*** This Week Through YOUR m4/3 2014.10.11 ***

Florida Nature Photographer said:

Welcome back Wormsmeat. I really like this set!

Wormsmeat said:

os should that be color?

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Yes. ;-)
I love the mood in this. The sky is, of course, great.

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And for info, not tweaked. It really was that amazing colour.



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Wormsmeat

Nice colors and interesting composition. It looks like you were shooting from a position slightly above the lake. If it were possible to get down to water level, I think a shot with more sky while retaining the reflection on the right might be preferable.

Michael

I guess the bread achieved the goal of attracting birds, but I don't think the bread enhances the images.

Some of those birds look like sparrows, but what kind of bird was the first with the yellow coloring?

Michael

Very nice set! I ran through it three times. :-D

minniev said:

So I shot the sunrise and critters instead

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I love how the bird is looking towards the setting sun. And the fact that the bird is there.

minniev said:

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My favorite of the bunch.

minniev said:

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Action, with a clear reflection. Very cool.


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The first and second are quite nice. I also like how those birds can walk on water, sort of.

Michael

Wormsmeat said:

And for info, not tweaked. It really was that amazing colour.

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Thanks for that. Based on the second one, I wasn't sure.

Wormsmeat said:

All fine shots but the first has that little something different.

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All right, we have to help him out a bit since... such conflicting critques.... I see the man as the subject of the photo and he is out of focus. Do you see the roof tops as the subject or do you just not care that he is out of focus?

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These were posted in Part 3 of last week's thread. Part 3 appears to have been abandoned, so I'm reposting here.




There were fireworks for another Indian-American festival last Sunday. I walked along the Brooklyn Promenade for a good spot to shoot from and thought this was as good a spot as any. Voigtlander 17.5mm




Shooting fireworks from an elevated position shows the fireworks better than shooting at ground level.




An elevated position also allows shooting at longer focal lengths than from shooting at ground level.




All the fireworks were shot with the 12-35mm. This lens is quite useful in manual focus at infinity as it can be zoomed without changing focus.




One more silhouette shot from Lincoln Center. This one shot with the Voigtander 17.5mm.



Michael

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It is quite a crop anyway and may be recoverable when I get home....it was the overall image that I liked. But, yes, if I had had the time maybe the focus would have been better; I just like manual focus primes.

I didn't see them in the other thread and I'm glad I saw them. Thanks for the tips about the fireworks. I like the first the best.

Thanks, the first was in Fujian Province where we were hunting tulou...there are the round house "castles" that can house up to 40 families. Difficult to get to unless you have a car. The others are in Qingdao (think Tsingtao beer) in Shandong. The aeroplane is a Chinese made Russian Beriev flying boat at the open air museum. Shame about Chinese kites...they have lost the skills of centuries; this is the best they can do these days.

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I was and I agree with your comments. It's possible to get down to the water level but you have to do some real bushwhacking to do it in that spot. I was still in work (office) togs. But you gotta get your pants dirty if you want to get the right shot, and I didn't.

Florida Nature Photographer said:

On the first one I want to look at the guy in the restaurant but my eye keeps coming back to the piece of trash in the gutter (left). Cloning that out would make it much better for me.

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You're right. I'm not the most refined Photoshopper, but I do think I managed to overall improve the picture. I also cropped it slightly.









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If you don't like the first one please tell me why.

The second one I reworked this morning because I noticed it had a lot of noise. As suggested by numerous here I used selective noise reduction on the sky only to maintain the detail in the foreground. I use DeNoise on a layer Elements. Then I used a layer mask to paint it on the sky only. Then I processed it normally in Lightroom. How did I do? Just as important, do you like the photo?

I have quite a few shots like the third one and I have no idea if they will appeal to someone who wasn't there to see it live, so let me know.



















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Michael, the third image. The masts belong to boats parked on a Ribble Yacht Club hard standing below the promenade level.

The compression was deliberate, in that I was trying out the 45-150. Not sure I'll use the 45-150 much because I'll tend to have the FZ200 in the bag. Handily, both cameras use the same battery type. On the other hand, the 45-150 takes less space than the FZ. I'm in no rush to make up my mind.

The free lens was a UK Panasonic offer over this summer, think it was for G6 or GX7. Bought and registered the G6 + Kit lens and received the lens about 6 weeks later.

Dear all,

I was flying over the pond to Geneva yesterday to do my usual stuff. Looking out the window of the plane to the north, I could just barely make out the stars of Big Dipper, so I decided to see if I could photograph them. I quickly learned that this was not a good way to take pictures of stars, but it was fun trying.

First of all, there were lots of strong reflections from lights all over the airplane cabin, e.g., the "No Smoking/Fasten Seat Belt" sign, but also many, many others. At first, I thought it would not be too hard to deal with these, but it really was a challenge. I used a pillow and blanket around the camera to try to block the light - but light always seemed to get in somehow.

Then there are the issues of focusing, long exposures, vibrations, turbulence, the wing, etc. Because there were quite a few lights in the cabin, my eyes were not really dark adjusted, and it was hard to even see any stars at all -- I had gradually had to figure out the best place to point the camera. I focused and set the exposure manually.

So the effort was only a modest success. Here are some of the results. I was glad that I was able to resolve the Alcor/Mizar double star in Ursa Major, but this is of course nothing compared to what real astrophotographers do.

All comments/suggestions are welcome.

Best regards,
Jeff

P.S. You really have to zoom in on this to see the stars well.


Lightened in PP. Below I show OOC jpg. Note Ursa Major (Big Dipper) at middle right. The Alcor/Mizar double star is in the "handle". There are two nasty reflection blobs on the right. Anybody know how to deal with these in LR?


Even lighter in PP.


Part of the handle, with the Alcor/Mizar double star at left, half-way up. Alcor is the fainter one on the left of the pair. Mizar is the brighter one on the right.


Picture showing part of the wing. Lightened in PP. To my naked eye, the stars in the dipper were much less bright.


FYI -- an OOC jpg. Not much to look at!


Concentrating on the star field. Lightened in PP.

Florida Nature Photographer said:

Wormsmeat said:

All fine shots but the first has that little something different.

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All right, we have to help him out a bit since... such conflicting critques.... I see the man as the subject of the photo and he is out of focus. Do you see the roof tops as the subject or do you just not care that he is out of focus?

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Well, the whole shot has a muddy, Polaroid vibe which I like. Not sure that was the look Paul was going for with a Leica and prime lens. Don't think he's any more OOF than the rest of the scene.

Michael L NYC 99 said:

I guess the bread achieved the goal of attracting birds, but I don't think the bread enhances the images.

Some of those birds look like sparrows, but what kind of bird was the first with the yellow coloring?

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A photoshopped sparrow.