Photography Thailand Forum

[bkkdave]

Giant Swing contest launched

New and vintage pictures welcomed for exhibition to be held at City Hall

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) in collaboration with the Federation of Thai Photography Associations is organising a photo contest on the theme of the Giant Swing, one of the city's landmarks located in Phra Nakhon district. The Amazing Giant Swing Photo Contest is being organised in preparation for the unveiling of the new Giant Swing, which has been installed to replace the old one. The celebration will take place later this year.

The photo competition has been split into two categories, new and vintage.

Each contestant can submit as many entries as he likes, and there are no entry charges for either category.

Contestants in the new photo category are required to capture the landmark from different angles. The photos can focus solely on the Giant Swing or include other surroundings.

The entries must be colour photos 12 inches wide and 18 inches high. They can be sent in either digital _ at least six million pixels _ or film form.

Those entering the vintage category can submit colour or black and white 8 x 12 inch photographs of the old Giant Swing or photos that feature the traditional way of life of people around the landmark.

Cash prizes are up for grabs for the winning entries in both categories.

The winner of the new photo category will get a cash prize of 100,000 baht along with a plaque, with 50,000 baht for second place and 30,000 for third.

There are also 20 consolation prizes of 3,000 baht, which will be given along with congratulatory certificates.

For the vintage category, owners of the 100 selected photos will win cash prizes of 1,000 baht each.

The prized entries will be displayed at an exhibition at the City Hall when the new Giant Swing is officially unveiled. All entries will become the property of the organisers and will not be returned.

Entries, which should be sent to the public relations department at the BMA permanent secretary's office or the Association of Photography Business and Photo Hobby Co, close on Aug 15.

For more information, dial 02 803 7570-1, or 02 231 3232.

[Marc Schultz]

I was searching for somehting in Google and came across this guy's page by accident. Some amazing color in the photos of the swing in front of Wat Suthat. Never seen anything like it. In fact, never seen Bangkok looking like such a clean colorful place: http://platongkohphoto.multiply.com/photos/album/64

Must have been one of those unusual days for clear skies in Bangkok and lots of saturation :).

[Paul Whitehead]

Nice - there are some beautiful images there. I love to see such punchy colours but always wonder how they hold them - I always find that pushing saturation beyond +20 just kills detail so you end up with a spectacular web size shot but it cannot be effectively printed or reproduced at any decent size.

[SimonP]

Thanks for sharing that Marc - not only nice colours but some really interesting shots there.  Some amazing shots too on his post of the Nikon competition winners.  Really inspiring stuff. 

Also noticed Marc that one of his shots http://platongkohphoto.multiply.com/photos/photo/46/7 was very similar to one of your own earlier posts from your photo trip to Sukhothai.  Do you think that was from the same excursion you went on? 

[kinginexile]

I'd think he used a polarizer on this one too. It's a tough one to shoot nicely without being postcardish. Interesting contest. I have one with me under ithe swing, shot with the self-timer.

yeah, you guessed, it stays home, I will not send it

Herve

[Marc Schultz]

Yes, Paul, I normally don't ever push saturation over 15 points for the reasons you mentioned. You start to get noise as well sometimes. You can also use photo filters and variations in Photoshop to sometimes add more colors.

But as Herve said, he probably used a Polarizing filter. To be honest though, I have only ever seen those colors come out of a sky when using highly saturated slide films like Fuji Provia or Velvia. Digital is normally too literal to ever come up with those sades of blue sky colors.

Good catch Simon, there is a good chance he also joined that trip with the Bangkok Photographic Society (www.bpsthai.com) to Sukhothai last year. There were about 40 Thai photographers on the trip, but I only know a handful of them. Possibly by face I would recognize him.

[bkkdave]

Mark, so that is the answer as to why I can not achieve the same results with skies with digital as I did when using Velvia  and a polarizer. When I moved to Thailand in 2002 it was the time that I stopped using film and switched to digital full time. I still use a polarizer but the results have never been quite the same as with Velvia. I used to set the Velvia to ISO 40 on my camera. Thank you.

[bjorn slis]

You can download the "digital Velvia " action for p'shop (google on DV pro), it's a channel mixer and curves adjustment action. Or you can try playing with curves and channel mixer adjustment layers yourself.

[Marc Schultz]

I guess by shooting at ASA 40 on Velvia you were over exposing by about 2/10th of a stop, which is fine. More than that though and slide film can not handle it normally.

Yes, those highly saturated slide films were so popular because they created colors that was far more vivid and saturated than real life and pulled out colors that we often could not see with our naked eye. As I said, digital is too literal for that now.

As Bjorn mentioned, there are Photoshop Actions people have created to mimic those effects of slide film. Fred Miranda used to have a Velvia Action, but he has replaced it now with something called Velvia Vision it seems, which is more of a plug-in: http://www.fredmiranda.com/shopping/vv

I have not tried the new thing from FM and it may be good, but my experience in the past was never really great with those Velvia likeness actions.

You can do good stuff though with Photo Filter adjustment layers in Photoshop alone to improve and change the color of skies and you can have lost of control by playing with the opacity of the adjustment layer and then masking out areas not to be effected by the filter.

[bkkdave]

Thank you Mark! I am now just starting out with Adjustment layers and was not too successful using the Layer masks as yet. I will keep at it until it comes together more for me. I have more than a few photos with washed out skies that I will dig out and practice with.