot was taken at famed Churchill Downs during Derby Week. I imagine this lady as just having placed her bet and was lighting one up and waiting for the race to start. I hope she won big.

- Joe Hale

EXIF: ISO 400, f5.6, 1/250sec, 38mm

Camera Canon EOS Rebel T1i
Lens: EF 28-135
flash did not fire

This shot was taken at the National Cemetery in Daejeon, South Korea. This is a guard that works at one of the monument buildings on site. He is there to sign people in, otherwise he's got all the time for a small photo-shoot with me! I like the look of his b&w uniform with the traditional Korean architecture design in the background.

I did not use any lights or equipment, just the natural light and my camera.

- Alla Ponomareva

I took this photo on 5/5/11 of my wife at Churchill Downs a few days before the 137th running of the Kentucky Derby. Each year around this time the track becomes increasingly busy each day as the week nears closer to Saturday's Running of the Roses. My wife and I were attending a luncheon at the track on Thursday during the Spring Meet races when the scenery behind us struck me as an excellent portrait opportunity.

Photo specs:
Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S18-135 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS @ 33 mm focal length
ISO 100
f/4.5
1/160

Thanks,

- Shannon Tompkins

I took this picture with a Canon D5000 at a wedding this weekend. I was taking some pictures with this challenge in mind, but no one knew, they just had had a few drinks and were all up for posing for the camera. I had a few to choose from but this seemed to be the best one for this contest to me.

- Adam Szachacz

This challenge was particularly special for me because I'm just starting to get into portrait photography as a side job. I spent a few days racking my brain over who to shoot and decided I wanted to use someone I hadn't worked with before. This eliminated a lot of my friends and family. It hit me finally Sunday afternoon while at my parents house for Mother's Day. My middle-younger brother Bili and I have always been a bit like oil and water and he normally hates it when I take his picture so most end up blurry or simply him flipping me off. However, he seemed to be oddly agreeable this afternoon. I took a bunch of shots that were a bit more serious but this seemed to be the one that really showed who he is. A big brat! The fun part about this is out of the frame my best friend is shooting from the side- a forced perspective that made it look like he was eating the cows in the field next to the house. Taken with a Canon 7D and an 85mm f1.8. ISO-200, f/2, 1/500sec at 6:55 in the evening with lots of beautiful sunshine.

- Meredith Woolfolk

Canon T2i, stock lens, ISO 200, and manual focus.

A classic "mug" shot in Locust Point, Baltimore watching the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race. Zoomed in and manually focused on "M's" lovely proboscis. Obviously, she's owns the closeup. It was a tad cool in the shade, thereby necessitating the hoody. Adds to her dashing look.

- R

shot with a Canon 450D and a Canon 1.8 II 50mm lens with iso at 200.

This picture was taken of my friend after we walked around Washington
Square in Philadelphia where I go to school. I found a park bench with
the sunlight beaming between the buildings and shot with the super
sharp prime lens and caught a cool effect of the sunshine illuminating
the edge of his face.

- Romy Patel

Canon T2i, ISO 1600, 45mm, 0EV, f/2.8, 1/60.

The brave soul in this portrait is my friend Kate, who, after reading the instructions of the challenge, still decided to help me with this one. Thanks KATE, you rock! And you are so patient :-)

We tried many configurations, props and backdrops, but this photo at the bar just seemed the most genuine to me. We were celebrating her new job, and you can see the excitement in her face!

- Diego Jimenez

10x10 clear glass Ambrotype

equipment : 8x10 Deardorff with a Dallmeyer 2c brass barrel lens
settings : F2.2
technique : I use the Wet Plate Collodion process

the story : I photograph people Unadorned, Just a simple portrait...

Thanks

- Christopher R. Perez

Hi,

Here is my entry to the portrait contest.

Shot with a Canon T2i with a 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. It was VERY bright out so ISO was kept at 100 and the shutter was at 4000th/sec just trying to not overexpose the photo. At f/1.4, not enough of the shot was in focus so f/1.8 seemed to do JUST nicely in providing a very short depth of field on her face, but JUST enough in focus! Touched up VERY slightly in iPhoto '11 .

The shot was taken at the Borden Bridge (N 52.37328, W -107.150087) just outside of Saskatoon. Its a favorite area for us to walk the dogs and just have a great time by the river. The bridges old architecture usually makes for some very awe inspiring shots, but they didn't work out this visit so you're unable to see how beautiful it is out here...

Thanks for the opportunity of the contest ;)

- Aaron

Nikon D60
Nikon 18-200 VRII

ISO 400
35mm
f 4.5
1/640

I took a ton of shots to try to find something that worked. After a variety of shots inside, I took advantage of being in the suburbs and not the city for the weekend and went outside and had her lie on the grass. Stood on a rock to get up a little higher and shot directly down. I liked the contrast of the green, but the shot still was kind of borring so I started putting her hair in different styles. I liked the star/sun thing she has going on in this one. Played with the colors in post to make the green stand out a little more.

- John

D90 with a 35mm F1.8 Lens. Photo specs are F1.8, shutter speed 1/15, and ISO 450.

I FINALLY bought a camera, I've always been into photography and decided, I'm going to buy a camera...and now I'm trying to get better at it. I told my fiancee let's go take some pictures. I decided I'm going to start entering in these contests...if nothing else (even if I miss the point of the challenge / suck at it) I'll learn something about photography...

- Ramsin L. Israel

Canon EOS 5D, EF 50mm f/1.2L, ISO 400, 1/2000s, @ f/1.2.

My brother and I spent most of Mother's Day laying out on the boat.
The sun hung low behind some clouds when dusk came around, and we
lingered for a few more minutes to grab this shot. Portrait
photography to me is all about capturing personalities - this is my
brother.

- Bo Burasco

As a sort of tribute to Mothers and Mother's day this is a portrait of my grandmother. She's a survivor, been through breast cancer and is one of the most caring people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. This photo was actually taken on mother's day outside of a restaurant we were planning on eating at. She never smiles for photographs but she's always smiling. You have to sneak a picture of her smiling if you want it. I decided it was far more dramatic this way. This photo seemed perfect in itself, I felt no need to do the standard photoshop touchup. This is the first of many photography challenges I'll be entering in.

This was shot with my Canon Rebel XS at 100 ISO using 1/160 shutter speed at f/2.8 with my new 50 mm 1.8 II lens which acts more like a 80 mm with my APS-C sized sensor.

- Adam

So this all started when a friend and I were exploring the dense jungle forest in the local library, when we were ambushed by 4 bloodthirsty jungle cats! Lucky for us, my friend was able to tame them with his copious amounts of sexiness long enough to pose for this shot. The ferocious beasts would have had us for a Mother's Day dinner if it were not for him! Taken with a Canon XSi kit lens at f/4, 1/60 sec, and ISO 400

- Forrest Sherman

Hey there,

I've never done any portrait work, and as an amateur I found this challenge to be quite intimidating. I was messing around the first night after reading the contest, taking some candid shots of my wife Brittany and now 5 week old, Lola. We both liked this one that came out of that and thought it would be cool to submit. I did do some research into the sweet spot on my lens after taking this shot, and learned an f-stop around 8 on that lens usually gets pretty crisp results. At least I learned something, so thanks.

