jim schwaiger

Good image, blue border... ehhh.

Just an experiment during the recent lunar eclipse. I know the

blurring would occur at such a long exposure.

 

It's also cropped heavily which means you are starting to see the

limits of my old cheesy scanner here too.

Lovely colors, it has a very soft, almost airbrush quality to it. The only thing that seems extraneous to me is the water. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't seem to add anything to the image either.

After consulting the expert (mom), this is a "First Lady" dogwood which is a hybrid. The leaves stay like this and they are fairly rare around this area. Indeed most dogwoods have plain green leaves.

Pardon the poor cropping at the top...

Now that's close, nice job. Do you remember what aperture this was? With a strong flash, you may be able to stop down a little to get a touch more DOF. I am pretty impressed as it is though.

Fred want a looser crop, wha? (cough cough) did he... I can't belie... errr... uhhh... but... uhhh...

Incredibly interesting - I'll go far as to say it's the best reflection abstract yet!

Spectacular Fred. Great subject and great capture. Having never seen one like that it's easy to see why people don't believe the color.

 

I guess you enjoyed the warm weather while you were down there?

 

I hope to do better at our local butterfly house than I did last year with the new lens.

The lighting is nice, but the angle makes it tough to see the spider. Colors are also great.

What do you think?

Several of these guys gave up because of the strong current, but

this one was determined.

 

The river was up about 20 feet or so this day and it had been

higher than this, Almost the entire marina was under water. After

several years of droughts, mother nature is making up for it this

spring.

Another cemetery image with the moon barely visible.

Very in-this-world beautiful.

Nabil,

 

The perspective distortions are a little odd here, as the tower seems to lean to the left. The other oddity is that the foreground structure (kinda looks like a gate) appears to be ornate and I want to see more of it. Finally, the web image might look a tad batter if it were a hair darker. The area's that I think should be black are kinda purplish and brownish.

It feels overexposed and the blue cast may be a little much for me. This is a tough shot to get the tonal range on film without at least one ND grad. I do like the idea and the composition.

Nabil, it is a very lovely image, but there may be a couple of things that could improve the image.

 

First, a slower, more saturated film might give you a better original. I don't think most nature photographer's would choose Press 400 for this scene. Second, I doubt the polarizer did anything in this image, so take it off so the light passes through fewer pieces of glass.

 

The only compositional change I'd like is to have the sun going down in the water instead of over the land. A few weeks ago it was probably enough further south to get the shot I mean. Keep that in mind if you plan to go back next year or in the fall under similar conditions.

I'm going back in time to the cemetery assignment. In other words, I'm out of

nice reflections.

My wife likes this one, but I have mixed feelings. I think it's the

wide tonal range and lack of nice color that bother me.

The lighting almost makes it look upside-down, but the major thing for me is that the framing is more interesting than the photo. It is not a bad photo, just a little dark with unusual lighting.

Another from the same day at the lake. The geese just happened to be there

when the timer took the shot. I never saw them until after I clicked the shutter.

 

Two bad things. The Cokin lens hood at the corners and not using my ND

Grads. Silly me.

Different angle.

One of a series of sunset images I took on this very clear day.

I've seen waterbugs do this, but never one this big, or with this

many legs...

Fred, yeah I had to have a long lens. It's very cool even though this particular one is huge (long and heavy). I liked the fence reflection too. I don't see the blank strip, is it black? If it's just a pixel or two, it's poor cropping from the scan.

 

Peter, the perspective makes it hard for everything to look square. I didn't intent it to be this close, but to get the fence where it is and the dogwood reflection, I ended up at this spot.