On the subject of disappointing photos of animals, the camera I had with me (my iPhone) didn’t really get this eagle very well. Shots where I got the bay around them turned the bird into smudged pixels.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I was out trying to take photos of the milky way but there was a really annoying glow in the sky that was washing it out. This was a bit of a surprise to me because we were in a small town away from big city lights, and I was out down by a river away from even the lights of the town, so I couldn't work out what was going on. Then I realised that even _with_ the town lights, the glow was coming from the north, but the town was to the south of me. (Sundre AB, fwiw, which is a very nice town to visit if you're in the area)
Then I realised that the light in the sky was the _northern_ lights. And they were putting on a pretty good show, too:
BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I'm moving away from northern Utah in the near future and decided to do some final hiking today as the balmy 60 °F that came with a recent cold front and rain showers is the coolest the area is going to be for a while. Went to the local favorite Wind Caves, which are windy, but were formed by water erosion, not wind. On the way up and down, saw some wildflowers.
A nice feature of the trail is that you come up on top of the caves just before it leads you to their back entrance so you get a beautiful panorama view of the pass.
The mountains on the other side are just kissing the clouds today, but sometimes the clouds drop lower and you can end up hiking through them. If you look at the center, you see a rock wall that another trail follows along the top of. If I'm not sore tomorrow, I might do that trail after work before things heat up again.
BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Got that second hike in today. The Crimson Trail takes you up to the top of the stone wall you can see in the distance in the final image of my previous post and is essentially the top and sides of a rectangle where a second trail called the Riverside Trail is the base of the rectangle. You can walk the loop in either direction and each direction gives a different experience. Today, I stated up the right side of the rectangle directly on the Crimson Trail. There's a stream at the trail start that feeds into the Logan River that winds through the bottom of the canyon.
Saw a bunch of flowers that I didn't see on the other side of the canyon which I thought was interesting.
Also this butterfly that decided the best way to flee from me was to simply move a little farther down the trail several times in a row. Spoiled for bug.
Because you eventually walk on top of the wall, you don't get a good view of it once you're on the wall, but there are some nice vistas on the approach.
Once you get to the top, its a beautiful view of the canyon in both directions. You might be able to make out the Wind Cave in the top left of the below image.
The hike to get to the top is not easy but not overly strenuous either. Where things get exciting is on the descent. The left side of the rectangle is located at a break in the rock wall. Instead of a sheer stone cliff, you get a slightly less sheer dirt/rock path. The steep path drops you fast. The image below is me a few feet away from the rock wall looking up after only about a minute on the path down.
The way down is a work out and is a particular adventure for your thighs and knees. I slipped a couple of times on the way down although I will admit to wearing sneakers and not hiking boots. I've gone in the reverse direction once and the hike up this way is brutal. I do want to note that I saw not one but two people jogging in reverse direction as me on the trail, meaning they came up this path, and one of those was literally jogging up this path as I was on the way down. Damn those people were in shape.
Saw a fresh fawn on the way. Didn't see the mother but that's likely by design.
The end of the descent is the Riverside Trail that follows the road and the river back to the trailhead. Caught sight of a family of ducks.
And finally got a nice closing view of the river via a bridge over it.
There's an easier but much longer trail farther up the canyon that leads to a 1500+ year old jardine juniper tree. We're hitting 90's Fahrenheit over the weekend, but there will be a last gasp of 70's early next week where I might take one final hike to go there.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
One last cold front has been blowing through the last few days and today is the last day in the 60's °F before the area goes permanently into the 80's/90's so I did one last hike. The Jardine Juniper Trail is by far the longest hike I've done at nearly 11.5 miles with a nearly 2000 ft elevation gain. Today's adventure began with me reaching the trail head a little while after the rain stopped and seeing the mountains in the distance consumed by clouds.
I then started walking and immediately ate shit. Like, within 60 seconds of starting I was on my side in the mud. Fortunately, there was a nice brook a little ways down the path where I could wash my hands.
Saw some pretty birds including a goldfinch and male black-chinned hummingbird whose purple throat flashed brilliantly in the sun, but no pictures. The trail winds up one side of a valley that eventually crosses to the other side to start the climb to the main ridge. I saw lots of areas that probably drain water from melting snowpack, but with all but the highest peaks now snowless only this 1/3 of a waterfall still had flowing water.
The path eventually turns into a loop that is divided into a "scenic" half and a "shady" half. The scenic half takes you up the western side of the ridge overlooking the valley so you can see what you just climbed.
Getting to the eponymous Jardine Juniper requires a modest descent on the eastern side of the ridge, which gives a great view of the Logan valley. This is the highest I've been in the valley and got to see the top of the eastern mountains which were much more grassy and rolling than I was expecting.