Canon T2i w/kit 18-55, 1/60 sec @ f3.5, 23mm focal length, camera mounted Vivitar DF-483, ISO 400

- Solomon Kamman

For this weeks shooting contest I decided to capture a picture of the rare recycling troll that lives on the bottom of the recycling bin. The trick to it was waiting him out, because I knew he was not going to willing come out for a shooting contest. So I had to camp over night next to the bin to insure that noboby fed him any tasty recyclable treats. It was a painful thirty seven and a half hours but finally the troll became hungry garbling at passerbys where I was able to snap a quick shot at him as somebody slipped in a delicious piece of coffee stained paper. I shot him with my Canon XSi with stock lens at 200iso 6.3f and 1/40 shutter speed. It was alot of work but defiantly worth the picture in the end, and don't forget to feed your recycling troll they tend to get a bit crazy when not fed.

- Myke Outinen

Looking Out

I had my wife look out the window of our home on a warm afternoon. I was able to focus in on her face as she gazed outside. I took the shot with my iPhone 4 and did some post processing work with a few apps and photoshop on my pc.

- Jared Grayden

I was visiting a friend in London this weekend, and it's been really sunny so I thought it would be perfect for trying to get a nicely lit portrait shot of her. We took a walk down Camden Lock, but despite her being more than willing to pose for a shot, she was quite embarrassed about standing in the middle of Camden with me snapping away and it showed in the photos. I then decided to try and catch her unaware, resulting in this - my favourite shot of the day! Taken with a Canon EOS 550D using a 18-55mm lens, at ISO100, f/5.6, 1/1250 sec.

- Mitch Needham

I was taking pictures of different people and she was holding the lights originally. I asked if anyone could raise just one eyebrow and she volunteered even though she hadn't wanted her picture taken at first. I only got three taken before she let other people continue being my models. Fortunately one of those three turned out pretty well. I used my flash as the hair light and a halogen lamp with a diffuser for the main light.

Body: Nikon D50
Lens: 50mm f/1.8
Flash: SB-800
50mm
f/1.8
ISO 400
1/100 sec

- Quentin Swager

I was taking this picture of my friend next to the roses in our garden
that are in full bloom right now.
Due to the wind her bangs were blowing in her face though.
But I just loved this portrait of this happy beautiful girl :)

Nikon D3000
F/5
1/5000 sec
ISO-250
145mm

- Anna Albert

Here is my photo, sorry about not having a wallpaper, but wasn't sure how to do that with a portrait orientation.
Story:
A friend of mine and I were waiting for a bagel when I snapped this picture. Its a nice little cafe that opens up onto the main street. We are both amateur photographers so we decided to go on a shoot together for this challenge. Taken with a Canon EOS Rebel T2i with a 18-55mm at ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/80.

Thanks!

- Jasmine Holland

Shooting Summary:
Camera - Nikon D7000
Lens - Nikon 35mm f/1.8G
ISO - 450
Mode - Aperture at f1.8

Story
I shot my friend Matt Fellows after a long day at a local independent shopping event in Downtown LA. He runs an awesome clothing company called MNKR and has been repping his brand nonstop at this show for 2 days straight prior to this shot. I took the shot a few hours after the event was over, when most of the vendors already left and Matt stayed to pop open an iced cold beer (hence the blushing cheeks).

Thanks,

- Marat

Shot with a Canon Rebel XS on a tripod, using a 50mm f1.8 lens at
f2.5, ISO 200, 1/100th second exposure.
My brother and I aren't the closest of bros, and he generally hates
having his picture taken, so when I posted to facebook asking for a
portrait subject, I was shocked to see him volunteer. Guessing he was
taking one for the team in order create a bonding opportunity, and I'm
glad he did. Had a good time.
Regarding the location, he's massively into books (think he said he's
got something like a hundred boxes of books in storage), so the
library seemed an obvious place to shoot. And of all the shots I took,
I tended to like the ones where he was either right up against the
books or framed by them, showing him being connected and/or engulfed
by them...

- Eric Kornblum

This image is a Wet-Plate Collodion tintype. I shot it with my homemade walnut view camera and an antique C.C. Harrison petzval portrait lens on 4.25x5.5" tin plate with a fixed f-stop of approximately f/3.6. The exposure was about 2 seconds. My camera doesn't have a shutter, so I just pop the lens cap on and off. Wet-Plate film is approximately ASA 1 and requires strong UV/Blue light, so lighting for this image was outdoors at 3 PM in direct sun.

The model was a new local person I found on Model Mayhem that I had not shot with before. She did great and was very patient while I worked through the process...Thanks Linzy!

Thanks for looking!

- Andrew Richmond

I took this shot of my brother while out late at a pub in Baltimore City. I realize that's not quite a "planned" portrait, but this wasn't candid, either. I saw the light bulb floating near his head and asked him to pose in a thoughtful manner. Considering the number of drinks in him, I think he did well. :) The light really accentuates his ginger beard too. Overall, the shot really demonstrates, the, err... lofty art-ness of a night out on the town. :/

Canon Powershot S90, ISO 400, 0.3 s, f/3.5, handheld. White balance adjustment in Aperture.

- Shaun Wrightson

Come the spring time a favorite pastime is sitting around the campfire with a few drinks and laughing until our sides hurt. I shot this weekend doing exactly that. The contest was a good opportunity to play with closeups and bokeh. I think this shot perfectly captures the essence of good friends and good times. Shot with my Canon ESO 60D and 70-200 f2.8 mk II lens. ISO 500 at 200mm, f3.5 and 1/320 of a second. No post processing was done to the pic. This is straight out of the camera.

- Bruce

This is my very first attempt at a portrait. The resolution of the 5D MkII together with the 50mm f/1.8 USM is just incredible: B&W settings, increased contrast and sharpness, ISO 125, Manual exposure 1/800, f1.8. Mac Aperture3.

I found this Portrait is provocative and at the same time calming and comforting. The best element of this portrait is his eyes, sharp and directive. During our shooting session we have experience a strong wind, which caused him to tear up a bit, that brought more reflection and contrast to his look and character.

Dear Gizmodo.com, Thank you for a chance to participate in Shooting challenge "Portrait" contest.

Sincerely,

- Alikhan Kuljanov

Not to sound too brown nosey, but always enjoyed checking out the shooting challenges here on gizmodo. It lead me to buying my first DSLR, so I thought it was my time to take part and see what comes of it. Last week I decided to plunge into the world of old school lenses, the kinda ones you find on the end of a zenit, with the help of an M42 adapter I was set to go. Plucked for a 58mm Helios 44-2, an old Russian lens, and one of the earlier builds, which were notorious for their wild flaring at wide aperture. I took this as a pro rather than a con, with the hope they'll create dreamy images in direct light. My chance came a few days ago as myself and my girlfriend were taking a drive, noticing the great sunset I quickly drove to the most scenic area I could think of: Knaresbourough castle, overlooking the bridge and the river. Grabbed my new lens itching to give it the usage it deserved, luckily she's not shy so manage to get some shots in before the sun set. Shot with Canon 500D/Rebel T1i at f/2.0, 1/2500 sec and ISO 400.

