Grand Cen­tral, New York — Just try tak­ing out a tri­pod here!

I haven’t often entered pho­tog­ra­phy con­tests, pri­mar­ily because I couldn’t decide what shots to sub­mit (as you will soon see, that hasn’t changed much!). Spec­tra Photo & Dig­i­tal Begin­ners are run­ning a travel pho­tog­ra­phy con­test together, which was right up my street, look­ing for pho­tos that show the exotic nature of travel. The rules are very open, and there is no limit to the num­ber of images you can sub­mit. Clos­ing date is mid­night on Sun­day 7th of Sep­tem­ber 2008, so don’t hang around! Read more to see my entries…

I do have a cou­ple of whines though… hey it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t!

• You need to print your entries in Spec­tra stores — no prob­lem there — but they use Kodak Kiosks which I find exhibit a ter­ri­ble orange colour cast. The photo at the top of this post is near grayscale but looks like sepia in the print out
• I printed some shots in my local Spec­tra in Lim­er­ick, 11 8x6 inch shots for <€20. I printed some more in Dublin and it was over €20 for 7. Come on Spec­tra, get your act together! The sales assis­tant tried to fob me off say­ing that it was due to com­pe­ti­tion in the area — what?

Any­way, here are my shots — enjoy!