solja

This photo was shot at 1" @ f/2.8 or so - I didn't have my tripod, so

I had to hold the camera vertically on my bag, which rested on my

knee as I was kneeling on the tracks. Needless to say, I had to snap

a few shots to get a sharp one!

 

Any comments appreciated, thanks!

These trees really caught my eye - I wish I were able to stay for

good light and shoot in color. But, I made do with the midday light

and slapped on the infrared filter. I think it came out pretty well,

though it's hard to distinguish between the two trees - does that add

or detract? Comments appreciated!

This is some type of horse fly, I believe. I was out taking photos of

starfish and anenomes at the beach and this fly just kept following

and landing on me, trying to bite my shorts and my camera bag.

Immediately after this shot, I lost my balance and to keep myself

from falling, I put my hand back right on some sharp barnacles and

cut my hand up pretty bad. Still got 2 or 3 more shots, though! Any

thoughts would be great. Thanks!

I don't mean to be um, cynical or overly critical or anything, but:

 

If photography is done with light, and this and your other 'photos' were done entirely in Photoshop, how is it a photograph?

 

People are saying "nice shot" and "this photo is your best", but... isn't this more like a painting than a photograph, in that it's purely imaginary, a vision within someone's mind and visualized through the use of pigment, digital pigment in this case? Nothing here is 'photographic'? Am I missing something?

 

Sorry, I know these 'photos' are dominating the high ranks, but I don't get it... I can draw and model things in my computer too, but I wouldn't call it a photograph.

Found this guy while yanking weeds in my backyard. The original photo

is flipped vertically - i.e. this caterpillar was actually standing

upright. I thought it looked better this way. Thoughts? Thanks!

I very much admire your work, Mark - I grew up catching bugs and so I love to get close to them as well, but I can only hope to approximate the quality you've achieved!

This is more of an abstract than anything, I think. I knew the street lights from the parking lot were going to affect the foreground, and though the aurora were dim, I knew they'd show up as well. Just an experiment with light, but I'd love to know what you think.

Thanks!

The orange glow is from the street lights in the parking lot - I was about 1/4 mile from them, but some residual light still reaches out, especially on long exposures!

Jerome, as far as weird colors: what would make the colors here normal? This is how it looked, I didn't do anything to /make/ these colors up. I will try bringing out the mountains a bit more, however. Thanks!

Since I've lived in Juneau, I've wanted a shot of the northern lights

over the Mendenhall Glacier. Almost every attempt I've made at

getting this shot, something has prevented me from it: forgot tripod

(!), fog, miscalculated exposure settings, and most recently a group

of kids who were out w/o a flashlight and thought they were being

chased by a bear. Anyway, finally managed to get a shot I think is

worth sharing, I'd be interested in knowing what you all think of it!

Hopefully, I will have more from this roll posted soon. Thanks!

What do you think?

Jorge,

After looking at the photo some more, I agree with your suggestion about the foreground. I went ahead and cropped the photo into a square format, and I do like it better this way. Thanks for the comments!

I agree, Mr. Plonsky's presentation is certainly a good source of information on your inquiries.

No matter what, however, there are two things that will help you succeed in taking bug photos: patience and practice. Expect to take a lot of shots trying for that one with acceptable DOF, color, and lighting and definitely expect to get very frustrated when you're on the verge of getting The One Perfect Shot and your subject decides to fly away. :)

For the most part, I find if you approach slowly enough, most bugs will tolerate your presence up to a point. This photo was taken with my 24mm lens reversed which put me about an inch or two away from the fly.

Anyway, just remember: "Patience, young grasshopper."

Stefano,

Yes, it is snow. But the lighting came from tungsten bulbs and I shot this with daylight-corrected film, so... I ended up with sort of a yellowish cast.

What would have made this better? I think more light on the near side

of the plane, making it a bit brighter, would have been ideal. But,

you take what you can get, right? Does this photo work anyhow?

As far as Tobias 'settling down'; hell, I wish everyone would put so much thought and effort into critiquing photos. (He put together a chart of his critiques, what more can you ask for?) Tobias doesn't sugar-coat his critiques - why can't we just get over that fact and move on to making our own critiques?

Now to following my own advice and making my own critique, to me this image just looks too fake. I mean, that you accomplished this through photography and Photoshop is great, but the overall impact to my eyes is lessened by the 'plastic' look of the model's skin, and the floor and walls textured a la "Doom" or "Quake". I do think the 'ghost' either has to be there or not - right now it's in between, it looks like there's some green smoke rising from behind the table, you can't make a figure out of it.

I think this shows a lot of potential, however. Try the 'paint with light' technique more, on different models and experiment to get better results. It seems like maybe you just tried to do and be too many things with this photo. Just my opinion of course, take it as you please.

Tobias, thanks for the tips. I rescanned the negative and played around with it a bit and got, what I think at least, a much better looking photo. I got rid of some of the yellow cast and what you see now is much closer to what I saw the night I took the photo. I cropped out that top strip (didn't even notice it the first time!) and cropped out a bit of the wandering tracks too.

Anyway, thanks again!

I did shoot this same shot with a 24mm lens on Tri-X, I still need to process that roll - maybe some of those will be better exposed. This shot was the last frame on this roll of film and I was all out of color film so I couldn't bracket. Don't you hate that!?

What do you think? I know the area where the light is hitting the

snow is a touch overexposed. This exposure what for about 15 seconds

at f/5.6 or so. The illumination was provided by my motion-detecting

lights over my garage door.

Jim,

Tell me about it! I've been trying to 'recreate' this scene for about two weeks, looking at every creek and puddle for the same ring pattern, but no luck.

As for the color, this whole area was in shadow and was really this blue. Combine the inherent blue cast with Velvia and you've got a nice blue scene going. The other scan of this photo with the tighter crop is much too dark, I didn't realize it when I scanned it, but since the cropping made it into a semi-abstract, I didn't mind.

Thanks for the comments!

This photo really caught my eye - excellent and very dramatic lighting. I think your use of a polarizer really helped form the drama, with the darkness of the blue sky in the upper right. Very good work.

Greg, thanks for your observation. This shot was really hard for me to crop (it's a 6x6) - If I cropped the bottom to give you more of a top subject, you'd lose the space around the ice. If I went vertical, again the ice would suffer. I thought about turning this photo upside down, it gives sort of a nice abstract look! Anyway, I really wish I could shoot more frames of this scene, but I used my last roll of Velvia on it and I don't think I'll see this ice effect again anytime soon.

What do you think?

Nice color choices!

The bottom portion of this image seems a little out of focus, as if the lens were at a slight angle to the ground. I think this photo would have been a more interesting and vibrant if the leaves were in their bright autumn colors. As it is, to my eye this photo seems a little drab and the composition lacks focus. Just my humble opinion!

Rajiv: agreed. I think if I were a little more to the left and had the dog at more of a discernable angle, it would have improved the shot. Next time, next time...