lorenzo

Thank you, Michael! It's actually quite easy. If you live on the northern hemisphere just point your camera north (or better: towards the North Star) and expose for at least 10 min (you'd get the star trails with shorter exposures but they'd be quite short, too). The image above represents 30 min.

Instead of one long exposure you may as well take a series of shorter ones and stack them (e.g.) in photoshop, like I did with this image (60 shots @ 30 s each). There are photoshop plug-ins that facilitate this process (e.g. Advanced Stacker Plus, which I use sometimes).

Thank you!

Thanks so much!

Thanks a lot for the thumbs up!

Thanks for the tip!

Since the spider is looking straight at me I'd probably leave it in the centre but it could be cropped tighter to get rid of some of the dead space.

At closer inspection, it is looking slightly to the right so this might work:

Thanks a lot!

I'm new to the MP-E 65 and would be happy for any suggestions & hacks

you might have for me. (although this shot has been taken with natural light

only, properly diffusing a flash is on my list already).

Thanks for your thoughts!

Yes, the polariser would definetly help with the colors. So I should better not leave it at home next time...

Next week I'm going to be back in that region and hopefully I can post some improved shots after that.

So you like the close up better. hm, yes I can see why.

Though the idea of the picture was different. In this shot I wanted to show the difficult conditions for research at this altitude (3580m). For one you have the cold and for two you have the barely filtered sunlight. Maybe I succeeded at this.

Lucky I had this dark sky. But otherwise, how can I improve my

mountain photography? (please mind the rest of the folder...) Thanks

for your help!

...a bit lost. everything is in focus and everything is grey. there's some black but almost no white spots.

maybe if you cut back on the aperture and reduce the depth of field to the main subject?

I like the warm brown colors better. But judge for yourself, i attached the b&w version (some corrections on the contrast had to be done).

I like the black and white much better. It sets the focus more on the smoke than the color version.

but, altough i do strongly agree with you concerning the kyoto protocol, i don't think this is the right picture to tell the world about it. Because you don't see neither the source or the nature of the smoke. It could be just water vapour and that's not much of a problem.

and to luis:

you're right about what you're saying but this doesn't change the fact that something has to be done. and the kyoto protocol is just a start.

Maybe I should've moved the focus more to the quenn's face instead of

to the angel on the right?

thanks a lot for your comments.

i guess coloring the man would alter the message of the picture. altough - or rather because - it would really put the focus on him.

thanks for your comments.

this actually is a boyscouts/girlscouts camp. i was volunteering as a camp cook there this summer.