First and foremost, welcome to RoTP and our brand new theme! Hopefully this sleek new look of ours will help improve user navigation and over all style. Throw us some comments about what you like/dislike!,

Now to the actual post. Today’s article is all about some pretty sweet news happening around u,s throughout the month of February. So to start us off…

Free Desktop Wallpapers

John Batdorff Free Desktop Wallpapers

I ran into John Batdorff’s blog almost a year ago, and have been a fan ever since. I enjoy wildlife, cultural, and scenic photography and that’s primarily what John focuses on. Within the past year, I have seen his blog grow incredibly fast with a new WordPress theme, many new desktop wallpapers, awesome contests, more and more product reviews, and I even believe he wrote/contributed to his own book? Don’t quote me, but check out his blog for yourself. Anyways, John always posts new desktop wallpapers each month so check them out! Free Desktop Wallpapers

Stock Photography

Stock Photography is a major component for graphic designers and artists, thus becoming a major career for photographers. Well, it was major… now it is extremely difficult to get into because of the saturation of photo’s, HOWEVER if you are a well recognized stock photographer, here is a quick tip as to stock popularity this week! (If you are that recognized I suppose you should already be recognizing the trends, but regardless…) iStockPhoto is looking for creative business themed images, and of course Valentines Day shots. Some examples

3 New Water Resistant Sigma Lenses

I am a large fan of Sigma Lenses. They are of excellent quality for the price, and are a great alternative to higher end Canon L series lenses, or Nikon’s. Now obviously, if you are going all pro you will be investing in higher level equipment, but for the most of us I think Sigma offers some of the best value dollar for dollar. So anyways, Sigma announced this week three brand new lenses to their line-up. 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM II, 105mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM, 50-150mm F2.8 EX DC APO OS HSM. They will initially be released with Canon and Nikon mounts, however this list will expand in future months. More details here

Canon T3i

Canon T3i Rebel Series

Boasting a 3″ display, 18 megapixel, DIGIC 4 Processor, this little camera is a BEAST! I have always recommended the Canon Rebel series to emerging photographers, and I think the T3i will join this lineup nicely. I do have a few concerns however; 18 megapixels is killer, but will it perform well in low light conditions? Will this be another 50D which doubled the pixels of the 40D, yet had serious noise issues in comparison? Hopefully not… but I do feel that Canon did that to jump on the “megapixel market” that new photographers base large camera decisions on. Secondly, rotating displays are quite popular… but I really dislike them. The durability level just does not seem to be the same as a built in screen. Besides, when are you going to use the display? You should be shooting through the eyepiece and checking the histogram levels on the display, that’s really all. Although, I suppose video does not work through the eyepiece…. Ok, well to my third point: No CF slot which would immediately be the decision making factor of mine not to buy this camera. I don’t own a single SD card, making this a pretty pointless backup camera. I suppose that the younger generation will have more SD cards from other mobile devices than they will CF though… so I’m not sure. I wish it could have been both? lol. Anyways, check out the details here.

$75 Free Lightroom Preset Giveaway

$75 Lightroom Preset Giveaway!

Lastly, I would like to remind everyone about our $75 Lightroom Preset giveaway. Presets are ALWAY handy to have, so be sure to join the giveaway. It’s free to enter, so why not? Visit the details here.