- Louis Hvejsel Bork

Determined to Win: (Portrait Taken by Jennifer Shuta)

EXIF Data:
Camera: Nikon D3100
Lens: AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 300mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Speed: 1/800

My wife & I are relatively new to photography, but as our boys haven't gotten more & more into sports we have caught a bit of the "shutter bug" to track our family memories. This portrait is a father of one of the kids on my baseball team that I am coaching. He is a man of little words & often has an intimidating demeanor about himself. After coaching his child for 2 years now we have become great friends. Determined is the first word I thought of when I saw how this shot came out.

- Aaron and Jennifer Shuta

Hey Giz,

Here's my Submission for the Portrait Contest.

I was taking some shots & playing with my brother's dog on Saturday, the first nice day we've had in Western NY so far, and thought of this contest. (Didn't see in the rules where the portrait had to be of a person...) Well I had plenty of nice shots of Auggie that were well composed and captured the noble beast. This one however, captured exactly what kind of dog he is. Goofy.

Equipment Used:
Nikon D5000 w/55-200 Lens & a used tennis ball.

- Harvey Taylor

This challenge was a little more difficult for me. I am not the type to go up to strangers and ask to take their picture for no really good reason. (Yet, I am working up to that). I also didn't want to do something that every one else was doing. So, I knew we were planning a Zoo trip this weekend and thought I may be able to get a great portrait there in a great setting, with my brand new Nikon D5100. Sure enough, I found my subject sitting amongst some shrubs, with a great looking attitude about him. I took many pictures of him, trying to get the best angle, lighting, etc. He was willing to work with me on some of his positioning but for the most part he kept things very natural. He was a delight to work with. In the end he shot me this great smile and I knew I had the shot I needed.

Equipment: Nikon D5100, Tamron 18-270mm Lens
Settings: f/6, 1/500 sec., ISO 800, 140mm

- Steve P.

For this challenge I decided I was going to shoot a coworker named Craig. Craig is definitely one who can not be judged by his outward appearances. One thing you can always recognize is his hat. People at work covet the chance to put it on. The setting was at the Promenade Mall in Temecula, CA. I snapped the shot with my Canon 7D using a Sigma 24-70 F2.8 at Iso 100, wide open aperture of 2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/180th. I use Aperture for my editing, preferring to stick with levels and a basic polarizing filter and running through a Photomax HDR plug-in.

Hope life is well and keep up the awesome work with the photo challenges. They definitely help push my art!

Sincerely

- Dan Azer

Story: Me and a friend went for a little shooting session downtown. We stopped at a bagel shop and I snapped this. We're both aspiring photographers and are trying to find more models then each other. Shot with a Canon Rebel T2i with a 18-55mm at ISO 1000, f/5.6 at 1/100.

Thanks!

- Jason Ritchey

My wonderful Mother-in-Law reading.

- Annemette Kuhlmann

After taking countless photos of my three year old daughter I saw my dog sitting and watching us. He looked like an old man that was deep in thought. I snapped a few photos of him and realized he was a much more cooperative subject then my daughter. A hat and coat later and I was done. I don't have an external flash so I just used a nearby window to get the catch light in his eye. I used a Canon T2i, 50mm, f/2.5, 1/100 sec, 3200 ISO.

-Ben

American Airlines is testing a new service, in partnership with Aircell, that will allow you to stream content from its in-flight library to your Wi-Fi enabled device. The airline wants to start consumer testing in the summer and plans for it to launch in the fall. [American Airlines via ZDNet]

My first and only image.

Picture taken at Eriksbergs Port. Gothenburg, Sweden.
Resting from heavy lifting, during the hot afternoon sun.
No boats to load/unload today.

I used a Sony DSC-W300, with ISO-100. Without flash.
Program Auto. Exposure time: 1 / 800 sec.
Focal Length: 8 mm. F: 8.0

- Amir Shahab

For this week I chose a picture of my 5 month old puppy being bad for my one shot. Since the snow is gone and the ground is now soft, my puppy has found it fun to dig for the underground animals. I let him out for a few minutes and when I went to go check on him he had made a giant hole in my yard. Being that he is a Shepadoodle his hair is long and it was hard to get all of the mud out. Before I punished him, I just had to get one shot to add to the memories.

Canon 60D
Sigma 18-250 lens
ISO 100
147mm
f7.1
1/250

- Joshua Young

Shot Details:
Nikon D3000 with PC tethering, 50mm f1.8, 1.3s, ISO 200.

The story:
I have just moved into a new rented apartment, so wanted to capture something related to that. Using a manually focusing lens was tough due to the lack of focus assist. But I think the sharpness is passable. Cheers.

- Anup Debnath

Specs:
Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Tameron 75-300mm @ F5.6
Iso: 2000

Good'ol Aurelias (moon jellies), I have had a few run-ins with them while snorkeling or diving. So when I saw the exhibit for the first time in the Houston Zoo with the black light I was enthralled to say the least. I never really got around to shooting them...with the glare on the tank and the crowds of parents and their children bumping into me there was no way I would ever attempt that low light shot. Then I read a article in photography magazine where they said not to be afraid to set up your gear. So with my monopod in hand I tried...I aimed for the part of tank with the least amount of glare and focused to the best of my ability, pushed my ISO to 2000 and shot. The one thing that amazed me...the space people give you when you got a DSLR mounted a monopod (in my case). You try that shot holding your camera and no one notices you or cares that you are taking a picture. But mount it and you got like a three foot radius around you! Thanks for the challenge. I am seriously looking forward to future ones!

- Edmundo Carreon

The story:

Down here in the Nogales, Arizona, area we have had a wild fire to the west of Nogales for the last 10 days or so. I was taking photos of the smoke near the office ( growing set of my photos of the fire can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthays/sets/72157626494200007/). Anyways, the smoke was blowing across the City, making the visibility really poor. I remembered I had recently gotten an infrared filter for my Canon T2i a month earlier, and thought I would try the filter to see if I could see through the smoke a little. So I put the filter on, forgetting that the auto-focus will not work with the IR Filter in place. I also forgot to reset the color setting to black and white, leaving it in the normal color space. I guessed at the time of exposure I would need to get something. Having played with IR Photography since getting the filter, I tried 15 seconds. Put the camera on my tripod. Aimed towards the fire, and hit the button. The result? Well, interms of what I was aiming for, it was a complete disastor. However, it is still a rather fascinating, though more as abstract art.

