Hey UncleLong, I'm going to Alaska in May-June. How rad is that?
That's pretty rad, depending on where you're going. Well, it's probably rad in general, but where are you going?
All over!
It's an Adventures by Disney trip, they take you around (place) and teach you all sorts of things and show you all sorts of things and we start in Fairbanks and end in Anchorage and see just about everything we can see in 8 days!
I like the second and third one.....mostly the third one.
Those two have the 'subject' that is in focus near the edge of the frame instead of at the center which gives it a bit more intrigue and asymetricalness. The first one doesn't have the contrast with the sky (or whatever background that is) and it just feels so very centered even though the part that is out of focus is in the top third of the photo. I'm not sure that makes much sense but thats just how it feels to me. I also really like the vignetting and focused light in the third one. I'm sure these are much darker than they seem on this monitor.
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No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Eh, I dunno erisian. Normally your bokeh shots are awesome but for this one the pattern inherent in the salt cubes is muddled into an unrecognizable blur and it doesn't help. It does look dreamy and stuff but it's like halfway being an abstract shot and a close-up, making it feel weird.
@jake: What kind of bush grows that red? It's pretty cool especially against a sky that rich. @no: I like 'garage' and 'friend', the lighting helps keep the focus where it's supposed to be and the noir-vibe is great. 'Business' probably needs a different crop for the subjects, should bring them up towards the center some.
Anyway more chandelier (It's actually my aunt's and I have dinner there a few times each year)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Osier_Dogwood That's pretty goddamn cool, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in my life before. A bright red shrub. All the plants here are mostly carbon copies of each other =\
pope - yeah, that's not working. One of those - "cool things I should take a picture of", but doesn't really carry any depth.
Sonick - the second one looks a little like a heart pendant.
Jake! - no, no crop. I like the details, the balloons, the boom box on the wall. It tells a story.
On the self portrait - background's a little bland. Texture would help. Otherwise - looks natural.
You guys are right on the salt pic - it's a pretty terrible photo. It was more of academic interest to me, as I had my 17mm reversed on my 105mm macro, so was getting ~6x magnification. The problem I have with using a reversed lens to increase magnification is that any aperture other than wide-open causes vignetting (on this lens that's f/2.8, and if I go to merely f/4 then the vignette covers a good bit of the frame) so I am stuck with a retardedly small DOF. Less than one grain of salt, it seems .
So yeah, crap picture but it's neat to see how big I can make one grain of salt. Well, to me anyway.
In other news, it seems even birds can suffer the occasional marital spat:
So it's Winter time and I'm in Florida, so what do my friends and I do? We go to the beach!
I'm trying to learn about black and white photography but I don't think I'm doing a good job. Here's one of the shots.
I ended up going past the breaking waves and taking a few shots from there, but I kept getting water on my lens..
The beach doesn't really lend itself for black and white. Or at least, I never got the feeling that I should use black and white while on the beach. Did you lose a lot of detail on the dude's wetsuit? It doesn't really have any shades of grey/black on my screen.
B&W is not the issue.
Time of day, angle, composition, weird crop, and last bus not least- subject matter.
Is that about my photo? Can you explain how I can make it better? Still learning here..
I have to say I disagree with both nO and Aldo on this. I like the image because of the contrast between the rider and the water. His expression and gesture add to that contrast which I think works.
This gondola takes you up and down Grouse Mountain in Vancouver.
I did a doubletake when I saw this shape moving down the river. The orange and blue popped nicely here, I think.
Shot at night, hand-held (thank you Super SteadyShot). I burned the bottom of the image in an effort to remove some distractingly bright foreground material.
I have to say I disagree with both nO and Aldo on this. I like the image because of the contrast between the rider and the water. His expression and gesture add to that contrast which I think works.
What is "Works"?
It's one thing to technically expose a photo, yet completely another to create something I might like on a wall. I realize that's not all we post here - snapshots and all, and that's ok. But it's a surfing shot, so there are certain characteristics one expects.
I have to say I disagree with both nO and Aldo on this. I like the image because of the contrast between the rider and the water. His expression and gesture add to that contrast which I think works.
What is "Works"?
It's one thing to technically expose a photo, yet completely another to create something I might like on a wall. I realize that's not all we post here - snapshots and all, and that's ok. But it's a surfing shot, so there are certain characteristics one expects.
