Weekly Photo Contest - 24th June-1st July, 2015: Tranquility

[Hughmac]

Ta very much for the critique; - yes I think there was a slight focussing problem but I promised my wife she would be blurred in the pic. and tried to get the foreground sharp.

I was going for a beach scene myself but thought those wonderful water and sunset photos would blow mine away.

Congrats to all the winners

Cheers

Hugh

 

[AlexH]

Excellent job judging this week, and the winning photo deserved to win. Great shot!

 

[stillcrazyman]

Well, thank you again for selecting my photo as the winner. I wasn't feeling too confident in my choice, but it seems to have been the correct choice
The entries were all tremendous !

I'll try and sort something out for the next contest. Stay tuned !

 

[Laird Knox]

[TIMG]https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...000_869781169756488_7377264914118455389_o.jpg

@Laird Knox

Lovely slow night scene, and what an interesting rock formation. That smaller rock on the top looks like its waiting to be pushed off! The composition works well as does the lighting. I’d be interested to here more about how you shot this.

With a camera.

Just a basic setup on the camera. It is a 30 second exposure to smooth out the already clam water even more. White balance was set to tungsten which caused the sky to go so blue.

The tripod was setup next to a boat ramp and about 30 feet to my left the shore on the other side of the ramp extended further out. I perched my light on a rock and pointed it at the island. It was also set to tungsten white balance so that the island would read correctly even though the sky went blue. I had it set at 1ev (the lowest power) After checking the exposure I keep increasing the power until I liked the result. It ended up at 3ev but this is really a meaningless number, it was just a matter of balancing the light levels.

Thank you for taking the time to judge and critique the contest.

 

[stillcrazyman]

New contest thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...y-9th-july-2015-opposite-of-tranquil.1897299/

 

[MacRy]

I nearly didn't enter this week as I saw anotherscotsman and AlexofOz's shots and thought "Well that's game over then!" Turns out I was wrong.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Thoroughly enjoyed looking at this week's entries, - and well done, @Apple fanboy for writing such detailed critiques.

Personally, I really rather liked @kenoh's picture, as well as those of @MacRy, @Laird Knox, and @AlexH.

Very well done, and some lovely shots.

 

[someoldguy]

Nice job judging , and commenting on each entry! Congrats to stillcrazyman and the other winners . My garden doesn't look like the one in my shot either .

 

[anotherscotsman]

I nearly didn't enter this week as I saw anotherscotsman and AlexofOz's shots and thought "Well that's game over then!" Turns out I was wrong.

I'd put my money on you over me anytime MacRy...but thanks for the thought.

Hi folks. Sorry for the delay. My little study is upstairs, and completely roasting yesterday, but a little more bearable today.

Well I’m afraid you’ve got to put up with my uneducated ramblings if you want feedback this week. Please remember these are just my opinions, and I mean no offense by what I say. Just calling it as I see it. Feel free to completely disagree!

@anotherscotsman

Again another cracking sky. The cloud cover in this one is sublime. Not sure if it’s possible, but I think the posts look a little cluttered. If you could adjust the angle so they were a little more diagonal, I think this would work even better.

I see what you mean - the elementary landscape error too much attention to the background (sky) and not enough to the foreground. In mitigation, the sky was mesmerising in vivo.

Great comments and thanks for judging. Congratulations to the worthy winners.

 

[kenoh]

Cracking commentary AFB. Fantastic entries this week. Well done everyone.

Well deserved winning entries.

LOVED jkramerbob's of the dog...

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

Thanks @Apple fanboy for the feedback, it's really appreciated. My image was taken just after sunset, the sand here was very undulating, which made for interesting water reflections of the uninteresting sunset light in conjunction with long exposure captures. ThIs was a thirty second exposure, which gave all the detail of the large rocky outcrops in the darkness of post-sunset. I have images where I let the ISO climb up to 25,600 to freeze the motion, but they didn't do it for me. I do love the fact that there could be any number of photographers in a place at the same time and the real potential is that they all end up with completely different images!

