The Photo of the Month competition for March 2011 is now open. The winning photo, decided by a vote, will be featured on the front page of the SABRE website and (in edited form) in the banner at the top of every webpage.

Your nomination must be entirely your own work, i.e. you must have photographed it yourself, and carried out any subsequent edits. Also, no more than one entry per person, and please avoid submitting previous winning photos.

If you think another SABRE member's photograph deserves to be included, you could consider sending him/her a message of encouragement to enter the competition.

Photos taken by anyone outside SABRE are not allowed in the competition - but instead, feel free to post links to your favourite photos in the forums, for everyone's enjoyment.

To enter a photo, please upload it using this form, making sure that the "Photo of the Month March 2011" category remains ticked in the lower part of the form (under "Other", in the right-hand column).

After uploading, please check that your photo appears in the Photo of the Month March 2011 gallery, and please ask for help if you have any problems.

If you wish to nominate one of your photos that already exists in the Wiki, and you are not sure how to add it to the current Photo of the Month nominations, please ask for help in this thread. State which photo you want to nominate, and I will add it to the nominations gallery.

Submissions will close on Monday 21 February, around 9:30pm.

Good luck!

Hi John,

Trying to upload the same M8 picture that I uploaded last month - but I keep getting a message telling me that the file has the same name, or is similar to, last month's photo!

When I tell it to upload anyway, it seems to place it in the PotM February 2011 gallery, in spite of me having ensured that the PotM March 2011 box was ticked when I uploaded the file.

Am I doing something wrong?

Uploading pictures of the M8?

^^ Scratch that. Just checked, and it appears to be in the right gallery now.

Not really - it's a quirk of the software.

The key to solving this problem is to "edit" the original image in the Wiki, and name further galleries in the code associated with it. I've now done this for you (and am happy to do so for anybody else with a similar problem).

Thanks John

Today I decided to mess around with the exposure controls on my digital camera. I took several (which ended up being quite abstract), however I wanted something rural so I picked the one you see in the gallery.

Abstract is certainly one way of describing it.

It's a bit dark, if you are taking long exposure night photos to get the blurred headlight effect you need some lighting on the background otherwise you just get some blurred lights and nothing else. It really needs to be a lit road or have lots of traffic.

Really need to use a tripod if standing at the side of the road taking pics, even then don't even press the shutter to fire the camera because even pressing the button can blur it, want to either use a release or if don't have one use the timer.

If you are taking a pic from the car need to either secure the camera to the dashboard somehow, i used a big blog of blu tack. or have it resting on the dashboard and try for 5 secs can get steadish shot.

You can do seriously long exposure shots in a moving vehicle done a few minutes on the M6 managed to get the clouds, some stars, car trails was impressive looking but the lines of the road where all over the place looked messy.

This is my best attempt, 5 secs M6 just before the border.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpgrbeat/5415842654/

I was taking shots like that earlier, I've not reviewed them yet. I'll also need to think of something to upload before the deadline...

1. I don't have a suitable tripod yet.

2. I was shooting from inside the car (passengers seat).

I've tried taking night pictures in the past without a tripod and they always come out blurred. Even resting the camera on something solid such as a bridge will produce blur. Even using a tripod on a bridge can cause blur if a lorry goes past and the bridge shakes

I'd never try taking a night shot without a tripod. I also always use the two second timer otherwise the shot will blur. Once you've got the hang of it, night photography is a lot of fun.

I do urban pics a lot of the time without a tripod but not trying to long exposures usually shoot at 1000 ISO with VR on usually ok, arms in tight at your chest, breath like a sniper lol.

Done about 1-2secs before handheld and got a blur free shot before but hard work.

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb19 ... o/dd16.jpg

one of the first shots i took with the D90, the VR on the Nikon really impressed me compared to the 18-55m i had on a canon 40d which wouldnt have done that shot.

think some blur is acceptable if its slight and have to be a pixel peeper to notice it.

I experimented with some night photography when I first got my DSLR - I particularly like this and this photo. Kind of looks to me as if they could be on another planet!

Blur is not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion. I wasn't aiming for the lack of it when I was experimenting.

In the interests of balance, I must point out that it wasn't necessarily bad to follow Oasis either.

I still haven't worked out what the photo is.