Photo of the day: February 2013

[Laird Knox]

Originally Posted by shashin

Thanks for the witty response! Now that you mention it, it does have a sort of Willy Wonka look to it! I hadn't thought of that before but a lot of things here strike me that way.
Here's today's shot. Again, responses are always welcome.

Anybody else see the Trojan horse?

[ijohn.8.80]

I've been seeing this pattern everywhere lately, on cactus plants, on snails, on sea shells, in sunflowers, in doodles on pads, even in my dreams! Hopefully making this will get it out of my head. Made from the neighbours street numbers. From the chaos comes perfection was my thought in using them.


Fibonacci

[VirtualRain]

Someplace I'd rather be (most days)...

[ijohn.8.80]

Originally Posted by VirtualRain

Someplace I'd rather be (most days)...

Looks like a beautiful place to go and escape it all.

[Phrasikleia]

Originally Posted by TheReef

Cheers I had a look at that POTN thread, definitely some great inspiration, some of those portraits are incredible.


Times Square, NYC (Click for larger)

What a wonderful riot of color. The extreme vibrancy works great with the scene, as does the fisheye focal length. It's also great how the stripes of the crosswalk form leading lines into the scene. A very arresting image.

Originally Posted by Designer Dale

Impressive, to say the least! How much pre-planning went into this shot? Did you have the location and technique planned before the hike or did you just think this out on the fly? How did you calculate the horizontal pan to get the 19 seperate shots? Did you eyeball it or use the degree marks on your tripod head? What about the vertical to get the second row? Was your sequence across, up and back? Did you write all the settings down before starting the shoot?

Are the "tire chains" on your boots a replacement for snowshoes or something you carry in your pack for conditions like this? I've looked at something like this at REI. They would come in handy for safely carrying my gear up on my local version of the Alps.

Dale

OK, let's see if I can answer all of those questions! What you see on my boots in that photo are crampons (Veriga Mount Track), a small packable kind that tuck away neatly into a stuff sack. They have 13 points per foot, which help a lot on hard-packed snow and icy surfaces. They are a standard part of my winter hiking kit. I use snowshoes for longer treks in deep snow and the crampons for areas where I just need more traction. My boots have cuttings for C2 crampons, but those would be overkill for most of what I'm doing. My crampons look like this:

Anyway, if you're carrying camera gear along mountain trails in the winter, then I highly recommend the Mount Track crampons. They enable me to walk safely in areas that would otherwise be treacherous.

Pano questions: I chose that location on that day because of the overcast conditions that would give me the requisite diffused light. I had been there only once before in the summer and wasn't remembering it very well before I went out; I thought I could get the whole waterfall in at 17mm...ha! No way. So yeah, I had a composition in mind more or less like the one you see, but I didn't realize that it would require a 19-frame stitch to get it. The only places you can stand to get an unobstructed view of the waterfall are very close to it, so the stitch was my only hope, and it only occurred to me while I was standing there.

As for the sequence, etc., I looked at where I wanted the edges of my composition to be and then shot in rows like a lawnmower to cover an area a bit larger, knowing that I would end up with uneven edges that require cropping. I was sure to make each image overlap the next one by 1/3 of the frame, using the on-screen lines in Live View to guide me. I was also careful to have the waterfall itself fall in the center of the frames that covered it (I first pointed at the waterfall, then worked outwards from there to determine my starting point). I hope that makes sense! My ball head has a pano knob and my camera has an electronic level, so it was easy to get the rows to be straight as I panned across scene.

There, I think that covers the questions!

[shashin]

Originally Posted by Laird Knox

Anybody else see the Trojan horse?

Now that you mention it... Yes!
I took the picture and I didn't think of that

[AlexH]

Light and shadow by DigitAl3x, on Flickr

Sony NEX-5R + Fujian 35mm f/1.7 CCTV lens

[Cheese&Apple]

I just put this up in the weekly photo contest but wanted to put it up here as well because I do like this shot of a Red Squirrel taken at Lynde Shores Conservation Area.

[ijohn.8.80]

Originally Posted by AlexH

Light and shadow by DigitAl3x, on Flickr

Sony NEX-5R + Fujian 35mm f/1.7 CCTV lens

Really well done Alex, just enough PP to add more intensity without going over the top.

Originally Posted by Cheese&Apple

I just this this up in the weekly photo contest but wanted to put it up here as well because I do like this shot of a Red Squirrel taken at Lynde Shores Conservation Area.

I enjoyed this fellow over on your portfolio site Peter last night, congratulations on an excellent job there. Really nice viewing throughout.

[AlexH]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

Really well done Alex, just enough PP to add more intensity without going over the top.

Thanks!

[petey2133]

My winter wonderland
D600 + 14-24mm

[Cheese&Apple]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

i enjoyed this fellow over on your portfolio site peter last night, congratulations on an excellent job there. Really nice viewing throughout.

Thanks very much John, I appreciate the support.

My website has been a labour of love for photography. I decided to put it together after growing tired of the free photo sharing sites. The financial cost was surprisingly minimal. The cost in time, over the last couple of months, was a bit more substantial…I knew nothing about HTML, Java and CSS. I haven't really learned that much about coding but, with help, did get it together. Of course it will always be a work in progress.

www.derrington.ca

[Doylem]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

I've been seeing this pattern everywhere lately, on cactus plants, on snails, on sea shells, in sunflowers, in doodles on pads, even in my dreams! Hopefully making this will get it out of my head. Made from the neighbours street numbers. From the chaos comes perfection was my thought in using them.

Attachment 396582
Fibonacci

I like the idea... and execution. How did you 'stitch' the images together?