Congrat's to the winners, and also to everyone who entered. I always love seeing the diversity of visions and/or interpretations put forth each week by the entrants.

 

[Joewilliamsca]

Great job judging AFB. Really appreciate the feedback

 

[Apple fanboy]

Thanks for all the positive feedback on the critique.

 

[AngerDanger]

@Laird Knox, the new forum software no longer allows [timg] tags. You should surround the URL with working tags we can see that beaut! Great job with the lighting, by the way; although the shadows could be softer (with voodoo?), I'm particularly fond of how bright they appear against the water.

 

[Laird Knox]

@Laird Knox, the new forum software no longer allows [timg] tags. You should surround the URL with working tags we can see that beaut! Great job with the lighting, by the way; although the shadows could be softer (with voodoo?), I'm particularly fond of how bright they appear against the water.

So I discovered. Yesterday I was beat and just didn't feel like fixing it.

I didn't think about softening the edges of the shadows. That would have been as simple as waving the flashlight around during the exposure. My biggest complaint with the image is a soft pink glow behind the island. It is the lights from Prescott Valley and in the prints it looks a bit like a post processing halo.

 

[zaphodtheprez]

@zaphodtheprez

I was sure this was a slow exposure to get that water so still. Then I saw it was an iPhone 6 shot, and I have to say consider me impressed! Just goes to show it’s the photographer not the equipment! My only negative is the duck who lost his legs and the twigs at the bottom, which I find a little distracting. Good effort though!

Thanks for the feedback AFB. I don't always have my Canon when I come across a scene I really want to capture, so my iPhone 6 is my new alternate. In fact I used to carry around my point-n-shoot Panasonic a lot more often, but not since I got the 6. I've used the "long exposure to still moving waters" technique before and quite like the results. That technique doesn't give the mirror-like reflection though. I was just lucky the water and wind were calm. The clutter in the foreground is a bit annoying. I was limited in the opening between trees where I could capture a balanced reflection and zooming on the 6 produces poor results.

This round had a great mix of interesting and impressive entries.
Congrats stillcrazyman - your win is well deserved - great shot.

 

[filmbufs]

Really nice entries for this week's contest and mighty fine judging. Congrats to the winners.
Shoutout to stillcrazyman for capturing a lovely image without mosquitos, jkramerbob for the laugh and to AlexH who is a magician with his use of bokeh.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Really nice entries for this week's contest and mighty fine judging. Congrats to the winners.
Shoutout to stillcrazyman for capturing a lovely image without mosquitos, jkramerbob for the laugh and to AlexH who is a magician with his use of bokeh.

Agreed. Very good critiques @Apple fanboy, and I, too was fascinated to see what people would come up with.

I expected quite a few shots with water, or where 'tranquil' seas, or lakes featured, and of course sunsets, particularly as it is this time of year when sunsets can be magnificent with the long evenings especially at higher latitudes.

However, I had half expected to see more 'blue' used, as that colour positively screams 'tranquility'. Still, am with @Alexander.Of.Oz when he remarked on how extraordinarily interesting it is that one theme can produce such disparate entries and interpretations of the brief or theme for the week.

 

[v3rlon]

Hi folks. Sorry for the delay. My little study is upstairs, and completely roasting yesterday, but a little more bearable today.

Well I’m afraid you’ve got to put up with my uneducated ramblings if you want feedback this week. Please remember these are just my opinions, and I mean no offense by what I say. Just calling it as I see it. Feel free to completely disagree!


@v3rlon

I’m not overly sure this image fits the theme. I’m not sure the squashed barn makes me think of tranquility. More like after the storm! Sorry that’s just me. Also I’d either put the farm house on the left in or out. Chopped in half doesn’t do anything for the image IMO.




Over to you stillcrazyman for this weeks competition.

Well, to be fair, I live in Central Texas. Water isn't exactly tranquil for us after multiple rounds of flooding. And if I showed a recent photo of water, there would probably be a squashed barn underneath the surface anyway.

That said, your contest - your rules. Nothing wrong with not finding tranquility where I did. There were several nice photos here, and congratulations to the winners.