Dates

Taken on April 28, 2011 at 1.34pm MST
Posted to Flickr April 28, 2011 at 10.26PM MST
Exif data

Camera Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure 15
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 51 mm
ISO Speed 1600
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Orientation Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution 72 dpi
Y-Resolution 72 dpi
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:04:28 13:34:31
Artist John Hays
YCbCr Positioning Co-sited
Copyright Copyright by John E. Hays, 2011
XPKeywords Bull Fire Smoke
Padding (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Exposure Program Manual
Date and Time (Original) 2011:04:28 13:34:31
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:04:28 13:34:31
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Sub Sec Time 72
Sub Sec Time Original 72
Sub Sec Time Digitized 72
Color Space sRGB
Focal Plane X-Resolution 5728.176796 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution 5808.403361 dpi
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Manual
White Balance Auto
Scene Capture Type Standard
Padding (Binary data 2060 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Offset Schema 4070
Macro Mode Normal
Self Timer 2 s
Quality Fine
Canon Flash Mode Off
Continuous Drive Single
Focus Mode Manual Focus (3)
Record Mode JPEG
Canon Image Size Large
Easy Mode Manual
Digital Zoom None
Contrast Normal
Saturation Normal
Metering Mode Evaluative
Focus Range Not Known
Canon Exposure Mode Manual
Lens Type Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Long Focal 55 mm
Short Focal 18 mm
Focal Units 1/mm
Max Aperture 5.7
Min Aperture 36
Flash Activity 0
Flash Bits (none)
Zoom Source Width 0
Zoom Target Width 0
Manual Flash Output n/a
Color Tone Normal
Focal Plane XSize 226.11 mm
Focal Plane YSize 500.13 mm
Auto ISO 100
Base ISO 1600
Measured EV 5.88
Target Aperture 5.7
Target Exposure Time 16
White Balance Auto
Slow Shutter None
Sequence Number 0
Optical Zoom Code n/a
Flash Guide Number 0
Flash Exposure Comp 0
Auto Exposure Bracketing Off
AEBBracket Value 0
Control Mode Camera Local Control
Measured EV2 5.75
Bulb Duration 0
Camera Type EOS High-end
NDFilter Unknown (-1)
Canon Firmware Version Firmware Version 1.0.9
Owner Name John Hays
Serial Number 0722331245
Canon Model ID Unknown (0x80000270)
AFMode Off (Manual Focus)
Num AFPoints 9
Valid AFPoints 9
AFArea Widths 129 129 129 181 222 181 129 129 129
AFArea Heights 172 172 172 117 221 117 172 172 172
AFPoints Selected 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Original Decision Data Offset 0
Bracket Mode Off
Bracket Value 0
Bracket Shot Number 0
Raw Jpg Size Large
WBBracket Mode Off
WBBracket Value AB 0
WBBracket Value GM 0
Live View Shooting Off
Flash Exposure Lock Off
Lens Model EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Internal Serial Number VA0704443
Dust Removal Data (Binary data 1024 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Tone Curve Standard
Sharpness 3
Sharpness Frequency n/a
Sensor Red Level 0
Sensor Blue Level 0
White Balance Red 0
White Balance Blue 0
Color Temperature 5200
Picture Style Standard
Digital Gain 0
WBShift AB 0
WBShift GM 0
Measured RGGB 979 1024 1024 956
Color Space sRGB
VRDOffset 0
Sensor Width 5344 (152-5335 used)
Sensor Height 3516 (56-3511 used)
Black Mask Left Border 0
Black Mask Top Border 0
Black Mask Right Border 0
Black Mask Bottom Border 0
Peripheral Lighting On
Peripheral Lighting Value 32
Peripheral Lighting Setting On
Exposure Level Increments 1/3 Stop
ISOExpansion Off
Flash Sync Speed Av Auto
Long Exposure Noise Reduction Off
High ISONoise Reduction Off
Highlight Tone Priority Disable
AFAssist Beam Emits
Mirror Lockup Disable
Shutter Button AFOn Button Metering + AF start
Set Button When Shooting Normal (disabled)
LCDDisplay At Power On Display
Add Original Decision Data Off
Compression JPEG (old-style)
About uuid:faf5bdd5-ba3d-11da-ad31-d33d75182f1b
Date Acquired 2011:04:28 22:07:44.081

- John Hays

Equipment is a Nikon D90 handheld with 18-55mm Nikkor AF-S 3.5-5.6G at 44 mm and with SB-400 flash.

Macro AUTO mode:

Aperture: f8

Shutter: 1/30 second

ISO 200

Auto settings for exposure and white balance.

I cast about for most of the week and weekend for the One shot challenge. It wasn't until my wife and I were shopping at Target where we came upon this cute Giraffe doll (with built-in music box). We recently found out we are expecting twins and when I saw this giraffe, I said, "Can we get this?" She agreed that it was cute and that we should get it. So I placed in our cart. We brought it home and we pondered briefly where we should place it. We decided to place it in our back bedroom and when we laid him on the bright blue bedspread, I knew I had my idea for what I'd shoot for this week's challenge.

Cheers,

- Cory

This is a shot taken of the underside of a rhubarb leaf growing at the end of my garden. The wind however decided to move the leaf as the shot was taken but it is what got with the first shot. I also think that looking back afterwards it needed a greater depth of field.

Taken with a Nikon D5000 1/125s F5.6 ISO400 Kit Lens set at 32mm

- John Kilmister

Hey Gizmodo,

Shot with a Nikon F3. Fujifilm 200 ISO 35mm film. F3.5 and had to use auto for shutter speed because I never shoot with film and I didn't want to ruin my 'one shot'.

Saw a wooden sculpture of a salmon near a local coffee shop and thought it might be interesting. The light leak was totally unintentional. When I went to develop my film (being the absolute amateur that I am) I somehow messed up the manual film rewind so the film wouldn't go back into the original canister. I of course had to crack open the back just a smidgen to make sure I had really over-wound it, which is when I risked ruining all my photos. I'm glad this one survived!

I love your weekly shooting challenges by the way!

- Samuel Oh

Spring Skiff on Mt. Garfield ~ Colorado
On my to the baseball game in Gunnison Colorado, I passed through Grand Junction Colorado. It had snowed a skiff of snow on Mt. Garfield and it looked magnificent. I was running late but I had to take the detour to take this shot. This shot was taken with a Canon T1I with the following settings: ISO100 5.6f, 1/250, 50mm at 9:35AM

- Jennifer Bartels

Hi,
I went to beach to get a nice sunset and i ended up capturing this.

- Sasanka

Canon 60D
f/6.3
ISO 400

My daughter playing in a garden while we attended an arts festival ... I liked her colorful sneakers and dress within the context of the garden.

- Cheryl MacLean

Driving past a cemetery in Pittsburgh I noticed the sunlight was creating great shadows and thought this might be my chance for the one shot. I circled around the block and by that time the sun had dropped too much to get the shot I wanted. Looking for the slivers of light still making it through the trees I noticed this little dandelion, I only had my iPhone with me so I didn't fuss with setting and just used the native camera app and did a point in shoot. I wish I had framed it a little higher, but such is the life of a one shot.

- Hope Jasper

While spring may be in the air snow was on the ground on Sunday. My lilacs covered in new snow seemed like the excellent one shot. To get the shot I metered the main flower group and then adjusted for a slightly darker background. All settings were done manually and I referenced the shot before shooting by flipping up the mirror to check DOF. This is a freehand shot at ISO 400 F 4.5 1/400 exposure Camera body was a Nikon D70.

- Die Fledermaus

This is the very last exhibit in the Star Wars show at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I took a ton of pictures at the show, but when I saw the X-wing tilted in the display, I decided that I needed to try a shot like this. I told myself that if it turned out that I'd submit it to the contest. One shot. It helped that my wife was eager to get the heck out of there and away from all the other geeks.

