jkmccarthy

Flying low just above the sand on Dockweiler Beach, Los Angeles CA.

Please view larger, and see "Details" for camera/lens info. Thanks in

advance for any comments and constructive criticisms.

Thunderclouds and scattered showers earlier in the afternoon -- sun had

started to filter through the clouds again when this was taken. View larger

and see details if you are interested.

 

Thanks in advance for your comments and constructive criticism.

If those are tiny bubbles of sea foam on the edge of the wave in the right foreground, then the depth of field and perspective in this shot is really amazing. First impression is photo was taken from high on a cliff overlooking a large bay as a wave approaches the shore, but eventually the macro scale of the foreground hits home, and ones realizes (I think?) the perspective is really from a very short distance above the calm water, and the 'cliff' along the middle left can't be more than a meter or two in actual height. Yet the water behind the wave is very turbulent, and reflects the sunlight like a much larger & more distant ocean.

 

A very unique perspective. A++

I really like the well-defined reflections off the very rapidly moving Metro from the track-side lighting. How long was this exposure to erase any evidence of windows in the train cars ? Well done!

... is the tree trunk in lower left whose bark goes from light to dark along the horizon-line boundary of the mountain in the background. Coincidence, or (more likely) an unintended result of HDR ?

What is most distracting to my eye in this photo is the non-uniform sky brightness, that seems to follow the outline of the treetops. The actual brightness of the sky background, of course, should not be related to whatever happens to be in the foreground of the photo. I presume the brightness enhancement at the ends of all the tree branches is an HDR effect you were after, but if possible to prevent the HDR effects from spilling over into the sky background, I think it might be more effective (as besides being more uniform, the sky would also be somewhat darker behind the tree branches, accentuating the brightening of the branches themselves).

 

The hand-drawn yellow curve in the image attachment below (magnified screen capture from your image viewed larger) traces one of the contours in the sky background that my eye finds distracting.

 

Good luck !

 

I like the mood and the nicely balanced exposure that retains foreground detail (as opposed to everything being black in silhouette). Trees veiled in mist in the left background, and sun rising through the mist to the right of center, add wonderful touches and sense of depth. However it does appear the horizon line slopes down to the left, which in my opinion detracts slightly from the otherwise excellent composition of the photo.

Snapshot while hiking La Jolla Canyon Trail near Point Magu,

California

Spotting that same "the crator at the top centre" of the 300% crop in the full frame image, and taking 30-arcmin for moon's diameter, I estimate the crater at about 40-arcsec diameter ... which says your telescope -- and the atmosphere above your astrophotography/observing site -- is indeed delivering ~ arcsec resolution, not to mention resolution well-matched to your Nikon D-200's CCD pixel size. Again, most impressive!

Much less impressive is the 200% magnified crop attached below from an image of the crescent moon I snapped Monday night with my Nikon D200 and a Tokina RMC 500mm f/8 reflex mirror lens (going rate for these on eBay is about US$75.00, give or take). To my eye it looks noticeably softer than your 200% crop, and in arcsec units, my pixels are twice as large since my lens is 500mm compared to your 1000mm. (In my portfolio you can see how the Tokina 500mm telephoto performs when paired with a Nikon TC-200 2x teleconverter, giving 1000mm focal length -- but sad to say reduced image sharpness, viewed side-by-side with a 200% magnified crop of the Tokina 500mm telephoto used alone ...).

To do better than this, I guess I'll need to take out of the closet my 8-inch Celestron SCT, and see what that can deliver in front of the Nikon D-SLR. Stay tuned !

Telephoto ... not as tack-sharp as other examples on this site taken

using a telescope, but passable at 4x6 or 5x7 ?

Greetings Tony --

Really sharp photo. This evening in the photo critique forum there appeared someone's full moon over water photoshop effort here:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=7004157

...which ran sufficiently counter to my astronomical sensibilities that I had to respond, in order to motivate the photographer to pay more attention to the relative sun--moon locations in the sky, etc. In the context of that mini astronomy lesson, I found your image here, and took the liberty of "borrowing" it for cut+paste purposes to illustrate in the above thread an alternative (more astronomically realistic) moonrise over water scene.

I hope first of all that you don't mind, and secondly might even be amused to see your image warmed, shrunk, and pasted-in over the other photographer's photoshop-simulated ocean or lake reflections at moonrise. We're all here for fun and to learn from each other, yes ?

Again, excellent photo in terms of sharpness along the terminator. I'm curious how much more sharp/fine details are visible in the full-size Nikon D200 image (or a subset cropped from it at 100% scale factor), versus the reduced-size picture posted here?

Cheers,

--Jim

Alternatively, the pitch black background of the original could be retained and still be correct, astronomically speaking, were the phase of the moon altered. At quarter moon, the moon and the sun are 90-degrees apart in the sky: waxing moon at first quarter sets around midnight, while waning moon at last quarter rises around midnight. A waning gibbous moon rising over water a few hours before midnight might present a view similar to Tom's original, such as in this new attachment. (Photo credit to photo.net's Tony Quinlan for the gibbous moon original image I warmed, shrunk, and cut+pasted into the attachment. See Tony's original on photo.net at this location: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6990698&size=lg ... well worth a look)

If you've ever looked closely at the moon as it rises or sets over the horizon, it's shape (and that of the sun at sunrise/sunset for that matter) is distorted by atmospheric refraction. Your line-of-sight to the rising/setting moon (or sun) has a very long path length through the atmosphere (distorting the moon's shape as well as giving it a warmer color), and furthermore the change from air to the vacuum of space (or vice versa, for light from the moon or sun incident at the top of the earth's atmosphere) is accompanied by a slight change in the index of refraction, causing the line-of-sight to bend downward (towards the horizon). As a result, the moon (or sun) will appear somewhat compressed in the vertical direction relative to its apparent angular size in the horizontal direction.

