Pentax K-3 Photo Contest Round 3 Voting

It's time to find out who will be our grand prize winner!

By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Aug 9, 2014

It's time for us to determine the winners of our Pentax K-3 photo contest!  The third and final round of the contest has recently ended; read on to browse all the submissions and vote for the ones you think should win.

This round of the contest, themed "Back to the Basics", was all about using your camera to capture a great image on the spot, rather than leveraging post-processing take an image to the next level.  In a nutshell, contestants were limited to using in-camera processing features or their desktop equivalents.  Creative shooting techniques such as multiple exposures or filters were encouraged.

You can vote for up to 3 photos: pick the photos that you think were the most successful given the processing restrictions.  In the table below, you'll find the processed image on the left, and the original on the right.  Click on any thumbnail to enlarge, and use your mouse scroll wheel or arrow keys to cycle though the images.  There was a total of 32 submissions this round.  Almost every photo was taken in RAW mode, thus adjustments to the white balance, color profile, and contrast are considered fair game in addition to cropping.

To be fair to all contestants, the photos in the table below will be randomized on every page load.  Also, you may only vote if you joined the forum before May.

Pentax K-3 Photo Contest: Round 2 Voting

Help us get one step closer to selecting our winners!

By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Jul 11, 2014

The time has come for us to pick the winners of round two of our Pentax K-3 photo contest!  In the second round, our round one finalists had to pick a theme by combining words from a list that we provided up-front.  Then, they had to go out and shoot an original photo matching that theme.  We saw an astounding amount of talent and creativity this round!

The winners of round two will be chosen via a user poll, and all forum members who registered prior to the start of the contest are eligible to vote.  You can vote for up to 4 photos that you think are the most creative and successful: remember, the appeal of the photo itself is just as important as the creativity of the theme and how well the photo matches that theme.

In the table below you'll find the 101 round two submissions as well as the theme chosen for each photo.  Click on any thumbnail to view the full-size image, or click on the description link to learn more about each photo.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the link to the voting page.

"Bokeh" Photo Contest Winners

Official February, 2013 Photo Contest Results

By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Mar 25, 2013

"Mystery Forest"

We're happy to announce the winners of our February, 2013 "Bokeh" photo contest! With over 280 eligible submissions, this was our largest contest to date! In first place was forum member hubetek, who captured the photo "Mystery Forest" (pictured above) with his Pentax K20D.

Our runners-up were forum members ohce in second place with "Green" (left) and loco in third place with "Chess Ghosts" (right). Click on any photo for a larger version!

"Green"	"Chess Ghosts"

We'd congratulate the winners one more time!  Stay tuned to our homapage for the "making of" the winning photo. Also, don't miss our March "Dreams" photo contest, which features the same great prizes from B&H and Red River Paper!

Pentax K-3 Contest Finalists Announced

128 stunning images

By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Jun 4, 2014

On behalf of our judges and community nominators, we'd like to announce the winners of the first round of our K-3 photo contest.  These skilled photographers will be moving on to round 2 of the contest for a chance to win a Pentax K-3! With the hundreds of fantastic submissions to the contest, this was a very tough decision for us to make. You can browse the finalist photos in the gallery below:

Click here to view the finalist gallery

If you've made it to round 2, know that it will be considerably more challenging than the first round; this was inevitable given the amount of talent that we've already seen.  To our finalists: the round 2 instructions are found here.  Good luck!

Announcing the Winners of our K-3 Photo Contest

Stunning images from our largest photo contest ever

By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Aug 22, 2014

We are very happy to announce the overall winners of our Pentax K-3 photo contest!  The photographers recognized in this post have all persevered through a demanding and time-consuming test of photographic skill, and their work has greatly impressed our site staff as well as fellow forum users.

To provide a little bit of background information, this photo contest consisted of three rounds:

• Round 1 measured each contestant's ability to capture a photo with a "wow" factor
• Round 2 required each contestant to take an original photo matching a unique theme from among a pool of choices
• Round 3 placed an emphasis on the basics of photography by disallowing "photoshopping" of images

The overall winners were determined by combining the relative success of our contestants' performance during each of the three rounds, with considerably more weight assigned to the last two rounds.  Furthermore, each round narrowed down the pool of finalists such that only the most successful images could advance.  In round 1, user nominations and judge selections allowed photos to pass to the second round.  The outcome of the final two rounds was determined by popular vote; only users who had registered prior to the start of the contest were eligible to vote.  For more details, see the results of rounds 1, 2, and 3.  In total, over 2,400 photographs were submitted to this competition, which set a new record for our official contests.

Without further ado, forum member Cheekygeek is our first place winner! He will be receiving the grand prize consisting of a Pentax K-3 and grip, sponsored by B&H Photo.  Congratulations!

Cheekygeek's round 1 photo- a dramatic B&W scene- received 20 user nominations: more than enough to allow him to advance to the next round.

"Lone Cottonwood in Tornado Alley" - Cheekygeek's Round 1 Submission

For round 2, he chose to go with a theme of "Powerful Motion", for which he captured a stunning image depicing the power of Mother Nature:

"Still Running Against the Wind" - Cheekygeek's Round 2 Submission

Again, his second photo allowed him to proceed to the next and final round by a comfortable margin, as determined by user votes.  He did a wonderful job of pairing an original image to the chosen theme.

In the final round, his Pentax K-5 IIs helped him secure the win. His final entry, shown below, received the highest number of votes:

"Custer County Supercell"