Before that, a new segment is introduced critiquing photos that users send in. This is essentially a no-holds-barred cage match. Many photos enter, only one photo survives. Or something like that. GET IN THE CAGE!!! Submit your photos for critique in our new Flickr group!

Here are the photos critiqued, along with brief notes about each and some of what was said on the show.

Tom – great composition; great view of Spaceship Earth, monorail, Flower & Garden, and blue Florida sky.

Ryan – monorail past Spaceship Earth; loves the view and everything else.

Cory – agrees about the monorail; loves the reflection.

Tom – Reposition camera so flower insides are more visible; clone out Dumbo wires.

Cory – Shallower depth of field; possibly wider.

Ryan – Good photo here; possibly shallower depth of field; sharper focus on flowers.

Cory – nice work not too much recovery.

Tom – great work; might dial back saturation on CC.

Ryan – loves lighting; great shot.

Bryan’s photo of Beach Club is next. He doesn’t allow sharing on Flickr (tsk, tsk), but you can view his photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9141645@N04/8906986611/in/set-72157633842972739

Tom – Great leading line; recover some highlights and bring out sunrise color.

Cory – Loves look of water; boost shadows.

Ryan – great swooping water; bring out more color in horizon.

Cory – Solid light; more breathing room at bottom?

Ryan – Loves it; could use more contrast; symmetry.

Tom – Arielle is famous in Japan; solid composition.

We also discuss the new Flickr, and why we think now is the perfect time to reinvigorate the Disney photography community on Flickr.

Nothing all that exciting for show notes this time, but if you have any questions, please post them in the comments!

We also go off on a variety of tangents having absolutely nothing to do with photography. Surprise, surprise.

The gang is joined by the world famous “Mearn” of the Duffyngton Post to discuss the inspirational and legendary Mater Topiary, and what you should expect when photographing this year’s Flower & Garden Festival.

We start out by covering the essential gear for nighttime photography, which is basically a remote and a tripod. For remotes, we use cheap wired remotes from Hong Kong–not the ridiculously overpriced first party ones. If the one at that link isn’t compatible with your camera, keep searching Amazon; you should be able to find one for <$15. You’ll want a wired remote for bulb mode shooting so you can “ghost” people out of your images.

For travel tripods, both Tom and Cory highly recommend the Luxi L Tripod. It used to go by the name Luxi F (only difference is color) and might now go by a totally different name. Basically, you want the one that’s ~63 inches tall.

We also discuss some other techniques, including manual focus and natural starbursts as a result of your aperture.

Then the show starts really getting awesome, as we discuss our favorite TV shows, alternate locations for Mater Topiary, and our Oscar picks.

At some point, Tom discusses editing in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop with Smart Objects. Here’s a great tutorial to supplement that.

Very little on Disney in this episode, although we do discuss how the various software might work well for Disney photos.

At the end of the episode, Tom goes on a tangent about murder-kittens. You can read more about this in the Washington Post, or in this hilarious cartoon.

Tom starts rambling on about how he uses presets in Adobe Camera Raw. Nothing important here. Cory mentions Matt Kloskowski, who has a lot of Lightroom presets.

Cory then asks about editing night images. Ryan discusses editing photos together to adjust white balance and saving photos as TIFFs before bringing them into Photoshop or Photomatix.

From there, we warned against taming highlights too much, increasing clarity too much, and increasing saturation instead of vibrance.

We concluded the episode by teasing next week’s episode, which will be a salute to the Nik software! Tom touched upon The HDR Book that he recently read.