Originally Posted by Cheese&Apple

Great pic. I like the way the squirrel is framed against that neutral area of out-of-focus background, which makes it stand out. Accident? Design?

Collapsed rainbow...

[Cheese&Apple]

Originally Posted by Doylem

Great pic. I like the way the squirrel is framed against that neutral area of out-of-focus background, which makes it stand out. Accident? Design?

Thanks Doylem. I'd like to be able to say it was by design but honestly, I'm not that good nor that fast. So I have to say...a lucky accident.

[ijohn.8.80]

Originally Posted by Doylem

I like the idea... and execution. How did you 'stitch' the images together?

Thanks Doylem, I know not everyone will get it, or like it, but that really doesn't matter to me.

I assembled it just in layers in Photoshop, I had a book with this layout of the Fibonacci sequence and copied the proportions from there. It's not quite exact but it's close enough for me. I opened and got the images cropped separately to a 1:1 proportion, copied them and special pasted them in place within the working piece. This way each number had their own layer, where I could then constrain the proportions of them individually. The black background layer became my border. Nine times out of ten I'll go lo-tech if possible. What I love about photoshop is that there are usually more than one ways to achieve the same outcome, a real tech-head would have probably used a spacing script to place everything, I did it by eye.

[Cheese&Apple]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

Thanks Doylem, I know not everyone will get it, or like it, but that really doesn't matter to me.

I assembled it just in layers in Photoshop, I had a book with this layout of the Fibonacci sequence and copied the proportions from there. It's not quite exact but it's close enough for me. I opened and got the images cropped separately to a 1:1 proportion, copied them and special pasted them in place within the working piece. This way each number had their own layer, where I could then constrain the proportions of them individually. The black background layer became my border. Nine times out of ten I'll go lo-tech if possible. What I love about photoshop is that there are usually more than one ways to achieve the same outcome, a real tech-head would have probably used a spacing script to place everything, I did it by eye.

Great composition John...well done and very creative. I'm an Aperture user, never having delved into Adobe, any idea how I would do that? Do you use Aperture?

Peter

[mikeschmeee]

[ijohn.8.80]

Originally Posted by Cheese&Apple

Great composition John...well done and very creative. I'm an Aperture user, never having delved into Adobe, any idea how I would do that? Do you use Aperture?

Peter

Thanks Peter. I really would love to assist you, but, unfortunately, I've never used Aperture. I use Photo Mechanic to import and then organise my library with keywords, ratings, colour codings, and Photoshop to edit.

After a very quick glance on the googlenet, I found this tutorial that seems to make it a very easy process Peter. Hope it helps you somewhat.

[Cheese&Apple]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

Thanks Peter. I really would love to assist you, but, unfortunately, I've never used Aperture. I use Photo Mechanic to import and then organise my library with keywords, ratings, colour codings, and Photoshop to edit.

After a very quick glance on the googlenet, I found this tutorial that seems to make it a very easy process Peter. Hope it helps you somewhat.

Awesome John and thank you. I always thought the "light table" function of Aperture was simply another way to view a group of photos...cool!

[ijohn.8.80]

Another from my sunset shots the other night, this time about 15 minutes after sunset. It really is a pity there were no clouds at all.

Canon 60D, Tokina 11-16mm, f2.8, ISO 100, 1/25, 11mm.

[LumbermanSVO]

Waiting

[Badrottie]

[TheBonk]

My lady today at Lake Michigan with her Pentax K1000.



Nikon D50 50mm f/9

[Phrasikleia]

Originally Posted by Doylem

Collapsed rainbow...

Fascinating. I don't think I've ever seen such a low rainbow, even in pictures. Nice catch.

Originally Posted by Cheese&Apple

I just put this up in the weekly photo contest but wanted to put it up here as well because I do like this shot of a Red Squirrel taken at Lynde Shores Conservation Area.

That squirrel looks about as cold as I feel right now. Brrrr...

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

Another from my sunset shots the other night, this time about 15 minutes after sunset. It really is a pity there were no clouds at all.

Maybe not such a pity...there is a certain graphic simplicity to this one that works quite well. I'm wondering what kind of composition might have made the various lines and textures of the foreground cohere more with the rest of the picture, but the color correspondence between the lights and the sky is a really fun 'discovery' to be made in this scene.

By the way, is anyone else really mourning the loss of our larger photo widths? It was bad enough when MacRumors took away quoted thumbnails (making us have to edit the code manually to get them back), but now the photos are all showing at the size that people were posting in, oh, I don't know...2002?? We Mac users mostly have screens that can show a 1000-pixel photo without any problems, and they are much easier to appreciate at that size. This site has become much less fun to browse and looks quite unimpressive in comparison with other websites. If any powers-that-be are reading this, I hope you will consider ditching the 780-pixel resizing.

[Ish]

Originally Posted by ijohn.8.80

Another from my sunset shots the other night, this time about 15 minutes after sunset. It really is a pity there were no clouds at all.

Canon 60D, Tokina 11-16mm, f2.8, ISO 100, 1/25, 11mm.

I wouldn't be sorry either. With clouds you'd break up that beautiful gradation of colour. If I was there and thought about it at the time, I might have tried another photo with the horizon a bit lower to exchange the dark foreground for seeing the gradation taper off a bit more.

Besides, with last year here being the second wettest on record and now nearly at the end of winter, I've had enough clouds to last a long time! People that live in areas with bluer skies sometimes bemoan the lack of clouds in their photos. While agreeing in principle about the interest they give I don't mind photos without — I just think AHH, BLUE!!!!!