This is my third and last entry into the Canon photo5 competition. As the entries close tomorrow night at midnight, I just won’t have enough time to enter anything I think is good enough to actually submit.

I originally intended on a completely different shot, and this one was probably a lot harder in the end. It doesn’t look as convincing as I’d hoped — it looks like I cut some of the images too small, but they’re actually the exact right size for the bottom of the box, it’s the shadows that make it look wrong. The result is still pretty cool though, and they’re all my own travel images to boot.

Again, if you like it, vote for this shot (starting November 23rd) and tell everyone you know to do the same. If you don’t like it, don’t vote.

And now, a whinge: The website for the last Canon competition was total rubbish — it crashed when the competition launched and was tough to navigate. This one’s no better. It’s slow to navigate, Flash only (what were they thinking?!), and the way in which photos are resized is in total opposition to actually making them look good. I mean, have a look at the angled edges of the boxes; they look terrible!

This is my second entry into the photo5 competition. It was actually the first shot I took; I took it early one Saturday morning but wasn’t sure if it was going to be the one I entered. Since I’ve pretty much run out of time, I decided to go with it.

I like the idea more than the execution, and I think it’s come out a little dark, but it’s too late for that. As always: if you like it, vote for it (starting November 23rd) and tell others to. If not, don’t.

I’ve finally uploaded my first entry to the Canon photo5 competition. The idea for this shot came to me as Justine and I left the house somewhere; I glanced over to our “display” bookcase and saw some rubber ducks we’d recently bought while on holiday. For some reason the thought that popped into my head was that the ducks looked they were congregating.

I used my 18-200mm Sigma lens and 12mm Kenko extension tube for this shot — the zoom lens is useful for macro work like this as you get extra focusing capacity due to the lens zooming.

If you like the shot, please vote for it and tell everyone you know to vote for it. If you don’t like it, that’s OK too. You can’t vote until November 23rd but hopefully I’ll remember to remind everyone to vote for the shot. I have another almost ready to upload, and I have a couple more ideas for the other items. I just need to get off my butt and take the shots.

Last year, Canon ran a competition — Find Your Shot — in which I entered one or two photos. At the time, I was surprised to see the type of photos that were being considered as the “winners” of the week. My shots definitely weren’t the best, but it seems as though a popularity contest emerged as part of the competition and people were able to get their photos a leg up even though there were far better ones (again, not mine) submitted.

The winning shot doesn’t really grab me; as the gallery has been taken offline I can’t browse to see if there were ones I liked more, but I certainly don’t think it deserved to have won the photographer a $25,000 holiday.

However, Trav recently pointed me in the direction of a new competition Canon is running called “photo5“. This competition has a bit of a twist which makes it intriguing. The first twist (yup, there’s more than one) is that only the first 2500 people to sign up can even enter. That limits the chances a bit. The second twist is that you’re delivered a box of five “goodies” (a balloon, cellophane, chalk, some circles and the box itself) that you must use to take creative shots. And no, they don’t accept all five items in one shot.

The box arrived this morning, and I already have a number of ideas for the balloon, as well as one or two each for the boxes and circles (though they aren’t that great). The chalk and cellophane I’m a bit stuck with. Other than shooting through cellophane, which is what everyone will do I’m sure, I’m stuck.

Some of the ideas I have planned require a model (depending on the shot it’ll just be your hands, or back, or possibly part of your face) so if anyone is interested let me know. It’ll be fun!