anat1

I have raised the contest problems in a forum post after I got some silly comments posted to my image page. If any of you think its worth your time, you can add to that forum post or wait to hear from PN admins in case they respond.

Forum post:

http://photo.net/site-help-forum/00bcYe

Thank you Jorge - Happy to know you like the image enough to add it to your favorites.

A very striking image that you are telling a story with - powerful.

Could you comment on the exposure and post-processing? Is it a multi-exposure manually blended, for instance? Any physical ND Grads used (doesn't look like it)? Thank you.

 

.. on winning the Earth Day contest.

I like the composition, the b/w treatment and the clouds at the top. You caught the horse at a particularly striking pose. The only small thing that detracts is the white patch on the hind leg which is distracting - that is ofcourse part of the animal, but could maybe darkened a tiny bit.

As can be seen from some of the comments above, contests seem to bring the worst types out in the open. The people posting the negative comments may have joined PN just to vote to a particular entry as several of them have joined on the same day / very recently.

Thank you Anne, Giuseppe and Luoise! It was a wonderful sight to see in person.

Thank you Giuseppe , Anne and Philip - appreciate your interest and compliments.

Philip: It was taken with a relatively slow-shutter speed to make the water look pleasing. I had to keep taking images (say 50-100, don't recall) until I managed to get one where the bear happened to be still so it was sharp inspite of the slow-shutter speed. I wish I had made the shutter even slower (see the previous image).

 

 

Thank you Gail. It is quite a sight indeed!

Thank you Claudiu.

Thank you Rolph and Kenneth.

Kenneth - the salmon in to the bears mouth would be great! Except here I was trying to get falls to be milky with a slower shutter speed and at the same time trying to get the bear sharp. This was difficult even when the bear was standing still and required *many* shots to get one sharp image. When the salmon come out the bears get excited and don't stand still as they try to reach and grab one. I do have high shutter-speed pics with caught salmon in their mouths (but the water is not as beautiful).

 

A long-exposure (100+ secs) of Herbert Lake at dusk in the spring.

Being there in the dark (around 11 pm) was a little uncomfortableknowing the bears were about :D We had seen about 4 bears near thehighway that day.

Your thoughts are much appreciated. Thank you.

The bears are able to balance themselves precariously on top of the

roaring falls in wait for salmon.

The bears are able to balance themselves precariously on top of the

roaring falls in wait for salmon.

We were lucky to get some dramatic golden light on Mt. Rundle just

before sunset. I had walked around on the partially frozen Vermillion

lakes to get to a location with interesting foreground. I think it was

worth it even though I ended up falling through thin ice into

knee-deep freezing water. :D

We were lucky to get some dramatic light on Mt. Rundle just before

sunset. I had walked around on the partially frozen Vermillion lakes

to get to a location with interesting foreground. I think it was

worth it even though I ended up falling through thin ice into

knee-deep freezing water. :D

The Mirror Lakes are a series of small lakes along the side of the

Milford Road in New Zealand's Fiordland National Park. The road winds

through some beautiful country, eventually ending at the famous

Milford Sound.

Having risen well before dawn, we were able to get to the Mirror Lakes

to catch the sunrise just on time. We had the entire place to

ourselves as we watched the sun slowly paint the opposing peaks a

beautiful orange. I have tried to use the branches to frame the peaks.

I thought the shapes of the leaves added some much-needed interest,

esp. due to the absence of clouds.

That interesting shaped water-body is Deep Cove - one arm of Doubtful

Sound in New Zealand's Fiordland National Park. The area is renowned

for its rainy (and cloudy) days, as this particular day happened to

be. Still relatively untouched and pristine.

Dear Gianni, Danny and Giuseppe - Thank you. Glad you like the image.

Radu - thank you. I would like to put up a bigger version too. But I find that PN causes compression artifacts on the "medium" size version it creates from my larger size images. It may just be the image settings I use in LR, I am not sure. So I stopped uploading anything over 680px. I tried asking about this in "site help/suggestions", but as has been the case before I didn't get anywhere with that approach.

Scott - Glad you like the image. It was a very tranquil morning - I'm happy the image conveys that feeling.

 

We were in a tiny 3-seater plane. The pilot, my wife in the back and

me in a safety harness in the front with the door removed. This was

the first time I had shot from a plane with the door removed and

although I was safely strapped-down, it felt quite unnerving to me.

Sky-diving is not for me surely :D. The entire area - Milford Sound,

Tasman Sea - was beautiful, but this particular sight just stunned us.

The pilot had not told us we were approaching it, so we were quite

surprised. The rainbow was the icing.

Got up quite early to catch the still waters before the wind picked

up. I tried searching for foreground interest and interesting

reflections. I settled on this large pond left behind by the low-tide.

I would have liked more pebbles in the foreground, but this was the

best angle I could achieve. Even though it was cloudy and there wasn't

a real sunrise, I was lucky to get a clear shot of the summit of Mitre

Peak which is often obscured. I loved being out here with just one

other person in the entire area.

Thank you Mike and Tony. Early morning when the wind was behaving and the water still. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy as you can see. But that is very common for the area I'm told. I never could get a nice sunrise / sunset shot in the area in the 3 days I stayed there.

Thank you Adam and Tony.

Adam - it is real :) - Sutherland Falls in the Fiordland near Milford Sound. It is 580 metres in height and has three sections as you can see where the fall is broken. It was quite breath-taking to come upon this sight during our flight-seeing trip. The rainbow was an added bonus - disappeared in a couple of minutes. Attached is a closer view of the upper section and the lake atop.

I must admit this sight, although too fleeting, was the highlight of our trip to NZ. If we had been in a helicopter instead of a fixed-wing plane we could have landed at the top I'm told!

Thank you again.

 

Dear Svend, Larry, Tony & Stefano - Thank you for stopping by and appreciating.

Larry - were you on your way to/from Dunedin? I'm sure you enjoyed your time in NZ. I'm not sure if those are seaweed on the rocks - I thought they were part of the rock face.

 

Tony - very nice way of giving a critical comment :). I do have another image (attached) without the corner rock showing. Somehow I wanted to include as much of the strange striations on the rocks as possible.

 

 

Dear Anis and Tony - Thank you. Hope you have had a nice new year till date.

Moeraki, a tiny town in eastern Otago district of New Zealand, has

many of these crazy looking boulders right on the beach. Odd-shaped

bowling balls, they seem to be best captured when both the tide and

light cooperate. On that morning I couldn't get the tide to come in to

make some interesting waves around these boulders. But it turned out

to be a nice sunrise.

Thank you Mike, Gerolamo and Michael. Happy New Year to you!