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Photo of the Day - March 2009
- Thread starter techie4life
- Start date
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swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
Some nice pics here, although I generally can't stand the overstaturated look of HDR images.
And just to show that cloudy days have their days...
I'm just a looky-loo, not a photographer, but I had to say: This is a wonderfully tranquil picture, beautiful. Do you have a higher res version uploaded somewhere? Would love to use it as a desktop pic.
Some nice shots on here lately, as usual... maddmacs, alaskamoose, of course doylem and johnnytraveler, and a few others I haven't mentioned...
Here's my version of the bird/seagull shot. I don't really take too many shots like this because they're (seagulls) so available down at the beach at the roadside beach parks. If you act like you're interested, they'll mob you, and you may just get more of a welcoming than you like... all over your head..
Exactly!! It was a rare WARM early-March day here in NY, and my goal was to get the hang of my 100-400 lens, and seagulls are the perfect unknowing volunteers for this task!! i was careful not to stand directly under them.
HDR Definitely and possibly Photoshopped a lil here and there to bring out the photo atmosphere
OK - this is how I did it...
The original shot, straight out of the camera, looked like this
(It's a Welsh castle, where my cousin got married)
I opened it up in Camera Raw (part of Photoshop CS3) and most of the look came from wild and extravagant use of the faders...almost like turning everything up to 10...
Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Contrast and Clarity all boosted to 100 and even more contrast added with the Tone Curve - then I needed to cut the Exposure, dropping it to -1.25
Vibrance pushed to 100, but Saturation cut to -70
And this was the result
These settings will make a lot of photos look terrible, but I liked the effect I was getting here.
To finish it off I opened it in Photoshop. I cloned out the blown out bit of sky in the top left hand corner, then used 3 filters: Fresco, Watercolour and Diffuse Glow. Fresco and Watercolour were to add a bit of texture and Diffuse Glow was to bring out the light in the sky.
I only wanted the merest hint of each one, so I used fairly subtle settings and applied them to duplicate layers, setting the Blend Mode to Darken, with 10% Opacity for Fresco and Watercolour and 20% Opacity for Diffuse Glow...
Hi, thanks for you interest! It's very flattering. There's a slightly larger version on my FlickR:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3654/3337719416_3299772d86_o.jpg
I hope that's ok.
Nest Exchange
Here's one from this weekend of a female Bald Eagle returning to her nest so the male, who was taking his turn sitting on the eggs, could take a break.
C&C always welcome.
Here's one from this weekend of a female Bald Eagle returning to her nest so the male, who was taking his turn sitting on the eggs, could take a break.
C&C always welcome.
That one is good.
You could look into the Olympus E-420 with ED 70-300mm f/4-5.6, certainly the lightest and smallest combination available to shoot at 600mm equivalent. I have the lens, it is sharp as a tack but not good for low light...
I took this shot with the 70-300 from 50 yards.
click to enlarge
Stalking around Hyde park and then playing around with B&W conversion.
I like the composition and the treatment.
Another one from my pre-DSLR archives:
More from film
This is on the north side (Washington state) of the Columbia River in the Columbia River Gorge area a little east of Bingen, which is across from Hood River, OR if you want to GoogleEarth it - Latitude: 45°43'7.29"N, Longitude: 121°22'1.53"W (click on thumbnail for google earth view, look for yellow marker.)
We hiked up into the oak and pine woods and meadows, which are distinctly different from the Douglas fir forests further west. It's good rattlesnake and red-tail hawk country... 35mm, scanned from negative.
This is on the north side (Washington state) of the Columbia River in the Columbia River Gorge area a little east of Bingen, which is across from Hood River, OR if you want to GoogleEarth it - Latitude: 45°43'7.29"N, Longitude: 121°22'1.53"W (click on thumbnail for google earth view, look for yellow marker.)
We hiked up into the oak and pine woods and meadows, which are distinctly different from the Douglas fir forests further west. It's good rattlesnake and red-tail hawk country...
35mm, scanned from negative.
Attachments
Nice Action Shot of Eagle
That is a nice action shot of the eagle. How did you find her?
That is a nice action shot of the eagle. How did you find her?
Here's one from this weekend of a female Bald Eagle returning to her nest so the male, who was taking his turn sitting on the eggs, could take a break.
C&C always welcome.
C&C very welcome!
Nice composition, and like the "framing". The sun is a little bright and keeps drawing the eye towards the bottom left of the picture. Have you tried dodging the area to slightly darken it?
Thanks. And you're a brave man for taking that photo... I'm sure your subject wouldn't have been happy if he noticedI like the composition and the treatment.
Another one from my pre-DSLR archives:
What a cutie. Kept me company in my back yard while I was sunning on a really nice, warm day here in NY.
Thanks. And you're a brave man for taking that photo... I'm sure your subject wouldn't have been happy if he noticed
or woman
Thanks. And you're a brave man for taking that photo... I'm sure your subject wouldn't have been happy if he noticed
Brave woman, actually.
I was inside a car at the checkpoint (one of many they have placed randomly along the roads in Jordan), so I figured I could get away with a quick photo.