Be Excellent To Each Other

Jet boating and waterfall are gorgeous Bobby

Waterfall looks unreal... like it's from one of those German miniature model cities.

I was going to ask if that was actually a model. If not, you've managed to tilt-shift it somehow.

Also, have you done any editing on those, Bobby? If not, your camera fucking loves blue.

not editing, but there is a mode on the camera called "expressive" which over saturates everything, but works nicely for blues, although to be fair, it was a fucking lovely day! the waterfall, again there is a mode called "mini" no idea what it does, but it really worked on that photo.

I know this one. Mini simulates tilt shift achieved by using a (very expensive) Perspective control lens, the panasonic GF3 has the best mode on the market.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11 ... otography/

Yep, that'd be it then!

In laws picked up a new doggo over the weekend. A mini Schnauzer called Jemma (only my mother in law who is Finnish insists that it shall be pronounced Yemma).


Jemma


Jemma

She's a bugger to try and get a half-decent photo of but is just adorable.

Aw, cute. Always liked those.

Zoinks!

*grabby hands*

I love this thread, is there a beginners / idiots guide for photos?

Aw, that's one cute schnauzer!



Kovacs, this has some good stuff...

http://digital-photography-school.com/d ... -beginners

I also recommend heading to your local library and checking out Tom Ang's guide books on photography. They're really well laid out with a good mix of inspirational but unintimidating photographs and he covers every field both creative and practical in a simple, direct way.

I have just returned from the first event of this big reenactment photography project. Three days and nights camping with Kern's !8th Missouri. I have just over a thousand photographs to trawl through. Shame it was all overcast, but I got at least two dozen crackers*, I reckon.

(Crackers as in good shots, not racist confederates. Hopefully.)

Confederate Girl




Confederate Boy

I like how her face looks like an explosion!

Did you take that picture with a hairdryer?

It must've been a Canon.

*groan*

Double Rainbow !

OMG THAT'S SOOOO BEAUTIFUL...

Cute doggy

Both of these pictures are ace! Great work (again) Pete!

Cheers, TheVision. It was a really tricky shoot. The smoke from the campfire cut contrast way down, but it was an etheral, moody look I wanted and it was a bit of a job juggling definition with smoke. Plus the light was a problem. I wanted a natural shot in the golden hour with light and smoke from the campfire adding a slight atmosphere and filling in the shadows. I had to shoot ISO 1250 to get it, which made for a fair bit of noise and reduced tones if I didn't nail the right exposure. Took quite a lot of takes to get it sharp too. They were remarkably patient with me circling them with a nikon like some papping Dr. Zoidberg.

The Hunter

Now that is absolutely superb. The previous two need more malnutrition to be authentic, but nice pictures.

WARNING: Baby picture herein. You have been warned!

surprise stabbin' by Learnin' Curve, on Flickr

Damn slow lens, going to get a nikon g ring adaptor and put the 35mm 1.8 on it.

Rocks. In The Sea. With Trees On.
(#1 of a series of 527)

Lovely!

Gorgeous. Isn't that where Scaramanga lives, though?

Ha - nearly! It's about 40 miles from there.

Sister in law took me flying yesterday. It's been ages since I've flown a light aircraft and I'd forgotten how much fun it is:

Not this one:


Gulfstream by Loopdreams, on Flickr

This one:


Cessna 152 by Loopdreams, on Flickr

As with every other light aircraft I've been in the interior seems to take its styling cues from British Leyland

Instruments by Loopdreams, on Flickr

Visibility yesterday was amazing 50 or 60 miles or so.

Blackpool from above by Loopdreams, on Flickr


View out the front by Loopdreams, on Flickr


Sis in law and me by Loopdreams, on Flickr

Those wrecks I'm always taking pictures of

River Wyre Wrecks by Loopdreams, on Flickr


Fleetwood from above by Loopdreams, on Flickr


Fleetwood from above by Loopdreams, on Flickr

Obligatory picture of our house

Home by Loopdreams, on Flickr

This was the first of about three touch and go landings that she did for her logbook.

Final Approach by Loopdreams, on Flickr

Excellent fun.

