Firstly - new layout courtesy of StudioLoftMedia's Journal skin! What do you think? Easier to read? Harder? No change? Thoughts and feedback appreciated!

I suppose one of the most intriguing news stories the past few weeks has been the announcement by some Restaurants in the USA that they will be banning food Photography! Some claim that it's because of the flashes going off in restaurants and spoiling the mood for other customers. Others are angry that some professional photographers are making money or getting a name for themselves by sharing images of food that someone else has 'arranged.' And then there are the few that don't like the instagram snaps floating around that don't show their dishes in the best light. But what are your thoughts on the matter? One way of getting around the lack of being able to take a photo of your dinner is that some establishments are going to allow guests to photograph their food before it leaves the kitchen...discuss! Full article here.

Community Volunteers Kaz-D + 3wyl

Firstly, the exciting news is that we now have a Conceptual Community Volunteer! Stepping into the awesome shoes that DemonMathiel left behind is astridle! So send your suggestions to her!

Check out the beautiful Tilt Shift Photography feature from BitterBeanJuicer. Have you tried tilt shift or explored the art here on dA? It's well worth a look! Adam has also put together a General Photography DD feature too. A member of our Photography community here on deviantART has had a book published. xMEGALOPOLISx has published a book of Photography - read more about that here. Also within the Photography galleries 3wyl has been busy as usual and has written
All snapped up! and To be seen. Both are articles featuring photographers here on deviantart! Our usual DD roundups have been published for the month. Check out  mine here and 3wyl's here.

Tutorials wise, we've brought a couple of troubleshooting articles to you the past few weeks. The first was particularly useful for those UK based deviants who experienced all the snow last week! Check out How to Photograph Snow for some hints and tips. Then we summarised this years (and a few of the latter part of last years) camera phone releases to see what's best for which. Check that out here. A final troubleshooting article that we released is also really useful and focuses on Capturing Landscapes.



If you've got a regular challenge going on, or a contest you'd like to see featured then let me know! It'd be great to include it in this article. Photography based only where possible please.
Reinterpretation Contest! from WintersRead
Still-Life-Stills are hosting another contest! Check it out over at the group.
Head over to Abstract-and-Surreal today for the monthly contest to be announced!
There may still be time to enter the Feedback for favourites Contest today!
PeopleAndPortraits are having a 'Love' theme throughout February! Check out the group for more info.

• Wednesday 6th February:
  Photography Games Night with Kaz-D + 3wyl in communityrelations. Bring your camera, bring your inspiration and come along for the chance to win some fantastic prizes!
  Starts at 12 PM PST—check your local time here.

• Wednesday 6th March:
  Photography Games Night with Kaz-D + 3wyl in communityrelations. Bring your camera, bring your inspiration and come along for the chance to win some fantastic prizes!
  Starts at 12 PM PST—check your local time here.

• Wednesday 3rd April:
  Photography Games Night with Kaz-D + 3wyl in communityrelations. Bring your camera, bring your inspiration and come along for the chance to win some fantastic prizes!
  Starts at 12 PM PST—check your local time here.

Most well known for her Fashion Photography, Merry also has some fantastic landscape shots within her gallery that really caught my eye this week. Thus she's the featured Photographer and also proof that us volunteers don't just showcase you loads of work within the galleries that we're looking after!!


I recently joined PhotographLove as an admin thanks to a kind invite from the founder. The group is one of the hottest photography groups on dA with a member base of over 24,000. It's well worth heading over and checking it out as the group is being revamped with lots of new things coming your way.


The past few weeks have been filled with lots of articles exploring all sorts of topics as part of our regular Community Weeks - with 2013 in full swing the team over at PE are working on bringing you some brand new features and keeping the group ticking over for another fantastic year. If you fancy getting involved just shoot the group a note! Check out the roundups from the past two weeks!


Photography month has drawn to a close and with it lots of valuable information has been shared into the History of this fantastic art form. Flash & Animation month kicks in now, so head on over for lots of fantastic articles and check out the roundup of Photography month below!




Since the last update, arctoa has worked hard to feature a variety of Daily Deviations in the genre, and his January Daily Deviation Report is available here. His Friday Feature of recent discoveries has two more editions, with Issue 008, and Issue 009 now online. Finally, his well-received Saturday Spotlight artist interviews continue: Volume 008 with Megalithicmatt and Volume 009 with PsycheAnamnesis being the latest showcase instalments.

Around the groups, Abstract-and-Surreal is now holding a vote for their January Shapes contest and an editorial about Why Surrealism is Art was published in affiliation with ArtHistoryProject. h-e-u-t-e is a new group founded this month with the aim to collect the best abstract, minimal, conceptual or surrealist artwork on deviantART. non-real is hosting a poll to determine their featured artist for next month, and Ode-to-simplicity released Square'ish LXXV: a feature for square art. Finally, WhoNeedsColour put forth their monthly feature, which can be read here.




Nyx-Valentine has put together another feature for Artistic Nude and Fetish Photography! The theme this time around is Outdoors. You can check out the full feature here *includes mature content*.