I used my Olympus e-pl1 with the kit 14-42mm lens. I had white balance set for fluorescent lighting, and manually focused on the cockpit. The shutter and aperture settings were on auto, but I knew that the shutter speed was slow enough to try the shot. I zoomed out just as I depressed the shutter button, and here's the result.

- Stephen Snider

This was a tough challenge this week. It makes you really appreciate how far technology has come. I took this photo in Kenmore Square in Boston right after dusk. I tried to get the Citgo sign to be the right light, but it looks like I may have let the shutter stay open slightly too long. I used my Canon XSi with F/22.0, Manual Focus, Tripod with remote release, at 8" shutter. I also wanted to point out the composition which was city lights through the trees, with a homeless man sleeping below.

- Seth Porter

Photo was taken while camping on my friends land up in Johnson VT, had to wait until the day after I found them so I could take the picture in the short window when the sun peeked through the trees and lit up the small puddle they were in. Shot with a Canon EOS Rebel T2i, on f/2.8, 1/200, and ISO-100.

- Ben Ozug

Earlier in the week when I heard about the challenge I thought about different shooting scenarios and subjects to try for a single shot. Well, the weekend kind of passed me by and I didn't have time for any of those ideas so I decided to just shoot the first thing I saw. As I was getting breakfast I saw my reflection in my kitchen mirror and figured why not. Maybe it's vanity, but I've always found shooting into reflective surfaces interesting. I also did something that I almost never do, shot in Auto mode. As I was hungry for breakfast I didn't feel like figuring out the best manual settings. This led to the camera needing to use the flash a creating a really cool JJ Abrams Star Trek lens flare effect. I turned the camera off and proceeded to eat my Raisin Bran Crunch.

Canon T2i
Auto Mode
f/4
1/60 sec
ISO 400

- Chip Moll

Mount Rainier and Somerset Hill, Bellevue, WA
Details: Canon PowerShot 890is, ISO 80, 1/250th sec. exposure time, maximum (5x) optical zoom

Description: I currently live in an 8th floor apartment at the edge of Downtown Bellevue WA, which gives me a wide unobstructed east-facing view that consists mostly of Interstate 405, but on a clear day there are also plenty of mountains to be seen in the distance. Given the crummy weather we've had around here for much of the Spring so far, these nice days have been rare, but today (Sunday) has provided one, with a view all the way to Mount Rainier, nearly 60 miles away from here. Although I do have a nice view to work with from here to get some good photo material, the apartment's windows get in the way and ruin shots with glare. To avoid this problem, I actually hang the camera out of the small window opening I have and take photos this way without obstruction. There's no way I could do this with a DSLR (and even if I could, who would want to risk dropping a couple thousand bucks worth of camera gear eight stories to the sidewalk anyway?) but a point-and-shoot fits through the opening, and with the attached wrist strap it shouldn't be too risky. Even after that, I can't really see the viewfinder while I'm doing this, so setting up the shot can be tricky, but I think I lucked out and got a decent angle on the first try. I think this turned out rather interesting, because it shows details I wasn't aware I could see from here (including the Newcastle golf course on the right side of the shot, and the houses on Somerset hill on the right.) If I was taking more than one shot, I might have considered trying at a different time of day to get a clearer shot (perhaps closer to sunset, the ambient light seems to have washed out things a bit.)

- Brian Lutz

Hey Gizmodo folks.. love the site. Here's my entry. Nothing
spectacular but for being a single attempt at capturing the rays of
sunlight breaking through the clouds, I thought it was good!

- Sal Ghani

Camera specs: Canon T2i, ISO 100, f 4.5, 1/160, 35mm (new lens!)
I must admit I did not like this challenge as much. I spent a good part of the day walking around to find that perfect frame that would be the ONE shot to submit, and had to resist the urge to snap photos in a perfect Spring day... In retrospect, that may have been stupid. Anyways, at some point "Daffodil" the 'frenchie' passed by and forgetting the challenge I just asked her owner if I could take a pic. She graciously agreed, and here is the result!

- Diego Jimenez

I recently purchased a Nikon Coolpix S6100 compact camera to replace my aging Samsung point and shoot. The Nikon features 16 Megapixels and a 7 X Optical Zoom. My "real" camera is a Pentax DSLR, but for many situations I find that a compact camera is more than adequate.

As I have an overseas trip coming up I want to be very familiar with the camera before leaving. The Nikon does not feature a manual setting mode, relying on 16 pre-set modes, this is a frustration but at the same time a challenge to ensure that before taking the picture you select the right mode and adjust the settings that are available to you.

For this shot I set the camera in Landscape mode (focus at infinity) zoomed right out and adjusted my position to frame the building as best as I could. One shot!

The building is still being constructed but is set to become a landmark in Brisbane as it will be the tallest building in the city.
f/3.7, 1/125 sec, ISO 80. I particularly like the variations in blue and the reflections off the glass of the building behind.

- Nick Smith

ISO100 - 65mm - f/20 - 1/500sec

On a nice day, a friend and I took a walk along the train tracks in Del Mar, CA which run parallel the coast line. I asked my friend to purposefully stand roughly 60 feet away from me in order to achieve a light diffraction effect as I zoomed in on his silhouette. Right after I asked him to do so I noticed a homeless lady walking the opposite way as us along the path, and I told myself I might as well make this my one shot as I was fairly confident in the way the light would surround his figure. After the shutter clicked I thought I had waited too long and the lady had escaped from frame, but to my surprise she hadn't. I adjusted the color profile and cropped slightly in Lightroom.

- Andre M.

Hi,

I forgot about this week's shooting challenge totally. Sunday night, my wife prepared me a drink out of some over-ripe mangoes, yoghurt, ice and some rose syrup. The red rose syrup was looking so nice on the orange-color (mango?) drink, I thought of taking a snap of it and suddenly this theme of one shot came into my mind. So I was thinking of highlighting the rose-syrup-path in the drink and I was pretty nervous about the "one shot" challenge. Suddenly, the luxury of pressing and holding the shutter-release button is taken away from me and that one shot seems to be last frame of my roll and after that I will be left with no other option other than packing up !
Anyway, I asked my wife to create a spot with my Maglite, and I reviewed the shot with DOF preview button for quite a while before pressing the most thoughtful shutter release ever since I bought my D300s.
I didn't like the outcome, as I wanted more contrast of the red-orange color...anyway, here it is!

Thanks.

Exif:
Location: Mumbai, India.
Camera: D300s
Mode: Aperture Priority
Aperture/Shutter: f/1.8, 1/3200 (-f0.3)
ISO 400
Lens: Nikon 50mm
Metering: Centre Weighted Average
Focal Length: 50mm
Treated in MS Office Picture Manager.
White balance: Cloudy.

- Asad

"Little Blue Heron"

Fujifilm s100fs — 1/400" — F5.3 — ISO 100 — 101.5mm — Velvia Film Simulation

- Mike Case

I was having difficulty coming up with something to shoot since it needed to be visually interesting. When you only have one shot, you really need to think it out. I was at my sister-in-law's house in Orange, CA for a nice BBQ and noticed all the power lines in their backyard. I liked how they all criss-crossed against the blue sky. I did my best to get the wires lined up in my shot as to where it would give the most artistic look. I hope you like it.