 

Note also that the full moon is approximately 180-degrees opposite in the sky from the sun. Hence when the full moon is either rising or setting, the sun is simultaneously setting or rising, respectively. Therefore the sky won't be pitch black when the full moon rises or sets, but generally a twilight sky.

 

While less artistically dramatic than your original, astronomically I would expect to see something more along the lines of the attached image, but likely with more wave/surface detail visible in the ocean or lake to the left and right of the moon's reflection, since this would still be a twilight scene....

 

Following up on Greg's comment, I like everything about this version except perhaps for the randomly feathered boundaries between the arcs of blue in the sky ... the 'noisy' boundaries come across to me less as 'natural' in appearance, and more as 'digital artifacts' ... but that's just my opinion/impression. Hard to say for sure without seeing an example, but I suspect I'd prefer to see instead smooth curved line boundaries between those bands of blue in the sky at the top, especially given how finely and delicately the tree is rendered in silhouette against the sky...

Very nicely done overall, however. Thanks for sharing!

--Jim

The contrasts between the sunlit fields, the shadows on the more distant (and lushly forested) hills/mountains, and the partly cloudy sky are wonderful!

While it's a matter of taste (and only my personal opinion), the one aspect that subtracts from the overall picture for me is the very dark foreground. Not that I have anything against foreground objects in dark silhouette as a rule, as I think it can contribute an artistic element when the object is recognizable, shapely, or otherwise interesting in "outline" form ... but here I don't think it contributes as much in these respects. Granted the foreground nicely "frames" the bottom of the shot and adds depth; I just think in this particular shot I'd like it better were the foreground vegetation rendered more naturally in a medium/dark green (very low level of fill flash or ?), versus a heavy mass silhouetted in black with only a few highlights sprinkled in.

But overall, I find the photograph very striking, and congratulate you on capturing this wonderful vista.

--Jim

Comments and constructive criticism welcome. Thanks very much.

(13 miles inland from Seward, Alaska). We started this hike at 6:00am, reached Grayling Lake destination before 7am, and I snapped this photo around 7:20am while hiking out (heading east, into the sun). See "Details" for complete exposure information, and thanks in advance for comments and constructive criticism.

... the whites of your eyes have turned the aquamarine color of the water in the pool ! Is that the message here, James ?

Under this assumption, my preference would have been for sharpest focus on the eyes / eyelashes, but these seem softer to me than the wet hair over her ear and the droplets of water on her shoulder. Maybe more DOF would be optimum, or as Julie suggests, take the eyes to B &amp W so the viewer's attention is less distracted from the droplets of water on her shoulder ?

Regards, --Jim.

Please let me know which one you prefer, and why --- pool light OFF (Shangri-La No. 1) or ON (here) ? Thanks for stopping by.

Please let me know which one you prefer, and why --- pool light OFF (here) or ON (Shangri-La No. 2) ? Thanks for stopping by.

But "Larger" version that can be viewed here has full resolution of the Nikon D200 camera used to take the hand-held exposure. Allows you to inspect image sharpness and quality at full resolution, if you are interested. Lens was Nikon 18-70mm kit lens, set at 52mm focal length and full aperture. See "Details" page for many other details.

Not so sure I agree with Al ... in Kim's original, I find the last rays of the setting sun catching the flower petals on the crest of the foreground stand-out just lovely, back-lit against the dark distant hills. Al's PhotoShop'd version spoils this effect and takes away the drama, at least to my eye. My feeling is that Kim's original is likely more faithful to the view had by someone actually standing there -- this is one of those pictures that you need to look at for a while to truly appreciate, letting your (dark-adapted?) eyes be drawn into the shadows containing green foliage and blue wildflowers in the foreground. Those details are unmistakably present in Kim's original, if one simply takes the time to look and admire ... (and tilt your LCD monitor just right (!-), until the foreground shadows are neither "black" nor "silver gray", but deep green and richly detailed ...).

In it's original form, this one probably isn't a shot appropriate for a magazine advertisement, i.e., granted the foreground wildflowers in shadow don't leap off the page and grab the viewer's attention as they're casually flipping the magazine pages.... But as a gallery piece (or, albeit more mundanely, as computer wallpaper?) that one would view at length (and again at just the optimum LCD monitor tilt, where the screen's dynamic range is maximum :-), I believe Kim's original works really really well.

So please folks don't quickly conclude "not enough light" and rush by this one ... the more you look at it, the more you'll see, and in that sense it's a real treasure. Thanks Kim for sharing it. --Jim

Hard to decide between "Nature" category and "Abstract".

 

Originally uploaded to my portfolio as example of Nikon D200 + 18-

70mm kit lens sharpness and image quality ... companion image in

portfolio shows crop of 1/9th frame area at full pixel resolution,

should anyone be interested. Hand-held. Other details complete

under "Details".