What are Self Assignments and Why Do Them? 

We all tend to get in creative ruts sometimes. We start assuming too much about what we can and can't photograph, and about the limits of our equipment, our film, and ourselves. These assignments (hopefully) take you out of your comfort zone and get you photographing things you might not normally shoot. 

The only way to really learn is to do, and the more film you put through your camera the better you'll get.  Plus you get the chance to win a bunch of film.  This months winner will get 20 rolls of the Professional film of their choice courtesy of FujiFilm Professional.

This Month: Eats - Roadside America

American culture is deeply rooted in cars and travel. The road trip has taken on mythic proportions in books, movies, and song. So it's no wonder that an entire subculture has grown up in America around roadside food as everyone from Colonel Sanders to your chubby uncle Ralph has tried to figure out how to extract dollars from that passing tide of cars. This month's self-assignment is to capture a bit of that roadside culture. Its a couple of old boys holding court at a table in a diner, the waitress pouring coffee behind the counter, a slice of apple pie sitting next to that coffee, the car hop on roller skates, and it's the wild things that people put on the roadside to pull people in.

Use your imagination! There's so much out there that it's been suggested we run this contest for more than one month!

There are no restrictions on lens, camera, color or black and white. The only restriction is on digital manipulation. We're not looking for pictures of Elvis digitally grafted into a modern diner. All submissions should be as shot. The only digital manipulations should be the things you'd normally do before printing such as minor adjustments to sharpness, contrast, tone, etc.

Deadline
September 15th

Film Types
Color or black and white, film or digital.

Lens Types (35mm format used as a reference)
All

Rules
Each month we pick several photos from the previous month's contest that we think are worthy of publication. Feel free to enter more than one photo. Photos should be submitted by email in JPEG format, and should be no larger than 1400x1400 pixels, 24 bit color (1.4MB). Overly large images will not be reviewed. Panoramic images may exceed 700 pixels in one direction but should not exceed 1.4MB in total file size. 

By entering the contest you are giving us permission to publish the your photo in the magazine, our back issues section, and any reprints of back issues.

Please include the following in your email:

• Name
  email address
  Brand & model of camera
  Brand & focal length of lens
  Brand & speed of film used (or specify digital)
  Scanner and/or scanning method
  How/if the image was manipulated digitally
  The story behind the image
  Enter Now

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