Tech info:
Canon EOS REBEL T1i
ISO 100
25 mm
f/11
1/100

I'm still unsure of how to get the photo sizes you are requesting. I am emailing these photos out of iPhoto and using Medium for the regular size and Large for the wallpaper. If that makes sense, I will keep doing that.

Thanks!

- Matthew Johnson

I had just bought a new tripod and a new 18-200 lens and was dying to take a shot for this week's challenge. There was a challenge to incorporate "light" into your photo from another photography site I frequently visit, and I thought it might be fun to combine both of these challenges. I knew I wanted to get some kind of light trail shot this week since it's something I've never done. I scoured the city looking for a good spot to set up and figured the freeway would offer the best chance to get a decent shot. Unfortunately all the overpasses have a fence to prevent anybody from taking beautiful pictures. I was then forced to be a little sneaky, and probably committed a couple infractions by walking down the on-ramp, around the fence, and under the overpass. Once in place I quickly set up and debated over exposure times, aperture, and even what to focus on. Some things to consider for next time? Shooting during a sunset, a longer exposure, smaller aperture.

Canon EOS T3i
70mm focal length
15s exposure
f/10
ISO 100

- Colin McLellan

yo!

> The photo was taken on May 1, 2011 @ Alaska State Aviation Trade Show.
Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 10-22mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: 8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/125

Salamat!,

- Nathaniel Abuan

Camera: Canon T2i
Lens: EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Iso: 400 Shutter: 1/10

Took this picture after the conclusion of World Of Color at Disneyland, was about my 5th time seeing it so I knew I could get a good shot of the fountains and the rest of the pier behind it. So i just waited there until I liked the best combination of colors and this is the end result. I would have liked to get the shot without that big piece of fence on the lower right part of the picture. Only way to do that is to show up about 2 hours early to get in line for the show and get the good spots!

- Carlos Guevara

Hi,

This is a picture of the giant Foucault Pendelum inside the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. I saw the crowds using zoom lenses to catch a picture of the ball up close so I decided to go for the opposite and used a wide lens to capture the entire circle. I wanted to get a picture of the pendelum swaying with motion blur but I did not slow down my shutter speed enough so it looks fairly still in the end result. It was incredibly challenging getting the right composition with only one shot but I liked the way it came out, especially the textures and lighting.

Canon 7D with Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens shot at 10mm, ISO 250, f/3.5, 1/60s

- Felipe Yang

AAHHH! I forgot to submit this! Now I've only got a few minutes to send it in so this is pretty much my description! Cool waterfall! AAHH!!

Canon Rebel T1i - 50mm lens - ISO 100 - f16 - 1/80

- Micah Gerber

I took this with my Bold 9780, I know it looks a little pixely when viewing
the full size, but it's the best I could do.
This picture was taken before my exam and doesn't it just put your mind at
ease? (*sarcasm) I'm in my freshman year, so it was a little scary when I
first saw this.

- Ramanjit Saini

Hey Giz-

I've always enjoyed following the shooting challenges, but I've never taken one up until now. So here! I read about the challenge this morning, walked around and looked out into my backyard from my kitchen. There's a fire-pit and chairs back there for beers and stuff on the weekends with the neighbors, and this piece of wood was sitting there placed exactly as shot, as a blank canvas. I took some spray-paint, painted the "1" on it, and left the can on top of the wood. Went back into my kitchen, composed, metered and focused the shot through a window and a screen. Was shot manually, on a Nikon D7000, MF Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 AI-s, 1/400 at f/4, ISO 200, as a NEF (raw). "Developed" in Aperture then shrunk in Photoshop for you guys. Scout's honor it was one shot. Hope you like it!

Cheers!

- Tim

Dear Gizmodos,

well, that was an easy one since I always do one-off snapshots. This one was taken on a playground at a lake near my home in Austria. The picture has been processed in Photoshop and was taken with ISO 200@1/4000th exposure time. There's nothing much more to it except I do like how dynamic and simply happy the whole scene looks.

- Paul

Shot with iPhone 4 using default camera app, edited in Photoshop.

I swear I'm not a hipster.

I didn't really have a lot of bright ideas for this shooting challenge so I just shot my glasses that are totally NOT hipster glasses. Because I was bored. This was the only shot. And if you have really great eyes you can see me browsing Gizmodo on my iMac in both the reflections.

- Kwinten Van den Berghe

Using iPhone4 camera

Name of photo: "well this changes things"

8 years together- no ring- guess this changes things :) I only needed one shot for this dramatic change of events.
Thanks for considering my photo. if I win all proceeds go to a future college fund :)

- Catherine McCarthy

Canon 7D
Canon 10-22mm (at 21mm focal length)
f4.5
1/2,000
ISO 250

Capturing some shots and video for a friend as he wanted me to come up
with some footage for a song he wants to publicise. It's the first
vaguely professional thing I've done while owning camera's for 3
years. My good friend Tom (He's the 1 in the picture) wanted me to
capture the moment when stones started going through the air after a
big ol' slide down the beach.

Needless to say it was a success and we ended up taking around 5gb of
photos and video ready for editing.

- George

Taken with an iPhone 3GS, and no flash was used. I don't recall 100%, but I believe my son was playing with his iPod and that is how I obtained the little bit of light for the photo,
and hence the reason he's sticking his tongue out during a challenging game of Angry Birds.

ISO-1000

- Domenic Patricelli

I was at my Aunts house when I saw this challenge on my iPhone. I immediately pulled out my DSLR, and looked for an item to photo graph. I saw that the bunny and the lamp would make a good picture, so I switched my camera on to A (aperture) mode. I focused it, and snapped a picture. Luckily, I came out right the first try! I had zoomed in fully, and set the aperture to 4.5. The ISO is 400, but I am not aware of the focus reading. Next Easter, I recommend we have a rabbit photographing contest! Ill ACE that! :-)

Taken with: Nikon D70 with AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5G ED-IF (6.1MP, 3008x2000, 4x Opt). No filters used!

- Matthew Brand

Photo Name: "Biodegradable I Think Not"
FUJIFILM FINEPIX S1800 using Default Lens
ISO 64
SHUTTER 1/160
F5.0

I was walking on the way to school when I saw this broken TV on the hill to my right. I think it is interesting how dissonant the dark and broken TV is against the well lit grass of midday. I took my one shot and didn't even check to see how it came out until I got home later to find myself pleased with the results.

- Jacob Jarecki

Taken with a Nikon D200 and a Nikor 18-200mm lens. 400 ISO, aperture f/9, 1/320 shutter speed. The scene is an old lightbulb that I needed to remove from my room that caught my eye as visually striking, on a music stand with the Catalina mountains in Tucson in the background. I was looking for an object that could transform the mountains, something I photograph regularly, to provide more of a challenge.

- Mark Bramhill

Camera: nikon d300
lens: 16-85mm 3.5-5.6
Shot: 1600 iso, 16mm, 3.5

It's a rum bar in montreal called Baraka my friends were there and i was going to join them in the afternoonl. They were standing at the end of the bar talking when i came in. When i saw the red and yellow lighting i knew it was going to be the shot for this contest. its a bit overexposed in the back window but eh ! only one shot so thats what you get.

- Dylan Ross

Yo Giz!

