Looking forward to week 27 - Sports in Action

WEEK 27 - July 13th - Sports in Action

Kids and/or Adults Category - A child, children, adult or adults participating in a sport. (Basically a photo of any person participating in a sport.) Any sport is fine. Your entry must show "action" though. Posed shots will be ineligible to win this week's photo challenge.

Pets Category - "Anything Goes" theme (even though we call this special category "Pets", we really don't care if the animal is an actual pet or not.)

Guest Photographer Judge

Rog Ellsworth of EPlove

We're excited to have Rog with us this week!
Be sure to visit his special page to learn more about him:-)

Introducing our newest I ♥ Faces contributors!

We're excited to have two new photographers join our team!! We've come to know both of these women from their wonderful entries in our photo challenges. Please give them a warm welcome! Visit their web sites and our contributor page to learn more about them:-)

Dana Suggs at From Chaos to Grace

A wife, mother of 3, child-wrangler by day and photographer by night. Dana is a traditional artist with a big passion for photography!

Rachel Durik from Savor Photography and The Adventures of an American Mum

A wife and mom of two who orginally made learning photography a project to take better photos for her blog:-) Now she's one awesome photographer!

Thanks everyone for visiting our social network this week!!

It's been great seeing new faces there! We hope you keep participating and meet new people from our community. That's the best part:-)

We can't wait to see your Sports in Action and Pet shots!!! Good luck everyone!

~Angie & Amy
co-founders of I ♥ Faces

It's Constructive Feedback Friday!

**This feature is now CLOSED to new entries. The current participants would love to receive your feedback on their photos though. Thank you for helping them in this way!**

We are taking a break from Fix-It Friday this week and are instead hosting a special Constructive Feedback Mr. Linky for those of you who would like to fix up one of your own photos and get advice on how to make it look even better.

The first 40 people who link their photo into our special Mr. Linky today will get at least one (if not more!) I ♥ Faces contributors to visit their site and comment with constructive feedback!

We ask that only amateurs and beginners enter their photos into the Mr. Linky today. Professionals and advanced amateurs...we are counting on you to help provide constructive feedback to those who enter their photo! We would love to have you all participate in the comments section on the blog posts that are entered. It's amazing how much we can all learn from each other by reading the feedback that others leave.

If you are entering the Mr. Linky today:

1) Please choose only one photo that you have already edited. You should post the original photo (in the largest size possible) and you can then have multiple edits of that particular photo in your post...but please only feature one photo in your post. (If you feature more than one photo in your post, it will be deleted from the Mr. Linky.) Your photo also needs to have a face in it. (Of course! Hee!)

2) You will need to put our I ♥ Faces button or our special "Constructive Feedback" button in your blog post.

3) Please make it clear to your regular readers that you are asking us to give you Constructive Feedback on your photo. We don't want to upset them when we stop by to do just that and they are wondering why anyone would "critique" or "put down" your photo. :)

4) It'd be wonderful if you could put the EXIF data for your photo in your blog post. (This tells you what your aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focal length were when you took the shot. An example: f/6.3 1/100 sec ISO 100 230 mm)

5) Please let us know what exactly it is that is bothering you about your edited photo. (Is the skin tone off? Does the overall color in the photo just feel too warm? Do you feel like the crop job could be better? etc.) Whatever it is, let the people who visit your post today know what you think the problems are with your photo. That way they will know better how to help you.

6) It is also good for us to know which photo editing program you used for this photo.

7) You need to enter the permalink to your blog post (not the link to the home page of your blog.) If you do not know what a permalink is, PLEASE go to the FAQ's portion of our website to read our tutorial there.

Again, we welcome and encourage our readers to participate in commenting today as well. Please note that we are not looking for “Oh that's a beautiful photo ~ I love it!” types of comments. Instead, those who leave comments need to actually give good, constructive advice on how that person could improve their photo.

We are looking forward to learning more about photography from each other today. We thank all of you for participating in this fun feature!