Have you been confused when categorising your Darkroom submissions? Or perhaps just when you're browsing you've noticed something that seems to be in the wrong place? Well EveryNextDream has written a fantastic article explaining the differences between Darkroom Traditional and Darkroom Digital.



Fashion This Week is out once more and focuses on some of the more recent submissions to the Fashion Photography gallery! This week I wanted to highlight a fantastic Fashion Photographer here on deviantART - if you're looking for some Fashion inspiration and work to aspire to then check out :devkylegavin:!



I stumbled across some beautiful macro shots this week in an article about a Macro Underwater Photographer who captures the unseen beauty of Corals.
Serdar-T is a fantastic Macro Photographer worth checking out this week if you want to browse some Macro Galleries here on deviantART.
Simplistic beauty combines with subtle lighting and blur to create beautiful close ups of interesting flowers.



Reccomended Artists is out again and focuses on some deviants within the Photojournalism community that are well worth checking out for their talent and expertise in the area! A roundup of January's Photo-journalism Daily Deviations is out now!



Lush! is out again and features some of the works that get suggested to DistortedSmile for daily deviations. Check out the talent in the article! DistortedSmile has also put together the History of Pinup and Glamour Photography which is an interesting read!




Kendra-Paige has announced the Photographer of the Week over at PeopleAndPortraits - Check it out here! We had some no entries to the January Challenge over at the group. But that hasn't deterred us - we've also announced February's challenge so head over and check it out here!




3wyl has written a Still Life Photography Article which explores the art form and helps explain it a bit more. The Recipe challenge winners for last month have been announced and the new recipe challenge is up today so head over and take a peek! The past few weeks, we've done a Breakfast Feature and a Sweetie Feature! Our next challenge and last months winners will be announced today so be sure to watch the group!



The Street Photography position is still open over at communityrelations so if you're interested why not consider heading over and getting an application in now?  StamatisGR has put together  Friday Night Specials once again featuring some fantastic artists from within the Street Photography galleries. StamatisGR is also running the Street Photography Challenges and you can check out more info on the eighth here.




This previous has month has seen an increase and a variation in Urban and Rural Photography Daily Deviations from us both. Don't forget that you can suggest anything within the Urban and Rural Galleries to 3wyl and I. We've also put together a few more urbex articles. The latest one focuses on an exploration of The Shard in London - read more about that here.


This one is costly (a little) this edition, but it's worth it if you want the sort of information that it offers you. It's an App called Focalware and is £2.99 currently on iTunes. If you want to know the exact position of the sun and moon at any location, any day, any time, then the focalware app is a fantastic solution. It helps with calculating the path and height of the sun and moon and allows you to determine where light and shadows will fall. Even if you don't need it for Photography, it's a pretty handy thing to geek out over!

Another resource with the anti-instagrammers of you out there will absolutely loathe, is Pixlr-o-matic for iphone. Thanks to DpressedSoul for bringing it to my attention! It boasts over 2 million combinations to make your photographs better, how can you NOT want it?! Check it out and have a play, share the results if you have some!

kinipelahh is taking us Back to Basics with some excellent Photography based articles giving tips and information about the basics of composition.



Getting rid of a 5d markii going for 1d mark iii
Non-Digital Point-and-shoot camera?
Cold weather shooting.
Choosing Lens - help
Product and Food Photography
Does ANYONE still use FILM?
Nikon Lenses/Extensions?
Great First Camera In YOUR opinion
Is the DSLR a dying breed?
Close up question
Internship Questions?
Photography-related Quotations
pros and cons of hiring an amateur for wedding photography?
Cameras Near The Sea
Not sharp photos even with tripod (canon)
Composition Help
Nikon D600 or Canon 6D?
A Question about Aperture...
Reading suggestions for somebody who is new to DSLR cameras and photography?
RAW or J-PEG????
New Perspective in your shots? How do you do?
magazines that can feature your works


The new releases list for 2013 came out last week and so there are lots of awesome Photography books to share for all sorts of tastes. Here's a few that caught my eye:
London Street Photography By Taschen.
More than Human By Tim Flach.
Life through the lens of the paparazzi By Pascal Roustain.


There's so much going on around the community especially for Volunteers that sometimes the awesome news can be missed out. I hope to share any weekly or monthly features that are ongoing here so that you can browse them at your leisure. If you know of something that needs to be listed let me know!

Birds Sing Sun Rising Hyms from scheinbar
Stolen Artworks? from DianaGrigore
Making a Difference from 3wyl
dA Love for Everyone from Lintu47
Project Porkchop from Astralseed
Under 1,000 Views from Postmorteum
Intimate, Touching, Emotive. from OliviaMichalski
Blue and Yellow from Canankk
Weekly Light Hunters from MarcosRodriguez
Wishing Well Weekly from TeaPhotography
Fashion Friday from BitterBeanJuicer








You can get yourself into Photography Weekly just by sending me a note! Each week I look for:
Spotlight Deviants
Underappreciated Deviants
Spotlight Groups
Photography related news
Themes +Topics
Featured Tutorials