In terms of the photo and what could be made better... well, I don't know. It's very static. He looks like he's standing in place, the wave is small.
The frame is copped, yet I don't see how the crop helps the composition.
It's black and white, yet there are no benefits to it being black and white. We are not lead by the shapes or shadows...
Well, I certainly won't say it's a world class photo, but I disagree on several of your points. I didn't see this as a "omg amazing surfer" shot at all which is why I wasn't expecting Jack English. I think the black and white helps for the same reason his goofy expression and awkward stance does: it doesn't look like he's in his element. I think the high contrast expounds on that. I could be wrong, maybe he's an amazing surfer, but I think this shot works regardless or in spite of that because it tells me something different.
I'll grant you the cropped frame doesn't help anything though. :P
They're both good looking shots. I would enjoy a touch more space above the bottle in the first one, the cap is REALLY close to the top of the frame. But the contrast and the tonal range in the grays are both top notch.
I think those first 2 are good, they made me look at them for over 20 seconds, at least.
The last one is very interesting, but I would have pulled the focus a bit more on the twig growing out of the pillion, maybe putting it slightly above the horizon or in line with the horizon so it looks like the twig is actually a big tree.
I was thinking I would post some photos in this thread, and then I saw some of the pictures already on there, and I thought, well, maybe not so much..., but then I figured, what the hell, why not? Although in picking the images, I found myself looking at them a lot more critically, and a lot of the pictures I thought were halfway decent before don't look all that hot now. Nevertheless...these are various pictures from Spain.
These pictures were taken with a point-n-shoot camera, huh? You have beautiful subjects, but the limits of the camera are very apparent.
1st has the windows overblown, 2nd has a white sky that was (probably) blue, 3rd is fine, though, 4th is slightly moved and again is overblown, 5th looks slightly moved and it's very yellow-ish, 6th is the most artistic of the bunch, even though you just greyscaled a picture you took.
To give a bit more feedback on the 6th one: you have an interesting subject, with a lot of interesting contrast, but also with some interesting surfaces, these come out good in the photo. I do not like the cropping, though: there's a lot of 'noise' in it, most notably the beams that go over your head. I think this picture would have been more impressive if you had put the door in the centre of the image or if you had put the two beams crossing each other in the centre. This kind of depends on how the rest of the building looked, of course.
It would have also been interesting to make a picture of just a bit of bare wall or just the door.
Numero drei I like a lot. The center composition works well, and the warm tones are contrasted by the lights in the street. And there's "ghosts" of people there, too. Good shot. If you shot it raw you could pull out even a little more out of it.
edit: oh, and anable - you need some negative space around those bottles of drunkedness. Other than that - clean stuff.
Yeah, it's the best digital camera I've got (cropped to a better camera's 1.5:1 ratio, mostly because I like the proportions better), and although I have a 35-mm, I haven't yet found any places to get good film for it. Yeah, the sky was blue in the second one, and I didn't have a tripod for the fourth one. Though the overblown-ness of the two church pictures was in the originals, I will admit I exacerbated it in Gimp (my levels adjusting isn't exactly schooled). The fifth one is quite yellow, although the lighting in the building wasn't really too far off from the picture, at least from what I can remember. I did kind of like the effect it seemed to have, although I will admit that without any contrasting colors, it does feel a bit much. As for that last one, it is grayscaled, but not by me (at least directly); I actually set the camera like that when I took it, mostly because of aforementioned lack of 35-mm film. I think if I ever do find a place where I can get film and (more importantly) develop it, I'm going to go back to that building to see what I can get in bona fide black and white. I do agree that the contrast is a bit troublesome (probably not helped by my cropping). I tried to crop it so that the beams crossed at a third spot, though in retrospect that may not have helped, since I'm not sure they're meant to be a focal point. I did take another picture of the door in vertical orientation, which I'll post in a bit, without the cropping (and, hell, maybe without the touching up, too--really, this is as much an exercise in post-processing for me, if not more so, as in the picture taking itself; I still feel like I'm kind of groping in the dark in that regard).
They're both good looking shots. I would enjoy a touch more space above the bottle in the first one, the cap is REALLY close to the top of the frame. But the contrast and the tonal range in the grays are both top notch.
What does your lighting setup look like?
Thanks. My setup was a black backdrop next to a window in late afternoon. Seriously. I tried some with my strobe as well but I didn't like them quite as much. There's one on my flickr if you want to see. It feels a bit too aggressive for me I think.
