A big thank you goes out to everyone that entered our Lifestyle Photography Competition and to Anne Herbert for supplying the fantastic prize of 2 classic prints on aluminium mounts.
As with previous competitions, the standard of entries was very high and our wonderful judge Nicole Young very kindly spent her weekend judging them all for us.
And now – the moment you’ve all been waiting for, drum-roll please! The winner and honorable mentions are revealed in the video below:
Open up the template in Photoshop. We’ve left the images of my face in the template so you can see how it all works – but if you don’t want to see my face (and I can sympathise with your position if you don’t) then either hide or delete the “Colin” Layers!
Next you’ll want to import the image (or images) that you want to use in your own profile.
To do this, select File > Place and select your image file.
Drag and resize it so its in the correct position, and hit enter to place it:
The web is alight with Google+ fever at the moment, and it seems that Google might have come up with a Social Networking concept that will truly challenge Facebook.
Like everyone else we’ve been getting to grips with how to get the best out of our profiles. Check out our Google+ Hints and Tips to benefit from what we know so far.
We’ve also devised a natty method for customising your Google+ profile design using tiled images.
pimp your-google+ profile
And what’s more we’ve put together a Photoshop Template to make it easy to implement for anyone who knows a bit of Photoshop (for those that don’t – we run a great 2-day Photoshop course here in Brighton!)
We’re sure you can all come up with some brilliant and creative ways of using the method to customize Google+ profiles that really stand out – we’d love to see the results – so if you use our template please post a link to your profile in the comments section so we can check out your work.
If you’re on Google Plus – follow us in the following places for all our goodies: Andy Trainer | Heather Buckley
The Lifestyle Photography Competition is NOW CLOSED!!! Thank you to all that have entered, watch this space for the winner! We have however now launched our NEW Street Photography Competition.
Grandad's Wall by Heather Buckley
Enter our Lifestyle Photography Competition for a chance to win Two beautiful Classic Aluminium Mounted prints of images of your choice, courtesy of Anne Herbert Photo Artistry, The Aluminium mounted prints are finished with a pair of wooden battens giving the effect of floating panels when hung on the wall.
Of course we at Silicon Beach Training being social media heavyweights will make sure you will gain great exposure for your images when the winner is announced.
The theme for our competition this time is ‘Lifestyle‘.
“Lifestyle” is open to wide interpretation. We are looking for images that describe the way that people live. If you want to see the winners of our last competition to judge the standard of entries click here.
To keep up-to-date the competition head over to Flickr, our Facebook page, and also follow our RSS Feed. The winner will also be announced on this blog and also on Twitter so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @SBTtraining.
Competition Prize – Win two classic prints on aluminium mounts that look like floating panels when hung
Many thanks to Anne Herbert www.anneherbert.com for sponsoring the prize. The prize on offer is two Classic Aluminium Mounts, image and size of your choice. The lightweight aluminium panels provide a modern and contemporary display giving the effect of floating panels when hung on the wall..
Images are printed onto high grade inkjet paper as a giclee print, sealed with a ‘metallic’ texture-effect laminate for an authentic look and feel, and then mounted onto a 3mm rigid aluminium panel.
The mount is finished at the back with a pair of 2″x1″ wooden battens giving the illusion of a floating panel when hung.
See more details of the prize here.
‘Lifestyle‘ Photography Competition Judge
Nicole Young is a full-time photographer and author currently living in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah. She specialises in food and lifestyle photography and licenses her images through iStockphoto and Getty Images.
You can email your entry to photocomp@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk with “Lifestyle” as the subject of the email. Attachments should be no larger than 3MB.
For email entries: the file name must state the title of the image and the photographer, e.g. Heather Buckley’s image above could be named as “Grandads Wall by Heather Buckley“, and the email message should also state the photographer’s full name.
A maximum of ONE photograph entry per entrant will be accepted.
If you don’t already have a Flickr account it’s easy and free to set one up, then you need to join the group and add your image (you can only enter 1 image) to the Silicon Beach Training Flickr Page.
We run quarterly photography competitions so keep in touch, let us know if you have any suggestions for the next competition theme or if you want to sponsor future competitions.
Our next competition is now live – follow it on twitter and facebook. The theme is “Street Photography” – click for more information on how to enter and what you can win.
Thank you to everyone that entered our Environment Photography Competition – as ever the standard of entries was exceptional and our judge Martin Bailey spent an agonising weekend judging them all for us.
So – the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The winner and honorable mentions are revealed in the video below:
Some of you may have seen The Circus of Horrors on Britain’s Got Talent recently. Amanda Holden described them as “gruesomely good” after seeing a woman being swung around by her hair.
I was lucky enough to see them live performing for the Brighton Fringe Festival. I asked permission to take photos as performance photography is a passion of mine, and as usual tagged the images and geolocated them so that they appear in Google Search. Sure enough when you type in “circus of horrors Brighton fringe” I will come up number one.
For marketing my photography this is a great tool. If you take a look at my flickr account, you will notice that I link the rest of my photography sites Brighton Photographer, Heather Buckley Photography (my Facebook page) and my twitter account, in the image description. Its a good example of cross marketing.
To learn more about SEO and Social Media, you could come to Brighton and enrol on one of our Social Media Training. If you would like to learn how to improve your image editing skills for your business blog than you might like to try our Photoshop Training courses or WordPress Training.
In doing this exercise however I noticed that the Circus of Horrors was in the news today, of all the acts on Saturdays show this is the act that the papers are talking about. I got me thinking about how marketeers can learn from Dok Daze and his freak show. Bear with me and enjoy the images and I’ll give you some inspiration for your marketing endeavours.
“Kilt-wearing Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, for example, uses a delicate part of his anatomy to swing a bowling pin between his legs. Then there’s Hannibal Helmurto, who can pull a four-ton truck with ropes attached to meat hooks in his back”
The theme for our competition this time is ‘Environment’ so no matter where you live, or what you do, you can get out there and get snapping. You can photograph your own environment or others, just post your entries on Flickr to be in with a chance of winning our fantastic prize! If you don’t already have a Flickr account it’s easy and free to set one up, then you need to join the group, then just add your image/s (you can enter up to 2 images) to the Silicon Beach Training Flickr group.
To follow this competition head to Flickr, our Facebook page, and also follow our RSS Feed. The winner will also be announced on this blog and also on Twitter so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @SBTtraining. We run regular photography competitions so keep in touch and let us know if you have any suggestions for the next competition theme.
The prize for the winning photographer is your choice of any public one or two day training course here at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton. You could try something creative like Illustrator Training, something practical like a Management Training Course, brush up on something more technical like HTML5 Training or expand on your social media expertise with a WordPress,Blogging or Social Media course. A full list of public courses can be found on our training dates page (only public courses in Brighton with a maximum duration of two days can be claimed as your prize).
The prize is for the training course only and winners will be responsible for any travel or accommodation costs incurred.
Winning will also result in exposure across our website and various social networking sites (namely Twitter, Facebook and our blog) – excellent free promotion if you want to build your profile online.