snigam

Excellent capture!

Thank Tony. Your visit is always a pleasure. I have been out of touch with your recent work since I got busy with other things. Will catch up with you soon. Take care...

A photographic thanks for all the friends who provided comments and

ratings this year. May all of you reach higher in your photo journey... just

like these birds. Merry christmas and happy new year.

Thanks for your visit Pierre. Glad you like this one. 

Best wishes... Sandeep

Beautiful photo. Natural colors and tones. Tree in foreground provides interesting frame for the scene.

Best wishes... Sandeep

Very beautiful photo. Love the color of moon against dark blue sky. Rock and waves provide nice foreground and color symmetry. Very well done!

Best wishes... Sandeep

James, never in my wildest dream had I thought one of my photo will remind somebody of Ansel Adam's "Moonrise, Hernandez NM". That is one of the greatest photo I have ever seen. A masterpiece... there is so much beauty in simplicity of that photo. 

There is something in BW photos that makes them appear both real and fantastic at the same time. It is this mix that makes the photo interesting. When I compare this BW to colored version, they feel completely different. I find much more freedom in toning of BW photo without having to worry about color faithfulness. Thanks again for kind words.

Sandeep

Hello Olaf, glad you find it interesting. Astronomy has always been interesting subject for me. The more we learn about it, more we realize how little we know. There is always some new fascinating topic to read.

Best wishes to you for christmas season... Sandeep

Frank, yes this is the last full umbra eclipse for next 3 years where complete moon goes black. There will be partial to shoot. In fact, once moon goes fully into shadow, there is nothing to photograph. Only when one edge starts coming out on the other side, there is something visible to shoot.

A 210mm moon shot with penumbral eclipse. The moon has been in penumbra region (shadow of earth but not complete darkness) for 54 minutes (called P1 eclipse). It is going to touch umbra region in 18 minutes (U1 start) at which time the shadow will starts to appear from top area. For more details see wikipedia article on penumbra eclipse. There is also an article about Dec. 10 eclipse with timeline. This photo was taken at 12:27 UTC (7.27 local time).

Since moon is so close to umbra, I was expecting to detect brightness gradient. In color image moon appears too bright and colors are distracting. I processed the raw in ACR 4.4 using linear curve to make the gradient more apparent. The darkest area at the top is at RGB21 and at the bottam it is close to RGB170, so you should be able to see full moon. The foreground was processed separately. There are some more details in color photo that you can reach by clicking on the right button.

One of the most fascinating moon shot I have ever taken although I did not know about the eclipse until afterwards. Thanks for looking. Comments or rating welcome.

Lovely image! The soft colors and tones are pierced by the sharp wings of turbines. Moon is icing on the cake. Colors appear very life like.

Best wishes Stephen... Sandeep

The moon in this photo is in P1 eclipse stage, also called penumbral eclipse. It started at 6:33am and this was taken at 7:27am. It is just beginning of eclipse stage when moon become progressively darker from one side until shadow of earth starts appearing (U1 stage). U1 started at 7:45 am and by that time moon had already set in Toronto.

I did not know about it at all until I read some new articles today. Out of curiosity I took the raw file, converted moon to grey scale and reduced exposure by about 3EV to detect any brightness gradient. The top portion of moon appears more dark than usual and there seems to be brightness variation from top to bottam. For comparison I tried same thing with another 210 mm shot from september and brightness there is even through out the grey area.

It is much easier to detect in photoshop by moving the mouse around and see the rgb values change from around 48 to 105. I made this image for comparison if anybody is interested.

Sometimes we just get lucky. I have few more images from same time frame.

Best wishes... Sandeep

Beautiful image. Monochromatic tones of green and yellow make this scene serene and interesting. 

Best wishes... Sandeep

I looked at the jpeg file size and it is 90 kb. My jpeg files of this size (1200x800) take up about 500 kb or more. So you are using some optimization to reduce file size and that will cause pixelization. I do not use any 'save to web' or optimization techniques. They all introduce some problems.

Rassie, Looking at this photo it is hard to believe this is coming from 16 mega pixel camera. D7000 is a good camera and you should be getting much better tones and smooth changes in colors. I see lot of pixelization in sky (meaning you can see abrupt changes in blue color). Either something in your camera setting is not right or your processing is causing it. Is this straight jpeg out of camera? If processed raw file, which tool are you using? Sometimes 8 bit processing can cause pixelization but depends on the tool.

Best wishes... Sandeep

A 210mm straight shot yesterday. No filter, color temperature set to 6300K.

It is going into clouds, so there is slight cut off at bottom right side.

Comments or rating welcome.

Lighting, composition and sharpness are excellent. 

Best wishes... Sandeep

Thanks Giuliano. Glad you find it interesting.

Sandeep

I agree there are too many photos posted for critique and not enough people who visit the critique forums. Most people do not want to comment on a photo unless they feel a bit comfortable with the photographer so that their comments are not taken the wrong way. Some of my photos got almost twenty ratings and no comment. I rely on the most simple number - number of clicks. How many people actually opened the thumbnail (since they can see the photo from thumbnail itself). Some of my photos got over 100 clicks in half an hour of posting, others can't reach 50 clicks even after 4 days. It is easiest way to judge if viewers find photo 'interesting' or not.

This is nice colorful photo. Best wishes Stephen... Sandeep

Stunning image. Sharpness, colors are excellent.

Best wishes... Sandeep

Wonderful shapes, textures and tones. Very creative. Lighting is interesting.

Best wishes... Sandeep

Lovely fall scene. Colors are natural. Green benches lead the eye.

Best wishes... Sandeep