Photo of the Day: November, 2010

[gnd]

One of those pix where you just enjoy 'wandering around' the scene... and the tractor & figure kinda hold it together...

Beautiful, I love the warm colours and many points of interest, it's very well executed.
It's one of those pictures I can sit back and stare at for a while
A bit of a shame about the power lines, it's a stunning location and picture nonetheless.

Thank you both!
Yeah, it's a shame about the power lines, they seem to be everywhere, and almost always in the worst possible place ...

Here is another one from around here, this time no power lines

200mm, f/6.4, 1/500s, ISO200

 

[NathanCH]

50mm / F 4.5 / 2.5" / ISO 200

 

[Xander562]

Goalie's response to hecklers.

Large View

 

[BarryJ]

On the rocks....

of the black rolling hills of Sudbury:

 

[Phrasikleia]

50mm / F 4.5 / 2.5" / ISO 200

A great example of a photo that breaks the 'rules' successfully. Ordinarily it's advisable to avoid a centered subject because centered subjects tend to result in static compositions. In this case, the angle of the moving bishop injects some nice dynamism and gets the eye moving around. The many echos of tone and form really help to tie together the two sides of the photo, so it doesn't break apart, either (another common consequence of centered subjects). I even think the harsh bokeh works here, since it echoes the glassy, reflective chess pieces (instead of merely being a foreign, distinct element that is competing for attention). Really nice photo!

 

[Keleko]

Explosion of leaves!
Flickr

 

[VirtualRain]

Criccieth Castle

Snowdonia in the distance. The ruins of the castle wall date back to around 1230.

 

[Jason Beck]

Tanya Cold

 

[otter]

 

[BarryJ]

Nice shot

Snowdonia in the distance. The ruins of the castle wall date back to around 1230.

I like your shot here. Was this summer light or was this a recent photo. The big clouds just set it up for ya!... and the ruins on the left flank is nice too. I bet back in 1200, there were a few fish in that bay...

BJ

 

[VirtualRain]

I like your shot here. Was this summer light or was this a recent photo. The big clouds just set it up for ya!... and the ruins on the left flank is nice too. I bet back in 1200, there were a few fish in that bay...

BJ

Thanks! This was taken recently on a tour of Wales in late October.

 

[sonor]

Ben Prestage

​

 

[MSUSpartan]

@Flickr

 

[gaswerks]

dinos ...

 

[compuwar]

I know you don't shoot landscapes much, but there really is no need for focus stacking with most of them. Here the subject was 2 miles away, and the hyperfocal distance was a mere 97 feet in front of the camera. Focusing on the subject itself in this case (100mm, f/11, 5D Mark II) gives a depth of field of 95 feet to infinity. So yeah, those mountains are very much in focus. I don't know about where you live, but even in relatively unpolluted Slovenia, 45 miles of atmosphere is a lot of particulate matter to shoot through. Focus stacking is ordinarily employed with macro shots, or anything where it's very difficult to get most of your image in focus without resorting to gross amounts of diffraction.

I actually shoot a fair number of landscapes, I'm just not usually as happy with them as I could be since I used to shoot 4x5 and 5x7 for landscape work and miss the tilts and extremely high of level detail. A 5x7 Velvia slide is an amazing thing to behold.

The mountains here seem to lack edge definition- that's an issue with distances approximating infinity at hyperfocal distance, and that's why I'd try a stack in this case.

Cambridge Color for instance says[1]:

The problem with the hyperfocal distance is that objects in the far background (treated as ~infinity) are on the extreme outer edge of the depth of field. These objects therefore barely meet what is defined to be "acceptably sharp." This seriously compromises detail, considering that most people can see features 1/3 the size of those used by most lens manufacturers for their circle of confusion (see "Understanding Depth of Field"). Sharpness at infinity is particularly important for those landscape images that are very background-heavy.

Focus stacking is a valid landscape technique-- it gives you the ability to create Scheimpflug-like focus without tilts. Yes, I realize that it's very popular with macro photographers and microscope workers, but that doesn't mean it's not useful elsewhere.

I do realize that atmosphere plays a role, but as I said it doesn't look to me like it's an atmospheric issue- I could well be wrong- and don't get me wrong- I'm not trying to tell you how to take pictures-- you take wonderful shots. I've just been missing my view cameras recently and I've been looking at focus stacking software to see if that and some stitching would help me approximate LF results with my DSLRs[2]. I'd have tried a shot of the mountains as the point of focus and a focus stack here as it jumped out as one where a little more edge definition/sharpness in the mountains would make it even more wonderful an image.

Paul
[1] http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/hyperfocal-distance.htm
[2] Which seems likely, but the commercial price for Zerene Stacker means I need to find some serious happiness in the technique.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

St. Peters

Taken March 2010 with my Sony A300 SLR. church was very dark and required fairly long exposures. Since the Swiss Guard folks thought my monopod looked like a weapon, and made me leave it outside, I had to jam the camera up against various stationary objects to hold it steady.

 

[JoshBoy]

A storm two nights ago in Sydney Australia - Taken on a Canon 7D 10-22mm for 5 seconds, ISO 100 with an aperture of 8 i think.

 

[wheezy]

Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA

Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 @ F9

Photomerged in CS5 from 9 frames shot in Portrait Orientation; final image output of 98 Megapixels.

 

[JRayFilms]

Praying Mantis on my driveway.

 

[Designer Dale]

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[B][I]One photo per day[/I][/B]. Please read the first post in this thread. There is a link in my sig.

Dale

 

[TheReef]

You've been posting such a wonderful variety of images. I didn't get a chance to comment on the one with the seaweed visible in the foreground, but I did see it. Super shot. And you caught a great composition here with the surfer. Does this photo maybe have a slight green cast to it?

Thanks. Yeah it probably does.
It looks very different on both of my screens (it looks slightly greenish on my 20" ACD, and more yellow on my Dell 24")
I've been meaning to callibrate them for some time, but you know it's one of those things...always things to do and buy first, a calibrator always seems to fall to the bottom of the list, especially when engine repairs come around

@gnd, just amazing colours again.

Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA

Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm 1.4 @ F9
Photomerged in CS5 from 9 frames shot in Portrait Orientation; final image output of 98 Megapixels.

Great Pano! You've really captured the scale, nice punchy colours too.

 

[Doylem]

Hmmm... a difficult choice of beards: high-maintenance or low-maintenance?

Great shot, Sonor. Cognizant Photos: you win a prize for 'most intrusive signature'...

A great example of a photo that breaks the 'rules' successfully. Ordinarily it's advisable to avoid a centered subject because centered subjects tend to result in static compositions. In this case, the angle of the moving bishop injects some nice dynamism and gets the eye moving around. The many echos of tone and form really help to tie together the two sides of the photo, so it doesn't break apart, either (another common consequence of centered subjects). I even think the harsh bokeh works here, since it echoes the glassy, reflective chess pieces (instead of merely being a foreign, distinct element that is competing for attention). Really nice photo!

+1 for me... I love the way the light plays on - and through - the translucent chess pieces. A perfect shot for a 50mm lens. I see a lot of pictures, with 50mm lenses, wide open, where the point of focus has been nothing in particular. This shot demonstrates how to control narrow depth-of-field for a purpose.

 

[TheReef]

 

[grassland]

Tilting

harbour,

 

[GoCubsGo]

Ben Prestage

​

I really quite like this photo. It's got a wonderful feel to it.