Along the way is what I called a "teaser" juniper. This one has a fair amount of growth on it and is a nice comparison for the real deal.
Discovered in the 1920's, the Jardine Juniper is estimated to have an age somewhere in excess of 1500 years. Note that it has only a small crown of green in comparison to the teaser juniper earlier on the trail. Still alive and kicking, though!
I came back down the "shady" path that goes through a dense forest area. Around this time, I hear some thunder from the other side of the western mountains and, sure enough, when I left the forest the sun over there was disappearing as the clouds flowed over the tops.
A light to moderate rain started on my way down and the trail, which had become fairly dry over my trek up, was once again wet and slippery. The sound of the rain on the plant life was pleasant and I am proud to say I did not close the circle and eat shit on the way down.
Okay, here's a couple of recent ones. Trees midway through heading into autumn:
and a fairly dramatic bit of sky:
(does anyone know how to resize/crop images on imgur.com with their new image editing UI? It seems designed exclusively for making memes, and is missing the basic-but-useful functionality it used to have)
Does anyone have a good YouTube tutorial or something to teach me how to take better photos? Just in a general I want to take "better" lot better composed more interesting pictures type of thing
I know a clear background is good for portraits of people and things, get as much natural light as you can, but I want to take Good Pictures
Does anyone have a good YouTube tutorial or something to teach me how to take better photos? Just in a general I want to take "better" lot better composed more interesting pictures type of thing
I know a clear background is good for portraits of people and things, get as much natural light as you can, but I want to take Good Pictures
There are other places to go as well depending on the kind of photography you want to take.
But generally for people/animals you want to be at eye level (unless you're doing something non-standard), with them looking/pointing at most 90 degrees away from you in good light (front or side-lit, not backlit unless going for a silhouette), and make sure you don't cut off their body in weird ways (so don't cut off the feet, hands, etc.). As a starting point softer light helps (sunrise/sunset) and avoid harsh, direct light (noon on a cloudless day). In harsh light, seek shadows for your subjects.
Anyway! All of those compositional rules are good. Keep in mind you don't need all of them in any one picture. And while they're rules, it's always more of a rule of thumb. You can break them to very good effect, but it helps to know the rule first and to know what you're breaking and why.
I want to take "better" portraits, I guess, mostly of my kid, like any proud parent, and "better" group photos at family gatherings. Maybe some landscape photos, maybe some archery photos.
DouglasDanger on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I'll go stump for Steve Perry on Youtube as well. While he focuses on wildlife photography, a lot of the same principles apply to action and to a lesser degree portrait photography. For posed portraits, I've found Julia Nilon (also Youtube) is very good and doesn't feed you a bunch of BS.
Steve Perry is selling books, Julia is selling presets. You don't need either of them and I would not recommend buying the presets. (I may end up buying Steve's Z9 book because good god that camera has so many settings).
I would suggest staying away from anybody with a clickbait style thumbnail or header, and that's unfortunately most of them. There's a lot of extremely opinionated folks that need to shut up and sit down (hello Ken Rockwell!).
I'll go stump for Steve Perry on Youtube as well. While he focuses on wildlife photography, a lot of the same principles apply to action and to a lesser degree portrait photography. For posed portraits, I've found Julia Nilon (also Youtube) is very good and doesn't feed you a bunch of BS.
Steve Perry is selling books, Julia is selling presets. You don't need either of them and I would not recommend buying the presets. (I may end up buying Steve's Z9 book because good god that camera has so many settings).
I would suggest staying away from anybody with a clickbait style thumbnail or header, and that's unfortunately most of them. There's a lot of extremely opinionated folks that need to shut up and sit down (hello Ken Rockwell!).
from Journey to wildlife photography what a ride
+1
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
It's basically all about framing and composition, but also about how and where to go to set up shots, and how to *think* about photography.
I'm not familiar with those YouTube channels so I can't say how they compare (although I probably should watch them, my camera is mostly gathering dust these days).
So the city in a effort to curb homeless camping all but did a slash and burn on a cistern {or water retention area}
This is the aftermath
You can see how muddy the ground still is {in 20F weather} as well as the larger stumps of the trees
As what really bothers me is that area was home to a ton of birds {the peregrine hawk had a nest in the trees I will find the pic I took of that a few years ago} as well as skunks rabbits and other animals
As in the days after the animals were looking for new homes since they destroyed that area
Why I think it was to discourage homeless camping was a couple of years ago someone built a leanto in the chute you could not see unless you were down there. I have seen camp sites but the skunks usually chase people off they would not go near the chute
I know that area will now be a mess of weeds in the spring and just ugly because of a short sighted effort
We went to Abraham Lake between boxing day and new year; bubble photos will need more sorting through, but as it was far away from any towns etc, I went out to try and take photos of the milky way again. Turns out that the milky way was below the horizon, so I just went for normal stars. And, like when we were in Sundre, there was an annoying glow to the north that, by pure good luck, was actually the northern lights showing up again:
The next night things were darker so I just got a regular photo of the stars -- it really does help an awful lot to be away from city sky glow, and I finally got around to trying out the little star tracker I got, which helped keep things sharp for longer exposures:
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Took these yesterday morning. 2023 is off to an awfully fancy start.