SUMMARY:
Date taken: April 27, 2011
Camera: Nikon Coolpix P7000
Aperature Priority, wide open (f/2.8)
ISO 100
Full frame, first shot, only a little Levels brightening

STORY: I'm a swimmer, and I've been eyeing these warnings at my local pool for a while. So this contest gave me the motivation to shoot one. Got down low kneeling on a towel (tiles are hard!), waited for the swimmers to clear, and took the shot. Normally, I'd crop a bit in Photoshop and polish a little more, but this is basically what came out of the camera.

Swim or Die!

- Harald Johnson

Hello Giz,

Here is my submission for the shooting challenge. I went to my local park after dusk, in hopes of nailing some long exposure photography.

Equipment used:
Canon Rebel T2i
Canon 50mm 1.8 Lens
iPhone 4 LED light

Camera settings:
ISO 100
f/4.5
Shutter speed: 30 seconds

I set my camera on my tripod, hit the shutter release, and rushed over with my iPhone 4 LED light to draw some light streaks. The result was a jumping man, triangles, a square box, a squiggly cord, and a ghostly image of myself. The first, and only shot of the night.

Take care! I hope this tickles your fancy.

Sincerely,

- Jon Cady

Hi,
Here's my submission to the Gizmodo shooting challenge: One Shot. I used a Canon 7D with 28-135 IS USM kit lens to take this picture. Camera settings: ISO 200, 0ev, f/22, 46 second shutter length, auto white balance, multi-metering.

I used my guitar and a mini mag light for this light painting. I love photography and I love playing my guitar, though I'm not a pro at either, but this kinda looked like an interesting subject to take a picture of. I have been working on my light painting skills for a while and this contest seemed like a good opportunity to actually see how good I am. When I first read the contest details this afternoon, while sitting through a boring political science lecture, I didn't pay much attention to it because I usually don't participate in photography contests. But on my frustrating rush hour drive back home, I suddenly realized my camera's costs and its inversely proportional relationship to how much I use it. Then all that was left to do was to make an irrational decision - take a picture of the first thing I find lying on my bed - and I guess by now you probably know what it was.

Thanks for the opportunity

P.S. Please ignore my grammar, limited vocabulary, or anything else that might make me look like an eight year old. I'm actually an international student from India, living in LA, and english is not my first language.

- Aayush Agrawal

Story Behind The Shot:
Finishing off a crown on the rocks, I remembered how miffed I was to miss out on the recent Gizmodo mobile shooting challenge and realized I had an interesting shot right in front of me. I rinsed out and dried off the glass, turned the flash on, aimed at the bottom of the glass and bam - this happened.

Shooting Summary:
Camera - iPhone 4, Camera+ app
Aperture - 2.970854
Exposure Time - 1/163
Flash - On
FNumber - 2.8
Focal Length - 3.85
ISO - 80

- Cory Futrell

Hi, this is my submission to the challenge.

Equipment: iPhone 3G + CameraPro, no post-processing.
Story: I was trying to get something unique on the street, something that accidentally happened right in front of me just by chance. But chance made me pull the trigger without even noticing, and this image ended in the Camera Roll... You can see the blurred tree caused by car speed, and the sharp reflection on the mirror. No way I could have planned this, no way I can frame that reflection again while driving... BTW: I had my phone strapped and hanging from my left hand, while holding securely the driving wheel... I'm no idiot.

Regards,

- Thomas Armstrong

Since it was a one shot shooting challenge I wanted to attempt with the camera phone. As I never have. So on the idea of taking the time to frame up the composition and take one shot with an iPhone I found humorous. I went around for a bit with the phone out framing shots up but never committing to the shot and pressing the shutter. Found nothing that sparked my interest so went back to work and just looked down and though hmm.. The iPhone takes decent micro shots. Focused on the jeans which blew out the light hitting my hand. Almost pass for a quick shot but took a bit to frame up without taking more than one shot.

- Philip McCloskey

So I saw the new challenge on Gizmodo and i knew i would have to finally try to do one of these contests after debating month after month!
Right outside my condo they were doing some renovations, so I ran downstairs! Grabbed my camera, ran back up, got the battery, ran down and shot the one shot!
I loved the picture due to the contrast of the yellow and black, I used iSplash in my mac and only showed the colour of the bulldozers!

Canon T2i 550D
Canon 18-55mm , Shot at 24mm
f/5.6, 1/30sec

- Ross Correia

Hi Giz,

My name's Tim. Nice to meet you.

Here are my photos for the One challenge. I hope you enjoy.

Equipment: MyTouch 3G slide - auto ISO. Handheld.

This shot was taken in front of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument which was erected in 1912.

I read about the contest today while I was at work, and basically forgot about it until I was out on my bike this afternoon. I live in Albany, NY, and I went to go ride my bike through Washington Park because it was beautiful at sunset after I got off work. Before I finished my ride, I felt the urge to go look at one of the more noticeable monuments, and when I came across the side of the monument and saw the sunset, I was instantly inspired to capture an image. All I had with me at that moment was my cell phone, but remembering about the contest, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I'm deeply interested in the nature of longevity in art, and much of my non photographic work deals with ephemeral installation. I've thoroughly enjoyed participating in this contest even if it only meant snapping a photo on my cell phone. Keep up the good work, and please continue producing enriching content on your website.

- Tim from Albany

Every morning, weather permitting my wife and I walk a mile or so to our favorite coffee shop. What makes the walk special (other than her company and our conversation) is that we live in a little farming community just north of Albuquerque and the walk passes by horse, burros, dogs, birds and plenty of Cottonwoods. Part of the walk is on road, but the bulk of it is on irrigation ditches and those ditches are controlled by gates. When spring rolls around and the water starts flowing, the gates provide all kinds of photo challenges – slowing down the movement, things bobbing in the eddies, etc. I take a lot of shots along the paths.

Today I saw this shot and snapped it quickly. I liked the combination of the static – concrete and steel, fixed shadows – and the chaotic – water, the rippling shadows, stuff flowing over the sluice, illumination coming from behind the gate and above.

Shooting information:

Canon 5D MkII with a Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 lens
ISO50
1/400 seconds
f/8.0

- Terry Brownell

I shot this with a Canon 60D and a Tokina 11-16mm lens. It was shot in RAW at f2.8 with a 6 second shutter speed, 11mm focal length and an ISO of 400. I decided to take this challenge literally and actually try a type of shot for the first time as well as taking the first photo from that shoot. Having just gotten the Tokina lens, I wanted to try night sky photography. This was my first attempt with this camera and lens, but I had tried it with a point and shoot a while back. That didn't turn out well. This one, however, has a good number of stars in it for a picture that was shot in the middle of a city. It also has some interesting light rays that give the photo a cool, movement effect. I actually like the shot!

- Mark Perry

Title: Dream Spark

Heres the story on this one.....