Oh Fleetwood football ground and chez Zardoz:


Fleetwood Town Football Ground by Loopdreams, on Flickr

Awesome pics! I'm assuming some killjoy somewhere has made a rule preventing you from buzzing the people on the rollercoasters, which would have been cool.

Those big pully-out looking knobs in the middle look like the choke controls from my sisters old Morris Marina.

Yeah, my old instructor apparently got a telling off for buzzing his dad on a golf course, the miserable shits.

Those are excellent, Mark. Love the shots of Blackpool seafront and of our beloved home town.

You fancy doing it again yourself now?

Yeah, do you want to sponsor me?

£1 per flight but you have to have my company name painted on the wings.

"Compo-the-amazing-flying-arse-bandit.com"

Awesome! What a nice day for it.

To be fair to the stylists, I suppose that plane probably does date from the early 80s?

Just noticed they've got the new slides in at The Sandcastle!

Probably older, I think.

Mark always looks like that, I don't think he had a makeover to go flying.

I just love this picture. If you could have got the rocks to sit on the horizon you could probably sell reprints. Still, super lovely.

Looks like minecraft.

Looks like a rock giant showing a 'gun'.

Great picture btw, Cras.

This is Scaramanga's home (Ao Phangnga Island), went earlier this year. The Surrounding islands were stunning, just a shame about the boatloads of everyone who piles onto 'James Bond Island' for the photoes (me included, i know). Took one look at the path to the beach and turned around.


Scaramanga 1 by Decardo, on Flickr




Reminds me i need to go through the other 3000 or so other pics from that trip to see if any of them are any good. Also i really need to learn how to make the most of my shots (ie learn how to use my camera) as i am always astounded at how you lot always seem to get the colours so vibrant.

Very simple in Photoshop / Aperture / Lightroom. Do you have any of those?

erm i have a old copy of photoshop, will need to install it though.

So it is not to do with how i am using the camera? I am just trying to learn about how to control and balance the ISO, aperture and shutter speeds at the moment, but end up buggering mist shots up when i go on the manual setting so still tend to rely on the Auto.

I find the easiest setting to use is Av mode. You control the Aperture and let the camera control the shutter speed for you. Small numbers on the aperture means shallow depth of field (narrow amount of things in focus), large number means wide depth of field (lots in focus). Keeping it in the middle is fairly ideal unless you're deliberately going for a shot with a blurred out background, but sometimes you'll need to go for a smaller number if the light's not good enough to give you a decent shutter speed (I tend to require a shutter speed of 1/80s or above to guarantee a good shot). When you get to where you're going to be shooting photos, set the ISO - 100 or 200 if you're outside on a nice bright day, 800 or 1600 if you're indoors.

All the above should get you a decent, usable photo in most conditions. Learn a bit about framing and the rule of thirds to work out what you want in your picture, and don't be afraid to crop bits out to get what you want.

Postprocessing in lightroom/aperture/PS is done for a number of reasons - tweaking the white balance because your camera didn't get it quite right, increasing the oomph of the colours, because cameras aren't as good at filtering out atmospheric UV as your eyes are, so it invariably looks more washed out in the picture than you remember it, or going for specific effects to get the look you want.

Some people think that post-processing isn't photography, I think it's as much a part of the artistic process as taking the original picture.

I done a quick 5 minute fiddle with your picture above. It's not brilliant, because I only had the 1024x JPG to work with rather than a full-size raw. Also there's a lot of the same blues in the water and the sky, so fiddling with those doesn't work terribly well. Had I spend more time on it I would have used two different graduated filters, one to bring out the blue in the sky, one to bring out the blue/green in the water.

Here are the two side-by-side:



Summary of what I did:
Altered the white balance to warm up the picture a little
Recovered some of the lost detail that was overexposed in the clouds
Increased the blacks at the bottom of the islands for a bit more punch
Increased the contrast/clarity a little
Tweaked the greens in the trees - increase saturation a little and decrease luminance.
Same for the blue in the sky (luminance only)
And the blue/green in the water (saturation only)
Did a light sharpening pass and a light noise reduction pass.

Sounds like a lot, but it quickly becomes habit, especially if you're editing a lot of similar pictures.