December is a personal favorite. With holidays spanning the globe, it is a great time to spend time with family, friends and community.

I am pretty excited about Something Newer the photo contest we are running right now. Connecting with the holidays the theme for the contest is friends. And the prizes are as shiny as those boxes under the tree – two-week rentals of bodies and lenses. If you are taking some days off and looking for something to read, watch or inspire your photography, read on for December’s speedlinks.

• Action and Preset Extravaganza
  Epic Edits
  Brian kicked off a project with a purpose to of creating a good resource of Photoshop actions and Lightroom presets. Oh yea – there are cool prizes too – more than 1000$ worth of prizes from Make Light Real. This is just like Brian – fixing the world one action at a time. I am looking forward to see final results, as the last project from Epic Edits yielded a great resource for film shooters.
• Do the Cokin Bokeh
  Zaug’z Blaug
  This is a great A to Z tutorial on creating those nifty shaped Bokehs from Brian – Just in time for the holidays. It has a twist, using the Cokin system to hold the shaped bristol
• SqueezeTheLime
  Squeeze The Lime
  Bert Stephani, a long time favorite of mine and a kick-ass photographer by himself along with Pieter Van Impe just gave birth to a new blog. It has all the great stuff Bert is used to doing – videos, tips and funny stuff.
• Speed Ring Setup
  The f-Stops Here
  Ever wanted to put them high end softboxes on a strobe? David Tejada shows us how
• Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free
  Strobist
  It’s been along time since any piece of article on the photo-blogo-sphere got so much excitement and through everybody off balance. The short story is that David is suggesting four good to work for free. The long story is that the photosphere is "torn" between free is sometimes good (Chase Jarvis, Joe McNally and more) and Free is wrong (Neil, John Harrington and more), although there are more than 200 comments, there are worth the read almost as the main article.
• Is Your Camera Gear Insured?
  Legg Net
  Is your gear insured? Rich does a short and focused talk about the benefits of insuring your (thousands of dollars) photography gear.
• 17-85 Exposed – FM Forums
  Blog Name
  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again – Take the inside view on the Canon 17-85.
• Pocketwizardstrobist – The Strobist Jet Pack
  YouTube
  Need more hands to hold your flash? Jesse Rosten is there to help with an extra hand
  
• The First Assignment: Pitfalls and Opportunities
  Lighting Essentials
  Don gives the A to Z on photography assignments. This is a great resource if you are making the move from photography as a hobby to photography as a job
• White Balance Part II: Accurate, or Convincing?
  The Online Photographer
  Carl Weese has an interesting take on white balance – He notes that accurate is not always the best WB.

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Related Links:
– Speed Links for 11-21-2008
– Speed Links for 10-23-2008
– Speed Links for 09-21-2008
– Speed Links for 8-28-2008
– Speed Links for 7-9-2008