I am currently visiting some friends from out of state and when I am with these friends we usually have a lot of crazy fun. I was standing in the parking lot of their apartment complex when I get a call from another friend In the area, he then asks me if I have my camera and as always I immediately tell him yes, I do have it. He then tells me to find a metal hanger, straighten it out and meet in the field behind the apartments. Without hesitation or question I instantly get my camera ready, round up the metal hanger and run out there. Once we have both met-up in the field he bigins to tell me about this site he went to by means of "Stumbleupon.com" and it was all possible by sticking steel wool to a metal hanger, and using your arm to then swing it around your head to create about 25-30 feet of sparks. I then prepared the camera using his car as the tripod along with the case for my CF card, got the settings I wanted, focused and let it rip.

The outcome of this photo could not have been any better in my opinion, I was so happy that he had brought this idea to me and even more happy that the photo contest this week is basically a one shot free-for-all!

Thanks for the challenge, it was great!

Body: Canon EOS 20D
Lens: 28x70mm Canon L
ISO: 100
Focal length: 28mm
F/22
Exposure: 6s

- George Westlake

In the true spirit of this contest I submitted a picture that was
taken with a Zeiss Ikon camera from 1937 (attached file named
"ziess.jpg), my grandfather's camera he bought in Detroit, MI. The
view finder is one that you look down through and not through the lens
itself. This means you have to guess your focal distance, and there
certainly isn't any type of auto-metering. So what I do is guess or
measure the distance (in meters) and use the LightMeter app on my
iPhone, or the Sunny 16 Rule in this case, to set the f-stop and the
speed, then record those settings on my iPhone in Notes. When it costs
$5 per 8-exposure roll, $7+ per 8-exposure roll of 120 film to
process, and then anywhere from $2-$5 per picture to scan (depending
on desired quality), you really only have ONE chance to get it right.
This is a shot of my hometown's village hall in Hinsdale, IL at f/16,
1/50, and infinite focal setting.

- Rob Lennox

I shot this on my Samsung Captivate so I don't have any lens, ISO, exposure information (although I think it is saved in the metadata). And It was my last day of classes walking through Purdue University's Engineering Mall and thought a picture of the Bell Tower and the Engineering Fountain would look great on this beautiful spring day. So I snapped it and now I just found out about this contest and thought to myself, "Hey! I only took one shot!." So hence my submission.

- Andrew Ricci

Okay, so this is my first shooting contest on Gizmodo. I've been wanting to do something like this shot, a contact lens close-up. I thought this would be good since the photos could be practically anything. I set up my camera on a tripod and used AF to take the picture, hoping it would turn out good; and it did!
Canon Rebel XS, 18-55mm, 1/100sec, 200ISO, f/7.1

- Evan

I was totally ready for this one. I was going to my sister's wedding in Utah and I knew there would be plenty of opportunities to take lots of great one-time photos there. The day before the wedding, we went to Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, UT which is a big family oriented complex which includes museums, an amphitheater, and gardens, among other things. We decided to spend some time there and see what it was all about. When we arrived it was snowing very lightly and the wind was blowing a bit, so it was rather cold. We went to the gardens because they are currently having their Tulip Festival. After we paid for admission and paid for the golf cart, the snow had started getting heavier. They gave us a blanket to use. I hopped on the back, which faced backwards, with my aunt while my dad and uncle took the front. The combination of driving, the wind, and the snow made it absolutely unbearable. We ventured off as far as we could go and I was snapping pictures as we went. We stopped for a moment by this statue and I took this photo. After reviewing it, instinct made me want to take another picture because there's a large, out of focus snowflake right in front of the girl, but remembering this contest I decided not to and that I'd use this one. The vivid spring colors of the flowers against the dull grey snowy background is very peculiar, not to mention the statue is of a girl in a dress who looks like she's ready to dip into the stream while it's snowing. This was taken with my Canon T2i with a Sigma 28mm lens in Shutter Priority mode at 1/500, f/4, ISO 200.

- Evan Hughes

Mum's Curtain. Taken with a Nikon D40 at ISO 200, f/4, Zoom 70mm (that's 105mm in 35 mm film) and Exposure 1/80s.

Had recently gotten my hands on an old 70-300 mm Nikon Lens. Was so excited that I would often snap some shots in the morning before going to work just to satisfy my desire to get comfortable with this lens. And so, was in my mum's room, when I just felt like experimenting; I took the exposure all the way down, set the focus and took a shot of the sunlight coming through my mum's bedroom window. The focus and the white balance (shade) made the picture!

- Ali Mehdi

It was a dark and dreary rainy day. As I was driving north on Interstate 5 near Tangent OR I spotted this bright yellow crop in a bit of sun. It was on the other side of the highway so I took the next exit and drove back south. By the time I got there the sun break was gone and it was raining. I wish I'd got there while the sun was shining on the yellow field but the crop was still much brighter than everything else.

Recalling the Shooting Challenge "One shot" criteria, I drove for a bit on the shoulder to find a good shot. To avoid the now steady rain I took my shot out the window, then as I was departing I spotted a possibly better shot a quarter mile farther along. Again recalling the criteria, I passed up the second shot.

Now as I needed to return to Northbound and my trip home I discovered the next exit was nine miles farther south. So this one shot cost me a 20 mile detour.

Nikon D40, Nikon 55-200 mm lens at 200mm. The camera was set on "P" which chose 1/1000 sec at F5 and ISO 800.

I cropped the image a bit and increased the contrast slightly with Irfanview.

John Ousterhout

This picture was taken by my Nikon Coolpix S3000. I carry this camera around with me all the time. I pass this place one or twice a week, today in particular when I was passing it was nice cloud less sunny day (in nottingham,uk it is end of spring/start of summer so cloudy days are decreasing) so I thought to my self that this will be the only time i can take this picture under the sunny sky which made think about this challenge. so I took auto my camera made sure the white balance and flash settings were correct (the only two setting I play with on this camera the rest are auto) and gave a nice look and picked the hopefully best shot I could take. the picture has been slightly modified in picasa using the I am feeling lucky auto tune.

- Ossama Muqeem

Shot on iPhone 4 (HDR)

So my Grandfather had moved into our house recently because my Grandmother had passed away. Hes a proud man, who lived all his life in India, raising my father as well as his 3 other siblings. I have never really saw a side of him where he seemed emotionally vunerable, until he came to our house in the US. I saw him standing by the window looking out as if he was very lost and feeling very singular from everyone, so I took my chance to capture it. This was shot on a iPhone 4 using its HDR mode. Though the original picture was not that great, I knew I could enhance the mood with some color correction and a dark border to enhance the spacial context of the photo.

- Krishna Yalla

Canon EOS 550D
Focal Length 18
F number 3.5
Exposure 15 secs
ISO 1600

This was taken from the balcony of our holiday house at Anna Bay on the central coast of New South Wales in Australia. This view is of Stockton Ridge on the right and the lights of Newcastle in the center. I took this at 2230 and having forgotten my tripod at home I took this resting it on the balcony, trying to hold it still with my hands.

- Kim Louey-Gung

One of the new weaponry advances for the U.S. Army's Longbow Apache helicopters is a targeting system that uses infrared cameras to detect muzzle flashes from ground fire. That means the Apache's virtual eyes will be instantly drawn towards anybody shooting anything.

Not only does the system allow pilots to target the ground-based enemies at a touch of a button but it also offers that same information to ground forces, other aircrafts and tactical operations centers. The system is set for deployment within the next twelve months. [Gizmag via U.S. Army]