fmueller

The photo shows smoke over the wetlands of Kakadu National Park in Northern Australia.

When I went there earlier this year, I was surprised to learn that fire has been used by Aboriginal people for thousands of years to 'clean the country' before the hot and dry season comes.       This earth, I never damage.

       I look after. Fire is nothing, just clean up.

       When you burn, new grass coming up.

       That means good animal soon,

       might be goanna, possum, wallaby.

       Burn him off, new grass coming up, new life all over.

       Bill Neidje - Bunitj clan

       Aboriginal traditional owner of the land Kakadu NP

This photo is meant to show the fire in a non-threatening way. There are no flames, just smoke that harmoniously blends in with the clouds. The vastness of the wetlands does not give the fire a chance to get out of control.Maybe thats all a bit much to be captured in one photo, especially considering that I was there on a family holiday with no chance to make contact to Aboriginal people to any significant degree.Anyway, all comments and suggestions appreciated.

Nice shot. I like it.

 

Between the lines I am reading your question 'could this photo have been further improved by the use of filters?' ;-)

 

I am also considering myself a beginner, but I'd have to say probably not.

 

If you are interested in filters, as a first resource you should read the Photo.net section on filters.

 

In a nutshell, colour filters (as in red, green, blue etc) are extremely useful for black and white photography, because they can help to enhance contrast. However, no serious photographer would use them in general colour photography.

 

Most people just own UV filters (protect the lens and reduce haze), polarizers (enhance contrast between white clouds and blue sky, reduce reflections on non-metallic surfaces) and maybe skylights (protect the lens, slight warming; ie add pink).

 

The latter could have been used in your photo, but probably wouldn't have added much.

 

If you had the opportunity to shoot this photo again, I would recommend to use a different film, particularly Fuji Velvia. It produces very vibrant and saturated colours - a lot of people love it, some hate it for that. With ISO 50 it is much slower than the film you used (ISO 400) and you might have had to use a tripod, which would be a good idea for that sort of photo anyway. Also, it is a slide film, so you would end up with a slide rather than a print, which you might or might not want. To publish it on the web you would either need a film scanner or you would have to have it scanned at your photo lab.

 

For what I consider to be typical Velvia shots please see my folder. For another great fall colour shot taken with a similar slide film (Provia's colours are probably not quite as vibrant as Velvia's) and an interesting filter (combination of polarizer and warming filter) please see this photo.

 

All the best

9/10 for spotting a subject that, I am sure, most of us would have walked straight past.

 

Love the colours. You should try selling prints of this to some holiday resort on a tropical island ;-)

Nice shot! Very clever - an unusual perspective for a butterfly picture that worked out very well.

I probably would not have seen the truck, had you not pointed it out. I don't find it distracting but there would probably not much be lost if you cropped it. The overall composition might even improve, because you would end up with more space before, than behing the truck, which I find desirable.

 

Wrt. burning, for my tast the picture is just a notch too light anyway. You might just make it a bit darker overall. For the web version this could easily be done with curves in Photo.shop.

 

Almost forgot to say, it's very nice shot!

I reckon it turned out surprisingly well. How did you manage to get no reflection even though you used on camera flash? Is it cropped quite a bit?

 

The usually recommended technique is to push both, the lens and the off camera flash firmly against the glass. One of those collapsible rubber lens hoods on the lens help. However, you have done pretty well without this technique.

 

The colours of the fish might have been warmer without flash, but then the picture might have been blurred...

It's Daimler...

This is one shot of a series of three in this folder.

Awesome colours! This would make a great poster.

I would try to get rid of the car tyre - even at the expense of loosing some of the wing.

 

If you have some more space at the bottom to get the second bird's feet in that would be great too!

 

Awesome shot anyway!

 

BTW, there is no Wendies in Australia :(

Could you send me over some Junior Bacon Cheese Burgers? ;-)

Very nice indeed! Agree with previous commenters, can't believe this is a digital image. Probably because I would expect somebody who takes that sort of picture to use a large format camera ;-)

Love this shot, which I managed to get on one of those rare mornings

when I managed to get out of bed early enough to see the sun rise.

 

The slide pops. Not sure if the scan can truely do it justice.

 

All comments appreciated.

 

Frank

Aren't Australian wildflowers great subjects for macro photography! They often don't look like much from afar but there is so much detail.

 

Nice shot!

All comments appreciated!

Ok, it's a snap-shot type of subject, but I really like this shot.

 

The ball and the dog halfway in the air add dynamic. I also like the

colours and the reflection of the dog.

 

What do you think? Harsh criticism appreciated! ;-)

 

Frank

All comments appreciated!

Please comment

If you like this photo please leave a comment.

 

If you don't like this photo please leave a comment too.

 

If you are indifferent definetely leave a comment!

all comments and suggestions appreciated

If this had been my first try at shooting F1 I would be pretty happy. You see a lot of F1 posters sold for a lot of money that are not as good as this.

Very nice, and quite original. I like it!

 

It's not too busy at all, just interesting. I could have an enlargement of this up on a wall and look at it for quite some time.

This is a pretty good shot, but the title had me screaming. Hilarious - well done!

 

Would love to have a bit more detail in the faces, but hey, as long as the hair is there ;-)

This is a great action shot! I too love the framing.

 

If you do want to crop further, and I am not sure if I would, you might want to crop a tiny little bit on the lefthand side, so that you have just two legs of the horse in the picture. The main purpose beeing that you would get rid of the red shirt of the rider in the top left hand corner.

You don't have much red in the rest of the picure and it draws the eye a bit into this corner.

 

Cropping on the right and top is perfect. On the bottom I might ,like to have a little bit more space - depending on what there is ;-)

 

Having said all this, I would probably leave the picture just as it is! Awesome shot, great colours, great composition!

A great shot. I agree that it looks more like a computer generated graphic than a photo, but the spot lights might explain this. I still like it!

What a cool folder! I usually don't support any glorifications of war and despise military parades and the like.

 

However, these pictures just look great. To cover an event like this I would have probably chosen B&W, but after seeing this folder I reckon B&W pictures would not have had anywhere near the impact of these. The colour brings this event from the past straight into the present.

 

Great work!