For many countries in the world, Halloween is just a few weeks away. While the recently announced Contest Corner Challenge #79: Rhymes with Orange isn’t a Halloween contest per se, it’s probably a good time of year to find something orange to photograph. There is one caveat, though - no pumpkins allowed. You have until October 24th to wander the streets or dig through your attic to find something orange to photograph; and you’re not going to want to miss this contest, as Tamron, the sponsor, is offering up an SP 70-300mm Di VC USD lens to the winner (as long as the winner is a Premiere Member, of course).

THE PRIZE

In the pursuit to achieve the most outstanding image resolution in the 70-300mm class, Tamron’s 60th Anniversary lens - the SP 70-300mm F4-5.6 Di VC USD (Model A005) - uses an advanced optical design that features LD (Low Dispersion) and XLD (Extra Low Dispersion) lens elements that prevent chromatic aberration. As a result, the SP 70-300mm Di VC USD boasts sharper contrast and greater descriptive performance than all others in its class. This is the first Tamron lens to sport USD (Ultrasonic Silent Drive), Tamron’s very own ultrasonic auto-focus drive mechanism. This USD mechanism delivers fast focusing, making it a perfect telephoto zoom choice for photographing sports and other fast-moving subjects. The lens also boasts Tamron’s proprietary VC (Vibration Compensation) image stabilization to assist in hand-held photography, not only at long focal length ranges where blurring is common, but also under low-lit conditions, dramatically enhancing photographic freedom. This combination of best in class image resolution, Ultrasonic Silent Drive and Vibration Compensation is a new achievement of Tamron technology, culminating in the production of a premium 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens. Winner of EISA Best Zoom Lens 2010-2011. Available for full-frame and APS-C sensor cameras in Canon, Nikon and Sony mounts (the latter without VC). $50 rebate thru 12/31/10. If the winner is a Premiere Member, they will receive an SP 70-300mm Di VC USD (a $449 value!!) in winner’s choice of Nikon, Canon or Sony mount (for use on full-frame and APS-C cameras - in event winner is Pentax user, they will receive a $449 credit towards a Tamron lens). If the winner is not a Premiere Member, they will receive a Tamron Domke Bag and Tamron Optech Large Lens Wrap (a $75 value).

Booyah!! If that doesn’t make you want to take an orange photograph, I don’t know what will. Get all the contest details here in the contest announcement thread, then make sure you read the guidelines, and get your entry in by October 24th, as voting will begin on the 25th.

I’m looking forward to a bunch of great orange photographs (because, hey, the winning photograph should match the color scheme of PhotographyCorner, too!).

In just a few easy clicks, today’s ‘Photoshop Monday’ Video Corner walks us through how to create that trendy dark/orange sky in our photographs. Instead of using Adobe Photoshop CS4, today’s video is actually an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 video tutorial (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is a fantastic pieces of software that costs less than half the price of Adobe Photoshop CS4).