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Photo of the day: September 2012

Cheese&Apple said:
Acadia National Park - Maine


Acadia National Park - Maine by Cheese&Apple, on Flickr

What a beautiful place on the east coast of the US. Not entirely happy with the framing of the trees though. Guess I'll just have to go back and try again. :)
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It works OK. It would be better to me if it was a bit wider, moving the trees to the right and giving them more room to breathe in the frame. I would like to see more of that cove that runs out of the frame on the left side and a wider shot would cover that, too.

Dale
 


Port Noarlunga Jetty by iJohn.8.80 on flickr

Looks very good to me. I always have trouble with the wide range and intensity of colours and lighting for a sunset shot and the variation between what my eyes see and what the camera sees.

Just wondering what a shot taken from some point on the jetty would look like? Maybe close to the point it meets the beach (to lead your eye out into the distance). To me, in some ways it feels like the jetty is a barrier to the sunset.

Cheers!
 
No, i am not into weddings! This is my eldest daughter, and while they had a pro photographer to do the 'official' shooting (saving me the stress), I couldn't resist and grabbed my camera to take this shot.
wedding.jpg
 
Designer Dale said:
It works OK. It would be better to me if it was a bit wider, moving the trees to the right and giving them more room to breathe in the frame. I would like to see more of that cove that runs out of the frame on the left side and a wider shot would cover that, too.

Dale
Click to expand...

I just went back into my shots to see if I could do what you suggested. Unfortunately, the shots are all in portrait position with no room to spare. I rarely take any in portrait...think I was fixated on the vertical rise of the trees.

Thanks for the comments Dale...much appreciated.

Cheers!

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appie57 said:
no, i am not into weddings! This is my eldest daughter, and while they had a pro photographer to do the 'official' shooting (saving me the stress), i couldn't resist and grabbed my camera to take this shot.
image
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Great looking couple...congratulations!!! :)
 
I was walking around with my 35mm on taking shots of other things when a bird swooped by overhead. Sadly the lens meant I couldn't zoom in tighter to it, but even so I like the shot and the way the wings are positioned with the tips backlit by the sunlight.


Soaring by emtreypics, on Flickr
 

A Hawk with Dinner by boundinlightphotography, on Flickr

While we are doing birds here is one I took a couple weeks ago. Really the first time I have played around with the servo focus. I was actually really surprised at how well it was able to track these hawks even though they were so small through my viewfinder (my lens only goes to 135mm).

ISO 100 f/7.1 135mm 1/800sec
 
Bound in Light said:
[url=http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8448/7835849710_dbc1bc4595_b.jpg]Image[/url]
A Hawk with Dinner by boundinlightphotography, on Flickr

While we are doing birds here is one I took a couple weeks ago. Really the first time I have played around with the servo focus. I was actually really surprised at how well it was able to track these hawks even though they were so small through my viewfinder (my lens only goes to 135mm).

ISO 100 f/7.1 135mm 1/800sec
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That is a really nice shot. I love how clearly the hawk is contrasted with the sky and the way the hills gradually go from dark to light-- conveys the depth of the range well.

Continuing with the bird theme...


Running Rooster by emtreypics, on Flickr
 
Doylem said:
In the middle of nowhere...

Image
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I think this picture would greatly benefit from HDR processing. :rolleyes:
(I jest, of course. I just finished reading the HDR thread and found it quite humorous.)
---
This is a pseudoscorpion (Pseudoscorpiones: Chernetidae). They can often be seen as phoronts (a fancy way of saying "hitchhiking on a larger animal); in one particular beetle (Acrocinus longimanus), as well as on some timber flies (Diptera: Pantophthalmidae), it's common to see several of them under the wings, almost always one male and several females.

Pseudoescorpion_zpsc765fd2b.jpg
 
My deck in the rain, this morning. D800, 70-200 @ 130mm, f/20, 2 second exposure. Leaves are where they blew in. Raw, passed through LR4, no tweaking.
 

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ijohn.8.80 said:
Finally had an evening with interesting cloud formations and not just a blanket of haze, so decided to leap in and try my first sunset. Next time I'll try a larger f-stop and slower shutter speed to blur the water, and get there early so it's not such a rush setting up. I think I'd also try shooting lower down on the beach, so the jetty is not sitting on the horizon line, but sits quite proud of it. Allowing the golden light through underneath its pylons also.

For a first attempt I thought it wan't too bad, considering how much I forgot to do, such as take shots using the remote! I wanted realism of colour and was trying to get a relatively balanced exposure as my primary concern. I don't have any filters yet to aid with colour saturation or tonal balance, etc...