Cecil - I feel like I should like that shot more than I do, but it's just not quite doing anything for me. You have some nice lines and curves there but I think the quality of the shot ruins it for me.
Uncle - What Aldo said, plus that first shot is really, really good. I took me a second to figure out exactly what I was looking at, but the whole land vs sea thing is great. I'm wondering what a shot would have looked like from underneath the bars though. I don't recall you doing many symmetry shots, but I think that would have been amazing as well.
Craw - Shots 1, 4, and 5 look very touristy. Not bad for remembering things, but they don't interest me much objectively. Also, like Aldo said, there seem to be some limitations of your camera that lower the quality of all of your shots which doesn't help. Still, I like that last shot quite a bit. Good exposure. Nice texture. Interesting composition. It's definitely the best of the bunch, in my opinion.
Well, it's not good enough a camera to have RAWs, but it is possible I overdid the contrast; I'm putting up a reduced version of the original (scaling being all I've done), to see if maybe it was just me. Also, here's the other shot, which doesn't have the crossed beams (or at least, less of them). I put the original along with my touchups, to see if maybe there's something I'm doing wrong in that regards.
PS: Anabel, looking at them, I would have to agree; I think that that was what worried me initially about putting stuff up, comparing them to what other people had posted. In my defense, I suppose, those were the ones I took most as a tourist--I'm living in Jaén at the moment, but those shots were during visits to Alhambra in Granada (number 4), and Cordoba (1 and 5).
Well, it's not good enough a camera to have RAWs, but it is possible I overdid the contrast; I'm putting up a reduced version of the original (scaling being all I've done), to see if maybe it was just me. Also, here's the other shot, which doesn't have the crossed beams (or at least, less of them). I put the original along with my touchups, to see if maybe there's something I'm doing wrong in that regards.
I think your original shot is fine. The first redo is too flat and the second has unnecessarily high black levels. Also the framing in the original is much better.
Anable - Is the one you thought too aggressive New Amsterdam, five? I really like how much this one pops. We might just have to agree to disagree on this Really, it almost sparkles.
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It's an Adventures by Disney trip, they take you around (place) and teach you all sorts of things and show you all sorts of things and we start in Fairbanks and end in Anchorage and see just about everything we can see in 8 days!
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Here are some macros I did for a wallpaper pack on dA (don't hate me)
Those two have the 'subject' that is in focus near the edge of the frame instead of at the center which gives it a bit more intrigue and asymetricalness. The first one doesn't have the contrast with the sky (or whatever background that is) and it just feels so very centered even though the part that is out of focus is in the top third of the photo. I'm not sure that makes much sense but thats just how it feels to me. I also really like the vignetting and focused light in the third one. I'm sure these are much darker than they seem on this monitor.
Pope: Your cat looks furious. Also, I'm not really into macro photography, but I love those shots from the last page, simply awesome, well done.
When I get some time, I'll give it another shot with the whole thing in focus.
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This is AWESOME.
Virum - I think you are my doppelganger or something since we always seem to like completely opposite things.
More from christmas:
Cranberry vodka
Business talk
In the garage
A friend
Table salt (at approximately 6:1 magnification):
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
@jake: What kind of bush grows that red? It's pretty cool especially against a sky that rich.
@no: I like 'garage' and 'friend', the lighting helps keep the focus where it's supposed to be and the noir-vibe is great. 'Business' probably needs a different crop for the subjects, should bring them up towards the center some.
Anyway more chandelier (It's actually my aunt's and I have dinner there a few times each year)
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NO: That garage shot, have you tried cropping it vertically?
self portrait, ish, kinda.
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Sonick - the second one looks a little like a heart pendant.
Jake! - no, no crop. I like the details, the balloons, the boom box on the wall. It tells a story.
On the self portrait - background's a little bland. Texture would help. Otherwise - looks natural.
So yeah, crap picture but it's neat to see how big I can make one grain of salt. Well, to me anyway.
In other news, it seems even birds can suffer the occasional marital spat:
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
I'm trying to learn about black and white photography but I don't think I'm doing a good job. Here's one of the shots.
I ended up going past the breaking waves and taking a few shots from there, but I kept getting water on my lens..
I will have to get some 120 film and play around with it some when I get back home.
Time of day, angle, composition, weird crop, and last bus not least- subject matter.
Is that about my photo? Can you explain how I can make it better? Still learning here..
