SDN Photo-a-Day (Rules updates - read the OP)

[Simplicius]

Had some fun tonight.



Blue bubbles



Corot, Jumièges Abbey - by Canon, after Daguerre. A scanner turns a transparency of a panting into a representation of a primitive photograph.



Marine sponge.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Nice pics Simplicus. The is interestingncy in particular transpare

[Simplicius]

I'm enraptured by the light, it just came out so soft and golden (it was midday light through trees, so no idea why it wasn't harsh)

The trees act as a filter, I think. There's nice light to be had in forests, if you can work with the bright patches.

I do like that picture, too. Only thing that bugs me is the dark mass of chain-link coming out of her head. The placement is unfortunately distracting; the rest of the fence is fine.

Of the next three, the towers has some potential but probably would have benefited from a filter to darken the scene (shrink the sun a bit and better define it and its rays) and bring out some more orange in the sun and sky. The spigot handle and trash don't do anything for me. The former is 'hey neat macro' but is otherwise a plain subject presented plainly, and the latter just doesn't look like much. It's not organized in any real way, and everything in it seems to merge together.

EDIT: Some thoughts about the first picture - I can't quite tell what the subject is. Is it the couple or is it the storage tanks across the river? The couple's dark clothing is also in-line with the much brighter buildings - so they seem to blend in.

I didn't catch this earlier. The couple is meant to be the subject, with the tanks as their subject. I was stopped way down, where I could have decreased DoF a little if I had been paying attention and maybe improved that part of it.

Placement WRT the horizon is also not the best, I agree. I took a couple more of them with a freighter in the background where differentiation is better, but placement in the frame is worse.

I like your Bean photo. It's probably one of those items that has been photographed nigh to death, but your shot uses it well - it's a picture of the city, not a 'lol curved mirror' gimmick or a picture of the sculpture itself.

lifeguard shack

The backlit building and greenery remind me of Eliot Porter's The wharf, Great Spruce Head Island, 1965, at least as printed. It seems a very delicate grade of light, light without quite being bright.

[phongn]

Today, I went to the Morton Arboretum to shoot the fall leaves. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I got back my tendency to fuck up exposure with slide film and scenes with a whole lot of dynamic range (read: today). I know I should expose for the highlights but just completely forgot. Hopefully I didn't just burn though a lot of irreplaceable film (in this case, Fortia SP)

I do like that picture, too. Only thing that bugs me is the dark mass of chain-link coming out of her head. The placement is unfortunately distracting; the rest of the fence is fine.

I think I have to agree here - for a little while the fence was distracting me and I couldn't figure out why for the life of me - then I recognized the part where it looked like the chain-link fence was growing into her head.

EDIT: Some thoughts about the first picture - I can't quite tell what the subject is. Is it the couple or is it the storage tanks across the river? The couple's dark clothing is also in-line with the much brighter buildings - so they seem to blend in.

I didn't catch this earlier. The couple is meant to be the subject, with the tanks as their subject. I was stopped way down, where I could have decreased DoF a little if I had been paying attention and maybe improved that part of it.

Subject isolation would've helped, I think, but then it runs the risk of de-emphasizing the tanks a bit too much. It still wasn't quite clear if the subjects were looking across the bay.

I like your Bean photo. It's probably one of those items that has been photographed nigh to death, but your shot uses it well - it's a picture of the city, not a 'lol curved mirror' gimmick or a picture of the sculpture itself.

The hilarious part is that I just found some unscanned film buried at the bottom of my photo bin and it turns out that I made almost the exact same shot in B&W. I'll have to compare the two (desaturated 135 KR 64 versus 120 TMY-2 400) and see what I liked best.

Incidentially, TMY-2 400 is a really fine-grained film, but I still am not quite sure how I feel about it compared to traditional Tri-X. Plus, there's also Neopan, Delta, HP5 ...

[Simplicius]

Bald Mountain and Megunticook Lake from Maiden's Cliff, Camden



Atlantic Point crossing, Rockland



Tools of the trade

Those scannergrams are fun, but they are really at their best at full size.

[The Grim Squeaker]

The third picture is very professional - clean, colour and background controlled, and I like the light spectrum. You should use it as an example of product photography if you have a portfolio.

[phongn]

Oooh, someone has Pentax glass. I should try that myself!

[Simplicius]

The third picture is very professional - clean, colour and background controlled, and I like the light spectrum. You should use it as an example of product photography if you have a portfolio.

The irony is that the technique is mind-bogglingly simple and takes almost zero effort or indeed thought, while the downside is that what can be presented and how are quite limited. Glad you liked it, though!

[phongn]

The oldest camera store in Chicago (and the last of the really independent shops):



Lone drummer competing against a festival in the distance:



Random shot of a Chicago streetlight control box:

[The Grim Squeaker]

Hey, I remember seeing that shop near my HI hostel

[generator_g1]

Another tiger shot (different from the 1st one I posted)


Here's another of him in his den.

[aerius]

Blue bubbles

How did you take this photo? Are those bubbles on the inside of a glass?

The backlit building and greenery remind me of Eliot Porter's The wharf, Great Spruce Head Island, 1965, at least as printed. It seems a very delicate grade of light, light without quite being bright.