I'm doing a photography course currently, but we haven't covered sunsets yet, just the technical use of the camera thus far really.

Canon 1100D, EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II, Manual Exposure, Manual Program, Manual White Balance, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO 200, Partial Metering, 60mm.

Thanks in advance for any help you may offer me for next time.
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Not bad, but you probably want to position yourself such that the pier isn't between you and the sunset. If you stood on the opposite side, you could get the pier leading into the setting sun, which would be a stronger composition.

Here's a sunrise example that I took as a general idea of what I'm talking about:



There is also a fringe benefit of the sunset providing some light on the pier instead of it being in shadow. The sky in the top portion of the frame has a rather unpleasant green tint, so some tweaking with color balance might be in order.
 
Doylem said:
Looks like a nice pic to me, but, yes, it might be better if the pier didn't merge with the horizon. The eye kinda wanders around the pic, and there isn't one single point of interest where the eye can rest...

In the middle of nowhere...

Image
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Oh, please. Pictures of heaven don't have to be technically perfect.
 
khollister said:
Not bad, but you probably want to position yourself such that the pier isn't between you and the sunset. If you stood on the opposite side, you could get the pier leading into the setting sun, which would be a stronger composition.

Here's a sunrise example that I took as a general idea of what I'm talking about:



There is also a fringe benefit of the sunset providing some light on the pier instead of it being in shadow. The sky in the top portion of the frame has a rather unpleasant green tint, so some tweaking with color balance might be in order.
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Keith, thanks for the ideas, I didn't think about using the sun to light the pier, I was fixated on the idea of a silhouette effect. I love how your pier actually leads the eye to the sunrise, well done.

Doylem was right when he said there was nothing in my shot to anchor the eye. This is something I'm working on right now, trying to compose so that there is a deliberate anchor point, but it's a hell of a lot harder than it seems! I seem to be stuck in newbie hell in that regard. Maybe 1 in 5-10 shots have the composition right so far, oh well, more reading and analysing of photo's to do I suppose...

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Dornblaser said:
Oh, please. Pictures of heaven don't have to be technically perfect.
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Dornblaser, I asked for feedback, Doylem gave constructive criticism to me. I appreciate his taking the time to help a newbie along the way. It's when I ask family and friends for comments and they say "it's nice" that I find a total waste of time. That's not going to make me a better photographer. ;)
 
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ijohn.8.80 said:
Doylem was right when he said there was nothing in my shot to anchor the eye.
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Something that trips a lot of folks up with landscapes is that a photograph needs to have a subject/focal point, whereas we often react to a real life scene differently, e.g. a great photograph of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park is about ... Half Dome, but when we stand there and take in the wonderful scenery our reaction is "wow, what a beautiful scene". What we don't do is say "wow, look at how cool Half Dome looks". I will use the sunrise image I posted above along with another shot from the same morning to illustrate what I'm talking about.

The first shot has the rising sun and its effect on the sky and water as the subject. The pier is a prop that adds visual interest and leads the eye towards the horizon and the sunrise.



The second shot has the pier as the subject and the sun (which is almost out of the frame) plays a supporting role in adding interesting light on the pier.



Two very similar shots in terms of content and geometry, but very different in terms of what the "picture is about". Contrast that with one's emotional reaction standing on the beach at dawn - you are overwhelmed with the vastness of the ocean, the sky and how insignificant the pier seems in that context in spite of its size. The non-photographer would throw their camera up and take a wide angle shot of the pier and get ... a boring photo of a pier sticking out into the water.

Photography is about visualization, but I think landscapes can be some of the more challenging from a compositional standpoint because of this gap in how we perceive a scene in person versus how it is conveyed in a photograph. Making photographs of animals, people or things (cars, airplanes, etc) is simpler to a degree due to not having to think about what you are actually taking a picture of.

I have come to landscape photography fairly late in my 35 year history with photography, and still struggle with it (at least in my eyes) as I came from a portrait/photo-journalism/wildlife background. It is only recently that I no longer need to stand there and think a shot through, but compose and shoot mostly instinctively like I have on other subjects for many years.

You desire to improve and learn is the key - hang in there, keep shooting and asking questions.

With all the technology, it's still "f/8 and be there"
 
Well it looks like I need to get out and start shooting again before winter arrives. For now, another shot from the north. If I've posted this one before, my bad. The colors look a bit weird to me, let me know what you think...


Yukon by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr
 
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