The winners were chosen completely subjectively – basically they were ones that I really liked the creative ideas that were behind them.

The first winner did an amazing job of capturing the feeling of being left out of a group. I love love love this photo.
Jamie from Ever After Photography wins a set of actions from Ashley McNamara! Jamie, please send me your email address!

And the other winner just tickled me with all of her fun ideas for the Scooby gang.
Congratulations Kayla Bate!, you win The Photo Book! Please send me your mailing address!

We have a surprise giveaway tomorrow, so check back to see how to win!

We have two fun prizes this time, first is The Photo Book. If you are new to photography or self-taught, you would be amazed to learn just how much you DON’T know about the history of photography. This book is full of amazing photos from incredible photographers from the mid-19th century to today. It’s a really neat book, so if you don’t have it already go shoot some toys so you can get it!

The second super awesome prize we have is a set of actions from the talented Ashley McNamara. If you’re not following her blog . . . well, I can’t even imagine that. That’s just crazy talk. Of course you are following her blog. How else would you get the best Photoshop tutorials around and see some amazing photography? Since you’re already following her, you must be really wishing you had her action set by now. She was generous enough to give away a set to a challenge winner here on Two Photogs, so wish no more!

To finish up this post, I’m including my attempt at toy photography from this past weekend. It was lots more fun, yet a bit harder than I expected. I think I’m kind of addicted though, because it was my daughter’s birthday on Saturday and I was eyeing up all her new toys, lol! Next attempt I will try to set up more elaborate scenes with more storytelling.

When we found this blog a couple of months ago, we were immediately engaged. What a cool idea, to take pictures of TOYS!
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/40-brilliant-creative-examples-of-toy-figure-photography/

As moms, we have plenty of toys around the house just waiting to play subject in a creative portrait. Toys are small enough to be shot indoors or out, and it’s a lot easier to create complex sets for them with the simplest of items.

If you want more inspiration, take a look through Flickr – it’s chock full of amazing toy photography.
Here’s just a few groups we found that sparked our interest:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/danbo-love/pool/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/travellingtoys/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/secretlifeoftoys/

We’ll be announcing the prizes for this challenge next week, and the winners will be announced on April 20th. Contest closes at 5pm ET April 19th. Blog your photos and then come back here and post the link in the comments section.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with – enjoy this challenge and get creative!

We have a ton of blog posts coming up in the next couple of weeks, tackling things like competition and jealousy, cool ways to use Moo.com and an Inspiration Challenge that I am so personally excited about that I can’t stop thinking about it!

We’re also working on another side project (I know, like we aren’t busy enough), mentoring some amazing women (with more to come next week!), and gearing up for a very busy spring season in our portrait businesses.

Another thing we wanted to let everyone know is that the next round of mentoring is now sold out. We might be doing another in May, so if you are interested, please let us know by emailing me at brandy@twophotogs.com and asking to be put on the waiting list.
Our waiting list gets first dibs on the mentoring spots, which is why they sell out so quickly.

So look forward to the next couple of weeks where we will have a new project announced, a new Inspiration Challenge, new posts about cool things, and even some new partnerships with some awesome companies and blogs!

First prize: A Fuji Instax Mini
Second prize: A $25 dollar gift card to Photojojo, the store that we are madly, insanely in love with.
Third prize: A $10 iTunes gift card, so you can download some awesome new photography apps for your iPhone.

Yes, it’s true. We are officially awesome. So please, get shooting. You are running out of time to win something fabulous. We will chose the winner based on creativity and all-around awesomeness.
Now go have fun!

We’ve certainly been hyping this challenge up enough, lol. It took us awhile to be able to get to this challenge – we wanted to do it justice and have people be able to participate. The month of January is typically slower for a photographer, so hopefully lots of people can participate in this one! We are still securing some awesome prizes for this contest – we are going to have a first, second and third place – each with a prize! So cool! But we aren’t going to tell you what they are going to be just yet. Let’s get to the challenge!

