Picture of the Day

pd, the sunsets lately have been unbelievable. Caught yesterday's at Cave Rock driving from Spats's place to Dookey's place ... tonight I caught it from the Oakland Hills looking out at the SF Bay.

Anyways ... self portraits: timers are fun, and really frigging hard ... I've had a lot more fun doing self portraits with an RF remote lately.

As far as the GND (graduated neutral density filter), it is possible to cheat and do a GND in photoshop but you will not get as good of results as you will with glass in front of the lens, which is what I'm guessing splitter was alluding to. In photoshop it's not an extension or plugin ... you can do it as a gradient layer from white to black and layered in as an overlay. I can show you next time I'm in town.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5159/...243edef1_b.jpg
Great Blue Heron by beezskis, on Flickr

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Originally Posted by mtcham

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2475/...851a9513_z.jpg
Bear L'amour by jrmorris-mt, on Flickr

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WTF!?!? Dude, how often does someone get to see something like that? That's a once-in-a-lifetime shot unless you happen to be a wildlife biologist studying the mating habits of black bears.


Hotidiggity - how close were you? Given the depth of field I'm thinking you weren't using all that long of a lens...?

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Originally Posted by Chainsaw_Willie

Hotidiggity - how close were you? Given the depth of field I'm thinking you weren't using all that long of a lens...?

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I was maybe 6 or 7 feet away from him. He was just chilling eating little fish and seemed to find me non-threatening. Closest I've even been to one. they usually get spooked much sooner.

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/t...n/6a952185.jpg

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/t...DSCF8216-1.jpg

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/t...n/6ad234fc.jpg

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Originally Posted by HotDiggity

I was maybe 6 or 7 feet away from him. He was just chilling eating little fish and seemed to find me non-threatening. Closest I've even been to one. they usually get spooked much sooner.

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Yeah, I've never been able to get closer than 20-30 feet from one. Good job!

another from the other day. we're back to clear skies now.
http://www.aboutlaketahoe.com/images...wood%20005.jpg

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Originally Posted by Chainsaw_Willie

WTF!?!? Dude, how often does someone get to see something like that? That's a once-in-a-lifetime shot unless you happen to be a wildlife biologist studying the mating habits of black bears.

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I felt like such a voyeur.:) I watched these two bears doing the deed for about 20 minutes-took about 300 shots. Coolest thing I've witnessed yet shooting wildlife. It's been a great spring for seeing tons of bears due to the heavy snowpack up high still.

Summit cairn at the true Hunter summit. Nice day to be out.

http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/w...1/IMG_3662.jpg

While I like the idea... is anything in focus? Selective DOF is nice but with only a tiny flower that makes up 1% of your picture being in focus it looks more like a mistake more than anything.

PS... take my comments with a grain of salt... I'm no pro by any stretch. And I know "art" is objective.

The dragonflies were really out in force in my yard today.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5229/...9a4a5fd7_b.jpg

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Originally Posted by HotDiggity

I was maybe 6 or 7 feet away from him. He was just chilling eating little fish and seemed to find me non-threatening. Closest I've even been to one. they usually get spooked much sooner.

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Originally Posted by Chainsaw_Willie

Yeah, I've never been able to get closer than 20-30 feet from one. Good job!

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If you want to get closer, get in a kayak. With no legs they don't find you threatening. Amazing that HotDiggity was able to get so close just walking.

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Originally Posted by The AD

The dragonflies were really out in force in my yard today.

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sick!

Tenaya Lake in the Yosemite high country partially covered with ice this last Saturday

http://gebster.smugmug.com/Other/Ten.../IMG9991-M.jpg

Playing around with some PP effects in LR3. Lots of fill light and recovery, moderately high blacks, some desaturation:
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5149/...216a2966_z.jpg
Spring in Summit, June 19, 2011 by FuzzSummit, on Flickr

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Originally Posted by powdork

that's as far left as i can go. i could put the golfer more on the right side, but that would mean cropping out some of the good sky.

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That's if you stay stationary and just rotate the camera. But if you physically moved the camera around to your left a bit more, you could maybe put the golfer to the right of the frame and keep the good sky in the center (looker's left of golfer).

Check out lightroomkillertips.com

he has a ton of free presets that might be worthwhile. i know you are probably tweaking things yourself, but it is nice to have a place to start

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Originally Posted by powdork

i was limited by the garbage can the camera was sitting on (while i ran over to the tee as fast as i could).
sort of like this?
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1308498199

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more so, it looks like you flashed the flag in this? this one doesn't do anything for me... I'm guessing you are using an on-camera direct flash? It bounces off the nice sky and gives the flag a warm glow that isn't necessarily a good warm glow, it makes the white balance look off. Also, you cut out the bottom of the flag...