If you are entering a photo into our Constructive Feedback feature, please note that it takes a considerable amount of time for our contributors to leave feedback for you. We would appreciate it if you could send them a special note of thanks for their help today if they leave feedback on your photo. We can't thank them enough for being so willing to spend their time helping all of us!

iHeartFaces Participants

1. Regina Normandy 2. Another Day in Paradise 3. Anna 4. Sonya 5. Yelena R. 6. Jen @ FotoJenicPhotos 7. Tatiana 8. janmary, N Ireland 9. The Bird's Nest 10. Dianna@KennedyAdventures 11. Jana Green 12. Ben's Mommy 13. Alicia & My 3 B's 14. Traci-Ordinary Inspirations

15. Chelsi 16. Jenn Walters - CS4 17. Puna @ LifeSignatures 18. Deborah 19. KATHRYN FLAMME 20. Catherine 21. see through me photo 22. I AM MOMMY 23. Krysta 24. captured moments-nancy 25. Herb of Grace 26. Mommaloo 27. Life with Kaishon 28. AutumnsAcornsPhoto's

29. Elizabeth 30. Erin Lenore 31. Erika G 32. Jaclyn 33. TC 34. Patty 35. Amanda- The Worthy House 36. Joanie 37. My Family's Circus 38. Frogmum 39. Sweet Art 40. Mommy Rachelle

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

Angie & Amy
I ♥ Faces Co-Founders

Being Inspired By All Of You!

When we look for photography inspiration, the internet is one of the first places we turn to. We’ve found that there is no shortage of photographers, websites and photostreams to be inspired by!

Did you know that one of these places of inspiration is one that was created by all of you? That’s right…one place that we go to all the time for inspiration is the I ♥ Faces Network! We are constantly amazed at the incredible photographs that are uploaded to our network for us all to learn from and be inspired by. Here are just a few from our Network Photostream that have caught our eye recently:

Melissa Jordan

Hana

Sandra Arduini

Janis

Moments Captured By Amy

Jenty

Laura Pritchett

While you are spending time in our Network, be sure to take a moment to add us as your Network friends. We love being able to get to know you all better that way!

Add Angie as a Network Friend

Add Amy as a Network Friend

"Just For Fun" Challenge:

Now here's our "Just For Fun" challenge to you: Go to our list of Network Members and randomly send requests to 10 other members to be your network friend. Who knows...you might just meet your next photography friend who will help inspire you as you continue in your photography journey! :)

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Constructive Feedback Friday

Tomorrow we are planning to have our next Constructive Feedback Friday rather than our typical Fix-It Friday. This is your opportunity to enter a photo that you really like, but you know it has problems with it and you aren’t sure how to fix them. Or you could enter a photo that you really thought was an awesome capture, but then you saw it on your computer and it really didn’t turn out all that wonderful at all.

Enter your photo into our special Mr. Linky tomorrow and then member of our community and the contributors will stop by to give you some Constructive Feedback on how your photo could be improved through editing or how it could have been improved while you were taking it.

This special Mr. Linky will only be open for the first 40 participants so be sure to get your photo and link ready now to be entered tomorrow morning.

If you’d like to participate in this special feature, we ask that you please read this information from our last Constructive Feedback Friday first. Entries that don’t follow the guidelines specified in that post will be deleted to make room for other entries.

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A Helpful Camera Hint

Written by: Rachel from American Mum

Did you know that there is a way to spruce up your JPEGs in most cameras?

I'm not sure about point and shoots, but most DSLRs will allow you to change a few aspects about how your RAW file is converted into a JPEG. You can play around with your sharpness, contrast, saturation and color tone.

Here's how it goes down on my Canon 5D. This should be the same for most Canons and similar for Nikons.

Go to Menu - Picture Style, and down to User Def. 1. You can set your own style! Yay!

Now hit jump, and you can change the sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone. If you want to know my personal recipe, I've set the sharpness up all the way, the contrast up two notches above zero, saturation two notches above zero, and color tone at zero. My pictures come out so ridiculously sharp, even magic sharp (one of my favorite sharpening actions) is almost too much. I end up having to use it at about 30-40%. And sharp is my thing.

I've had so much success with these settings that with perfect exposure, I don't even touch 'em. And THAT saves time! Of course in certain situations, you might not want as much contrast - maybe a portrait or something. But most of the time, these are right on.

Keep in mind that if you shoot in RAW, these settings won't apply. These are settings applied to the JPEG.

So go play around and find the recipe that's right for you. I'd love to hear what works well for you!

Rachel is a self-taught blogger-turned-photographer and mother of two. Once the "bad picture taker" of the family, she opened up her own photography business within a year of buying her first DSLR. She is located in Eastern North Carolina and can be found at Savor Photography and her blog, The Adventures of an American Mum.