I think it's an oversight. After all, the description says a free study for the Month of October. I'm sure once someone brings it to Langdon's attention it will be fixed.
I don't like this idea of monthly free studies. Btw, what ever happened to speed challenges? It seems these challenges are less about challenging yourself and more about just entering photos you already shot. Where's the challenge in that?
You don't have to participate...
But that said, I like speed challenges. But prefer when they're really cooky or event related.
(ie: Fall has come....take a photograph of something falling. [Does NOT need to be a leaf.]
I don't like this idea of monthly free studies. Btw, what ever happened to speed challenges? It seems these challenges are less about challenging yourself and more about just entering photos you already shot. Where's the challenge in that?
Regular, month-long, free studies do one thing that can not be gained from any other form of challenge this site offers -- a chance to measure an individuals improvement. All the other challenges each person is challenged to try a specific topic or technique. But with free studies, particularly when regularly scheduled, each individual is challenged to do the best they can at what they are best at doing. The challenge is not to be the most resourceful, the quickest thinker or even the one who has already been practicing some technique -- the challenge is for each person to do better than they have done before.
Free Studies provide a placement within a universal community that is comparable with the placement in the previous free study -- this provides the ability to measure personal growth and improvement.
This measurement of progress that has been missing from DPC.
David
I totally disagree. An accurate way to measure your improvement if your DPC score is any indicator is to enter the same challenge you did before. It's not like we don't run the same challenges over and over as it is. I haven't even looked at the recent free study entries but I'm pretty sure I'll see a lot of rehashed stuff that isn't any better or worse but just there for the easy score and IMO that will only increase if we continue to run monthly free studies.
darn. I was looking forward to a week long one. Makes the results much more interesting. :)
You can still limit yourself to a week. ;-)
This month I limited myself to what I could shoot in a day - September 30. Put the pressure on for that day but I didn't even think about it the entire month. Rather freeing.:)
I really like the idea of a permanent mountly free study. But maybe they should be named : October 2006 free Study, November 2006 Free Study and so on.
I love it because there is always that one pict that you get sometime in the month that would never fit a challenge but you really want to see how well it would do.
I don't like this idea of monthly free studies. Btw, what ever happened to speed challenges? It seems these challenges are less about challenging yourself and more about just entering photos you already shot. Where's the challenge in that?
Well, I can only speak for myself as a newbie, but all of these have been challenges for me. I learn something new with each photo I work on, even the monthly free studies.
I think the new free studies are a possible release valve on the # of entries in general. Everybody has been trying to come up with ideas to limit the size of challenges and I think the only way that will work is to add more challenges.
I love the free study... its creative freedom and the people on this site never fail to impress me with their skill, vision and passion. I find them inspiring.