Crits comments etc needed to improve thanks!
I have to say I disagree with both nO and Aldo on this. I like the image because of the contrast between the rider and the water. His expression and gesture add to that contrast which I think works.
This gondola takes you up and down Grouse Mountain in Vancouver.
I did a doubletake when I saw this shape moving down the river. The orange and blue popped nicely here, I think.
Shot at night, hand-held (thank you Super SteadyShot). I burned the bottom of the image in an effort to remove some distractingly bright foreground material.
What is "Works"?
It's one thing to technically expose a photo, yet completely another to create something I might like on a wall. I realize that's not all we post here - snapshots and all, and that's ok. But it's a surfing shot, so there are certain characteristics one expects.
Look at some photos from http://www.jackenglish.com/
In terms of the photo and what could be made better... well, I don't know. It's very static. He looks like he's standing in place, the wave is small.
The frame is copped, yet I don't see how the crop helps the composition.
It's black and white, yet there are no benefits to it being black and white. We are not lead by the shapes or shadows...
Well, I certainly won't say it's a world class photo, but I disagree on several of your points. I didn't see this as a "omg amazing surfer" shot at all which is why I wasn't expecting Jack English. I think the black and white helps for the same reason his goofy expression and awkward stance does: it doesn't look like he's in his element. I think the high contrast expounds on that. I could be wrong, maybe he's an amazing surfer, but I think this shot works regardless or in spite of that because it tells me something different.
I'll grant you the cropped frame doesn't help anything though. :P
What does your lighting setup look like?
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
Downtown canal in OKC, taken with my Asahi Pentax Spotmatic then scanned
Too much?
I pulled this one back to reduce the overall blown highlights.
Too far?
What do you guys think about this dock pillion?
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The last one is very interesting, but I would have pulled the focus a bit more on the twig growing out of the pillion, maybe putting it slightly above the horizon or in line with the horizon so it looks like the twig is actually a big tree.
Anyway.
These pictures were taken with a point-n-shoot camera, huh? You have beautiful subjects, but the limits of the camera are very apparent.
1st has the windows overblown, 2nd has a white sky that was (probably) blue, 3rd is fine, though, 4th is slightly moved and again is overblown, 5th looks slightly moved and it's very yellow-ish, 6th is the most artistic of the bunch, even though you just greyscaled a picture you took.
To give a bit more feedback on the 6th one: you have an interesting subject, with a lot of interesting contrast, but also with some interesting surfaces, these come out good in the photo. I do not like the cropping, though: there's a lot of 'noise' in it, most notably the beams that go over your head. I think this picture would have been more impressive if you had put the door in the centre of the image or if you had put the two beams crossing each other in the centre. This kind of depends on how the rest of the building looked, of course.
It would have also been interesting to make a picture of just a bit of bare wall or just the door.
edit: oh, and anable - you need some negative space around those bottles of drunkedness. Other than that - clean stuff.
Thanks. My setup was a black backdrop next to a window in late afternoon. Seriously. I tried some with my strobe as well but I didn't like them quite as much. There's one on my flickr if you want to see. It feels a bit too aggressive for me I think.
Cecil - I feel like I should like that shot more than I do, but it's just not quite doing anything for me. You have some nice lines and curves there but I think the quality of the shot ruins it for me.
Uncle - What Aldo said, plus that first shot is really, really good. I took me a second to figure out exactly what I was looking at, but the whole land vs sea thing is great. I'm wondering what a shot would have looked like from underneath the bars though. I don't recall you doing many symmetry shots, but I think that would have been amazing as well.
Craw - Shots 1, 4, and 5 look very touristy. Not bad for remembering things, but they don't interest me much objectively. Also, like Aldo said, there seem to be some limitations of your camera that lower the quality of all of your shots which doesn't help. Still, I like that last shot quite a bit. Good exposure. Nice texture. Interesting composition. It's definitely the best of the bunch, in my opinion.
PS: Anabel, looking at them, I would have to agree; I think that that was what worried me initially about putting stuff up, comparing them to what other people had posted. In my defense, I suppose, those were the ones I took most as a tourist--I'm living in Jaén at the moment, but those shots were during visits to Alhambra in Granada (number 4), and Cordoba (1 and 5).
Cotija:
Calle:
I think your original shot is fine. The first redo is too flat and the second has unnecessarily high black levels. Also the framing in the original is much better.
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010