Friday Finds: Purple

Happy Friday everyone!

Y’all, when I set my theme for this week to purple, I had no idea I Heart Faces would be choosing Purple for their Weekly Challenge. It’s a little embarrassing, but a complete coincidence.

There were so many cool submissions this week! Please check out the Friday Finds: Purple Gallery to see all 18 photos highlighted this week. Check out the bottom of this article to view a selection of all submissions! I encourage you to comment on these on Flickr if you’re set up over there. Everyone loves positive encouragement!

Links of the Week

I tried something new this week: I liked each of my recommended pages on StumbleUpon. I’ve been reading a lot about StumbleUpon lately and think it’s a great tool that can lead to a lot of traffic. And if you build up your network in StumbleUpon, it can be quality traffic!

• Photographing Babies Without Losing Your Mind – Some great tips I never would have thought of, like asking the parents to remove the baby’s clothes an hour ahead of time to avoid naked clothes wrinkles.
• Five Must-Have Shots to Take in Yosemite National Park – How do you take refreshing photographs in a place where millions have been snapped?
• Worldwide Photo Walk / Los Angeles – I wanted to sign up for the worldwide photo walk this year, but I was too chicken in the end. Nicole participated and got some awesome shots!
• Boost Your Creativity by Surrounding Yourself by Creativity – Another photo walk! This time in Boston Harbor. The title kind of gives away the point of this article. Your creativity is more likely to leak through if you surround yourself with creative energy.
• Enter a Photography Contest – Kimberly summarizes lots of photography contests going on – most of which have paid prizes!
• The Dreaded, ‘Your Camera Takes Really Nice Pictures’ Comment – Just about everyone who takes their photography seriously has heard this at one point or another. Nothing’s more annoying than someone complimenting your camera instead of your skill or artistry! Well, here’s a little case study you can pass along to these people as it compares a non-professional’s photos vs. a professional’s photos. I’d lump in any serious amateur photographer with the professional-level photos, too!
• 100 Free Photoshop Actions and How to Make Your Own – I haven’t read through this fully, however some of the free actions look pretty nifty!
• Nick Brandt’s African Animals – This is a breathtaking collection of black and white photographs of African animals. You will not be disappointed with the time it’ll take you to look through the images in this gallery. Wow!
• Setting Goals in Photography – I’m a big believer in setting goals for any interest you take, as I recently wrote a bit about in Project 365: More Than Just Photos over at Skinned Knees. This article helps walk you through the process of choosing your goals.
• Editing A Photo’s Background with the Patch Tool – I’ve been using the patch tool more and more, but frankly it still confuses me, so I’m still trying to absorb these tutorials. It does seem to be pretty powerful!

More PURPLE Awesomeness

Purple is such a beautiful color and these week’s submissions were all beautifully photographed. In addition to the Flickr Gallery, check out some of these:

The Next Theme Is: Sky Shots!

I still haven’t gotten any feedback about my ACR Sky Presets, which may mean that it totally sucks. Regardless, I want to see how you see the sky. Please enter your submissions to the Flickr pool by next Friday morning and tag the photograph with dwc-sky if you’d like the thumbnail to display on this site. You can see current submissions and read through the qualification guidelines on the Friday Finds page

Link Up

If you’d like to help promote the challenge, feel free to grab my button and link to this page!

This button was made by Christy of Skinned Knees. The photograph used is New “Camera”!, used under the Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Share YOUR favorite reads this week and link up to Friday Favorites at Life Without Pink!