Friday Finds

Sign up for my weekly newsletter and receive exclusive content, tips and photographic challenges! Here’s what you’ll get every week:

  • Photography exercises and prompts! Photography tips, tricks and links to help you complete the exercise or prompt.
  • An inspiring selection of stunning photos! See my very favorite interpretations and examples of the last theme. Even if you don’t have time to read the newsletter, scanning through the photos alone will motivate your creativity!
  • A chance to promote you and your blog! After signing up for the newsletter, be sure to fill out my subscriber highlight questionnaire if you want the chance to have your blog and social media accounts highlighted in an upcoming newsletter.
  • Find quality “hidden gem” blogs and make contacts! Every newsletter a new blog and blogger will be introduced. Maybe you haven’t met them yet or maybe you’ll learn something new about someone you love!
  • …and more! Let’s just say this newsletter is packed full of information and goodies in an easily digestible format.

This Week’s Theme: Depth of Field

Make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter to receive information about how to execute this theme!

To enter your photographs, you may submit up to five to the Friday Finds pool on Flickr. Please tag this week’s submissions as: dwcff-dof if you would like it to display as a thumbnail below.

What is Friday Finds?

It started out as a way for me find inspiration and highlight other photographers’ work. For over a year it was a series of articles on my blog with tons of photos and links! Now it exists in a condensed, yet equally informative version solely on my newsletter.

I use Flickr to search for Creative Commons licensed photographs matching the theme throughout the week and invite them to my Flickr group Friday Finds. Group members are more than welcome to add their own related shots, past or present. You do not need to subscribe to my newsletter to submit to the group, but how else will you know if your photo is included in it?

I tag all the submissions with something unique to my site (prefixed dwcff) so they’ll be easy for me and others to find.

On Friday, I create a Flickr Gallery from my favorite group pool submissions. Flickr purposely limits galleries to 18 photographs each and there are usually 150 or more submissions so I need to be selective.

I’ve found this is a useful and delightful exercise and I recommend any learning photographer spend some time curating others’ work. Every week the Flickr group gains at least a few new members who regularly contribute to the theme. My Flickr contacts also grow weekly as I connect with amazing photographers I can learn from, some of whom even provide feedback on my photostream.

In the Flickr group’s Discussion Threads I challenge everyone to post their own favorites and share their own galleries matching the theme.

Qualifications

Anyone is welcome to join the group and add to the pool! However, as I will be displaying selected submissions in my newsletter, there are a few strict rules you need to adhere to if you want to qualify for your photographs for consideration.

  1. The photograph must be added to the Friday Finds Group Pool on Flickr. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for free!
  2. The photograph must be public. Toward the bottom right side of the photo’s Flickr page, there are Owner Settings. If your photograph is public, an icon will show in green indicating anyone may see it. If it’s not green, click the edit link to the right and make the photograph public.
  3. The photograph must be under any Attribution Creative Commons license. This just gives me permission to display the photo on my site while crediting you. Under Owner Settings on your submission’s Flickr page you will see how your photograph is licensed. If it needs to be changed, click the edit link to the right and select the appropriate license. If you need help picking a license, try the License Generator. If you want to retain full commercial control over your photograph, you’re going to want to select Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
  4. Your work must be eligible for galleries. I create a gallery on Flickr for every Friday Finds, therefore if your settings don’t allow others to add your work to galleries, I cannot feature your photograph. To verify this is set up, go to your privacy and permissions settings. About a third of the way down, make sure “Allow your stuff to be added to a gallery” is set to Yes.
  5. I must be able to “Share” your photograph. This makes it easy for me so I don’t have to upload your photograph to my server. To verify this is set up, go to your privacy and permissions settings. The second question is, “Who can share your photos or video?” and make sure “Any Flickr Member” is chosen. Alternatively, you can set it to Contacts only and add me as a contact.

FAQs

How can I submit an article or idea for Friday Finds?
You can contact me at any time!

I have a really great photo to submit for a past challenge!
You can still submit your photograph to the pool and tag it accordingly.

When do you announce next week’s theme?
Next week’s theme is always announced on Friday in the newsletter. You can visit this page or the Flickr group anytime after the newsletter goes out to see the new theme. You’ll always have a full week to submit photographs!

Previous Issues

Can’t decide whether or not to join the newsletter? Check out previous issues of Friday Finds to see what it’s all about.

Please Note: Links specific to the theme do not start until the Friday Finds: Fog issue. Prior to that and links include general photography and photo editing links not necessarily related to the theme.

Please feel free to leave questions or comments either here or on the Flickr group!