Theres a shopping area on the main street of my wifes home town that is bar, cigarette/cigar/tobacco store, Weed store, Liquor store. Its super impressive.
Yay the 180-600mm lens from Nikon just went up for sale, grabbed it and the 1.4TC, hopefully it ships by mid July.
Excited to get my tele photo on. I was using the 70-300mm AFP FX lens for a long time and it's nice to be able to upgrade an move onto another Z lens.
Was recently in Mexico, was able to catch the sunrise on the last day.
dang that 2mb max size limit *Shakes fist into air*
Dixon on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Bad news, the 180-600mm isn't shipping till August, assuming you're in the first batch. I ordered mine a couple hours after the announcement dropped, but demand for this lens is going to be INTENSE. There's about 5 years of pent-up demand for an affordable super-telephoto and this lens is it.
Posts
On the subject of disappointing photos of animals, the camera I had with me (my iPhone) didn’t really get this eagle very well. Shots where I got the bay around them turned the bird into smudged pixels.
Then I realised that the light in the sky was the _northern_ lights. And they were putting on a pretty good show, too:
Some fuzzy creatures.
And of course the Wind Caves themselves.
A nice feature of the trail is that you come up on top of the caves just before it leads you to their back entrance so you get a beautiful panorama view of the pass.
The mountains on the other side are just kissing the clouds today, but sometimes the clouds drop lower and you can end up hiking through them. If you look at the center, you see a rock wall that another trail follows along the top of. If I'm not sore tomorrow, I might do that trail after work before things heat up again.
Saw a bunch of flowers that I didn't see on the other side of the canyon which I thought was interesting.
Also this butterfly that decided the best way to flee from me was to simply move a little farther down the trail several times in a row. Spoiled for bug.
Because you eventually walk on top of the wall, you don't get a good view of it once you're on the wall, but there are some nice vistas on the approach.
Once you get to the top, its a beautiful view of the canyon in both directions. You might be able to make out the Wind Cave in the top left of the below image.
The hike to get to the top is not easy but not overly strenuous either. Where things get exciting is on the descent. The left side of the rectangle is located at a break in the rock wall. Instead of a sheer stone cliff, you get a slightly less sheer dirt/rock path. The steep path drops you fast. The image below is me a few feet away from the rock wall looking up after only about a minute on the path down.
The way down is a work out and is a particular adventure for your thighs and knees. I slipped a couple of times on the way down although I will admit to wearing sneakers and not hiking boots. I've gone in the reverse direction once and the hike up this way is brutal. I do want to note that I saw not one but two people jogging in reverse direction as me on the trail, meaning they came up this path, and one of those was literally jogging up this path as I was on the way down. Damn those people were in shape.
Saw a fresh fawn on the way. Didn't see the mother but that's likely by design.
The end of the descent is the Riverside Trail that follows the road and the river back to the trailhead. Caught sight of a family of ducks.
And finally got a nice closing view of the river via a bridge over it.
There's an easier but much longer trail farther up the canyon that leads to a 1500+ year old jardine juniper tree. We're hitting 90's Fahrenheit over the weekend, but there will be a last gasp of 70's early next week where I might take one final hike to go there.
Eastern gray tree frog
Western gray tree frog
I then started walking and immediately ate shit. Like, within 60 seconds of starting I was on my side in the mud. Fortunately, there was a nice brook a little ways down the path where I could wash my hands.
Saw some pretty birds including a goldfinch and male black-chinned hummingbird whose purple throat flashed brilliantly in the sun, but no pictures. The trail winds up one side of a valley that eventually crosses to the other side to start the climb to the main ridge. I saw lots of areas that probably drain water from melting snowpack, but with all but the highest peaks now snowless only this 1/3 of a waterfall still had flowing water.
The path eventually turns into a loop that is divided into a "scenic" half and a "shady" half. The scenic half takes you up the western side of the ridge overlooking the valley so you can see what you just climbed.
Getting to the eponymous Jardine Juniper requires a modest descent on the eastern side of the ridge, which gives a great view of the Logan valley. This is the highest I've been in the valley and got to see the top of the eastern mountains which were much more grassy and rolling than I was expecting.