It was definitely interesting lighting that day, kind of a thin overcast with chunkier clumps of clouds in the overcast, it was just thick enough that the sun could shine through it while preventing any harsh shadows. The lighting changed fast and this was the best picture out of the half dozen or so I took.

---

Fall colours in my area




And an Inukshuk with a massive hardon

[Simplicius]

How did you take this photo? Are those bubbles on the inside of a glass?

Yep. Ginger ale + macro bellows + tungsten film.

Ginger ale's not especially bubbly though, and the carbonation died way down by the time I had fine-tuned the focus (plus I forgot about the 'auto' part of Auto-Bellows, so I shot wide-open and had to work against a razor-thin DoF ). An Alka-Seltzer would probably have been a better idea.

[generator_g1]

Converted my zebra pic to sepia. The zebra's stripes really stand out from the background in sepia.

[MKSheppard]

[phongn]

I mentioned that I shot the Bean on actual B&W film earlier - turns out it must've been a day when I had both cameras, because it's pretty much the same shot! From a technical perspective - it's a sharper image (ISO 400 vs 64 meant much higher shutter speeds, nevermind the advantages of 6x4.5 vs 35mm and various issues with me holding the camera still + rangefinder accuracy versus SLR AF). The way the film is exposed to B&W is different from Lightroom's automatic desaturation controls; finally, the dynamic range advantage of B&W film versus slide film (especially a very modern and sophisticated B&W film) shows in that one can actually see detail in the sky.



In the next shot I was aiming at one of the lions outside the Art Institute of Chicago when I saw the two men making random gestures at some street bucket drummers. I'm not sure how well this works - while I like the expressions on their faces and their gestures, they also compete with the lion statue for the subject of the shot. Also, I noticed that Provia 100 takes on a very cold cast in cloudy weather (this image has been rebalanced).



Finally, just a father-and-son having a bite in a small park:

[Bounty]

Assorted bucolic nonsense. I'm stuck sitting on my ass a bit on the photography front with all my regular-use cameras waiting for spare parts, batteries and/or repairs. The ones that are ready-to-go are 120 (too expensive) or SLR's (won't fit in my bag). Bah.

[Bounty]

[The Grim Squeaker]

Freshmen orientation day at the university

Street statue.



The Jerusalem YMCA

[Simplicius]

Guy and cat: desperately needs a crop. There's a really strong line curving through the cat that connects the two faces, but the top of the guy's head is a huge flat mass that sits on top of the photo and frigs it all up. Crop this picture.



Statues: I would have preferred a smaller aperture for this one. You've made only one statue the subject of the photo with no clear reason why, and it's not even the one whose face we can see.

Also, photos of art not art themselves, etc.

YMCA: The angle and perspective don't work. It looks like you were just trying to fit as much tower in the frame as possible, instead of composing the image for best effect.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Guy and cat: desperately needs a crop. There's a really strong line curving through the cat that connects the two faces, but the top of the guy's head is a huge flat mass that sits on top of the photo and frigs it all up. Crop this picture.

That is an improvement. Weird, usually I crop like crazy, thanks for pointing that improvement out to me .

Statues: I would have preferred a smaller aperture for this one. You've made only one statue the subject of the photo with no clear reason why, and it's not even the one whose face we can see.

Low light. I tried playing with the angles, but couldn't zoom due to the 1/30s limitation.

Also, photos of art not art themselves, etc.

It's cute .

YMCA: The angle and perspective don't work. It looks like you were just trying to fit as much tower in the frame as possible, instead of composing the image for best effect.

Eh, this was the only one worth a damn and it captured the glowing windows reasonably well. The tower was very high and narrow, and I couldn't climb up on the rooftop for a better angle of the glowing orange tower windows .
What would you have done?

[Simplicius]

What would you have done?

Honestly, I probably would not have taken it. I know that's not helpful to you at all, but assuming that this kind of view is typical of what's available, I don't think I'd bother trying.

As for your photo, the biggest problem with it is that it's so haphazard and purposeless. Perspective distortion is neither eliminated nor purposeful. The tower is tilted, but only a little. The building's symmetry is unused. There is no sense that the camera was positioned in any deliberate way to show any particular thing. It looks, as I said, like you just wanted a picture of the tower, any picture, and this is the one you happened to get. Not the sort of thing that demands showing off, in my opinion.

[phongn]

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y61/ue ... ields4.jpg

Is that a bird or a plane in the sky? It anchors the picture well; for me it gives a bit of a lonely feel.

[aerius]

Statues: I would have preferred a smaller aperture for this one. You've made only one statue the subject of the photo with no clear reason why, and it's not even the one whose face we can see.

Low light. I tried playing with the angles, but couldn't zoom due to the 1/30s limitation.

Get closer if possible so you can use a shorter zoom for less shake, then with practice you can easily handhold down to 1/8 of a second especially with image stabilization. If you don't believe me this is a 1/6 second handhold at a 80mm equivalent, no shake, no blur, all good.



Go to a wider angle and you can hand hold it all the way down to 1/4 second or even slower, this one's at 0.6 seconds. Still sharp & crisp

[Bounty]

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y61/ue ... ields4.jpg

Is that a bird or a plane in the sky? It anchors the picture well; for me it gives a bit of a lonely feel.

A C-130 which had been doing fly-bys all afternoon, probably as part of an exercise. It was too far away for a clear shot.