It’s up to you to make this challenge as complicated or as easy as you want. Use your iPhone, use an old Polaroid, use a Zumi, a Diana, an Instax. Use a point and shoot, use your kid’s Fisher Price digital camera. You just can’t use your regular DSLR (or SLR if you shoot film). Have fun, get creative and don’t get too serious. Don’t think about it too much, just have FUN! There are no rules except you must a different camera other than the one you normally shoot with.

We are giving you a whole month to complete this challenge. Why? Because cameras need to be found, film needs to be developed. You can enter at any time though, and we’re going to limit it to 3 entries per person and they must all be contained to the same blog post.

To enter – just post your image(s) on your blog and come here and link us in the comments section. We can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with! Winners will be revealed on February 12th!

Firstly, if any readers are Lightroom experts, we’d love to hear from you. Brandy is attempting to teach herself Lightroom over the holiday break and some guidance would be much appreciated. Any Lightroom tips or tricks? Leave them in the comment section below!

Secondly, we had a call out on Twitter last month for photographer workspaces. We want to showcase your space, so please send images of your fab workspace to brandy@twophotogs.com.

Lastly, we are finally having our next inspiration challenge THIS WEEK! The only rule is that you can’t use your DSLR. So drag out your iPhone, polaroid, toy camera, medium format, pinhole, whatever and load up with film. Think outside your comfort zone! We will post the details later this week! Brandy has a pink Diana F+ on the way, will it arrive in time or will she be using her Zumi, or her new Fuji Instax?

Nope, it’s not about taking photos in forbidden places. (Although that would be a good one now that I think about it, lol) This little snap was taken with my latest camera, the Zumi, a toy camera from Japan that takes really cool photos and videos. An upcoming challenge will be about stepping away from your DSLR and all your lenses, and focusing your creative energy on a different, simpler camera. Use a Zumi, use your iPhone, cell phone, point and shoot, polaroid, etc. Get away from apertures and ISOs and just take some really creative photos. I’m posting about this a few weeks before the challenge so that if you’ve been thinking about getting a fun new little camera (my next will be the Fuji Instax) you have time to do so before this challenge. Or find your old Polaroid, or your kid’s Fisher Price digital cam.
I’ll post more ideas when it’s closer to the challenge, just wanted to get those creative thoughts going!

Gina and Jodi counted as 1 & 2, so therefore our winner is #4 – Joy from http://www.capturesphotography.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much to all who participated, and don’t forget to check out the amazing discounts at Pixel2Canvas by using codes FRESH30 (for new customers) and THANKS (for existing customers)

We are going to give away the canvas tomorrow, so please post the links to your blog posts in the comments section of THIS post. If you’ve already posted them in the previous post, can you come back and post them here too please? It’s going to be a random draw again, because there is no way that we could pick a favorite from what we’ve seen so far. Everyone has been so creative and awesome. It’s been almost more fun to look at them than make them! If you don’t have a blog or site, you can email your collage to brandy@twophotogs.com and I will post it here for you.

Thank you all so much for participating and helping us get to know you a little better! In thanks, we have a coupon code generously donated by Pixel2Canvas for new clients to sign up and get 30% off all canvases for their first week! Enjoy your discount by using code: FRESH30 for any number/size of canvases for one week. Already a happy P2C customer? Use code THANKS to receive 20% off your order!

Without further ado, here are our own little masterpieces!

Danna chose white, and did some amazing macro shots. I want a copy of this to hang in my home!

I chose pink as you already know, and it was super challenging, but crazy fun.

Danna’s daughter, who is 10 and already showing such promising signs as a photographer and photoshop’er went out with Danna and chose orangey-red as her color:

And for our first entry into the Pixel2Canvas draw for a 20X24 canvas, Gina Yeo sent us this fun collage choosing orange:

Jodi Boucher sent us this beautiful collage of photos from her parents farm in Northern Alberta:

My sister-in-law Sarah of Sarah Anderson Photography just sent me this gorgeous collage using the color gold! Beautiful!