Along the way is what I called a "teaser" juniper. This one has a fair amount of growth on it and is a nice comparison for the real deal.
Discovered in the 1920's, the Jardine Juniper is estimated to have an age somewhere in excess of 1500 years. Note that it has only a small crown of green in comparison to the teaser juniper earlier on the trail. Still alive and kicking, though!
I came back down the "shady" path that goes through a dense forest area. Around this time, I hear some thunder from the other side of the western mountains and, sure enough, when I left the forest the sun over there was disappearing as the clouds flowed over the tops.
A light to moderate rain started on my way down and the trail, which had become fairly dry over my trek up, was once again wet and slippery. The sound of the rain on the plant life was pleasant and I am proud to say I did not close the circle and eat shit on the way down.
jesus, the Welsh, seriously
and B. I really liked this view from my drive yesterday morning.
and a fairly dramatic bit of sky:
(does anyone know how to resize/crop images on imgur.com with their new image editing UI? It seems designed exclusively for making memes, and is missing the basic-but-useful functionality it used to have)
Does anyone have a good YouTube tutorial or something to teach me how to take better photos? Just in a general I want to take "better" lot better composed more interesting pictures type of thing
I know a clear background is good for portraits of people and things, get as much natural light as you can, but I want to take Good Pictures
Is this good advice?
https://photographycourse.net/compositional-rules-in-photography-start-here/
I found this site incredibly helpful:
https://photographylife.com/learn-photography
There are other places to go as well depending on the kind of photography you want to take.
But generally for people/animals you want to be at eye level (unless you're doing something non-standard), with them looking/pointing at most 90 degrees away from you in good light (front or side-lit, not backlit unless going for a silhouette), and make sure you don't cut off their body in weird ways (so don't cut off the feet, hands, etc.). As a starting point softer light helps (sunrise/sunset) and avoid harsh, direct light (noon on a cloudless day). In harsh light, seek shadows for your subjects.
Anyway! All of those compositional rules are good. Keep in mind you don't need all of them in any one picture. And while they're rules, it's always more of a rule of thumb. You can break them to very good effect, but it helps to know the rule first and to know what you're breaking and why.
I want to take "better" portraits, I guess, mostly of my kid, like any proud parent, and "better" group photos at family gatherings. Maybe some landscape photos, maybe some archery photos.
Steve Perry is selling books, Julia is selling presets. You don't need either of them and I would not recommend buying the presets. (I may end up buying Steve's Z9 book because good god that camera has so many settings).
I would suggest staying away from anybody with a clickbait style thumbnail or header, and that's unfortunately most of them. There's a lot of extremely opinionated folks that need to shut up and sit down (hello Ken Rockwell!).
from Journey to wildlife photography what a ride
https://www.amazon.com/Photographers-Eye-Composition-Design-Digital/dp/0240809343
It's basically all about framing and composition, but also about how and where to go to set up shots, and how to *think* about photography.
I'm not familiar with those YouTube channels so I can't say how they compare (although I probably should watch them, my camera is mostly gathering dust these days).
One way or another though, I'm now limited by my skills instead of my camera when trying to take pictures of birds-in-flight.
This is the aftermath
You can see how muddy the ground still is {in 20F weather} as well as the larger stumps of the trees
As what really bothers me is that area was home to a ton of birds {the peregrine hawk had a nest in the trees I will find the pic I took of that a few years ago} as well as skunks rabbits and other animals
As in the days after the animals were looking for new homes since they destroyed that area
Why I think it was to discourage homeless camping was a couple of years ago someone built a leanto in the chute you could not see unless you were down there. I have seen camp sites but the skunks usually chase people off they would not go near the chute
I know that area will now be a mess of weeds in the spring and just ugly because of a short sighted effort
The next night things were darker so I just got a regular photo of the stars -- it really does help an awful lot to be away from city sky glow, and I finally got around to trying out the little star tracker I got, which helped keep things sharp for longer exposures:
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Theres a shopping area on the main street of my wifes home town that is bar, cigarette/cigar/tobacco store, Weed store, Liquor store. Its super impressive.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
3 stores, 3 signs, all the same shape, same font but delightfully separate
if only there was a fourth; TENTS
More good clouds!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Compact as advertised, though slightly thicker than I was expecting.
Wanted a good pocket camera for short and long trips, someone even smaller than the Alpha 5100. Maybe I'll take some comparison shots and post here
Excited to get my tele photo on. I was using the 70-300mm AFP FX lens for a long time and it's nice to be able to upgrade an move onto another Z lens.
Was recently in Mexico, was able to catch the sunrise on the last day.
dang that 2mb max size limit *Shakes fist into air*
I got my order in around 8am est but I'm not sure the time the exact post went up. I'm also in Canada which typically adds a fun delay.