I'm thinking lying on your belly or holding the camera as close to the ground and aiming up, filling the frame with almost all sky... You know where the hills start in the background and cut off the golfer at the knees? That orange sky would start below the knees. The whole body of the golfer would be framed by orange sky. The lake is beautiful as are the hills across the way normally, but they are lost in the black anyways in this photo. You can get low enough and aim high enough to eliminate them all together.

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Originally Posted by SchralphMacchio

As far as the GND (graduated neutral density filter), it is possible to cheat and do a GND in photoshop but you will not get as good of results as you will with glass in front of the lens, which is what I'm guessing splitter was alluding to.

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actually that was fuzz this time, recommending a GND. And Fuzz kills it, but I disagree with him on this one. You can absolutely expose correctly for the sky. Since the goal is a silhouette, that foreground (in this case as little as possible)/golfer will be black. A GND is very useful to balance exposure if you are trying to expose the foreground as well... With a silhouette I would stop down to expose the sky well, rather than use a filter, and the "underexposed" golfer looks good still because it's not underexposed, it's a purposeful black silhouette.

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Originally Posted by Fuzz

That's if you stay stationary and just rotate the camera. But if you physically moved the camera around to your left a bit more, you could maybe put the golfer to the right of the frame and keep the good sky in the center (looker's left of golfer).

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+1... definitely good to edit the photo and cropping does help to learn composition. At some point, when you are very familiar with your equipment you will set up comps that you know you will crop down, not to eliminate something, but because the shape of your vision doesn't match up with your sensor shape.

but, like fuzz, I think we were giving advice for the next opportunity, not necessarily edits for this photo...

Keep up the good work...

http://alexcooperblogs.files.wordpre...6/p5300344.jpg

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/i...0891/Spent.jpg

Just got an intervelometer in the mail today. Soooo....
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5061/...9282fb3a_b.jpg
2:33, ISO 400 Super Takumar 1:3.5/135 lens, f16
and
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5270/...d0e866e4_b.jpg
5:03, ISO 3200, same lens. Pretty sure I didn't need to go all the way up to 3200 on this one. I think the illumination of the tree branch in the lower right is either from my roommate having his light on or from down stairs. These shots were taken from my third floor balcony.

Cloudy and colorful sunset in Mammoth Lakes this last weekend.
http://gebster.smugmug.com/Other/Mam.../IMG0102-M.jpg

Mt. Rainier from Silver Peak
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...C_0010copy.jpg

MtnMan silhouetted on Silver Peak @ sunset
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...C_0042copy.jpg

And now for something completely different....
So last night while doing the Solstice BBQ thing I set up a little scene using a mini RC Apache heli (~8 inches in length) that I recently received as a get well gift after ACL surgery. I was inspired to try this because yesterday while being bored around the house I found some little LED lights for the LZ and because I can't do shit right now with a nuked knee.

I've never really tried to shoot anything like this, but it's about all the action/adventure I can handle right now. I was aiming to set up something like night opps on a heli pad at a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan. Here are a couple of them, please let me know what you think. I used my D90 with a 50mm prime lens and I think these shots are all 20 to 30 sec. exposures.

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b.../Apache2-1.jpg

^^^ I was using a small LED light to try and create some background light to illuminate the tail and counter the heli's headlights, as if this was on the edge of a larger military base, but I think I hit it with just a bit too much light in this one.

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b.../Apache1-1.jpg

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b.../Apache3-1.jpg

This is my personal favorite, but it's hard to tell what the subject is with the bright lights blasting.
Thanks in advance for the critic/input. When I get a little more mobile I'll have to try some night landing shots.

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Originally Posted by sftc

And now for something completely different....

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Very cool idea! Like the third shot the best as well, but you're right, the missing tail is distracting/confusing. I have an RC heli as well, but not w/ lights - might have to experiment some too. A few thoughts: the heli headlight is too bright and distracting. Is there a way to turn it off and just use the ambient light like you have in the first two shots (or even play around with different lighting angles using a flashlight)? And also get the blades spinning -- a must for any realistic/action heli shot! Having the LZ lights shining through the spinning blades would be cool. Maybe also experiment with getting closer and lower, and using a wide aperture to get a narrower DoF.

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/t...n/e88597ea.jpg

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/t...n/a94fae73.jpg