03/4/18 to 03/10/18 Weekly Show, Tell, and Critique

Birddogman · Mar 5, 2018

Bill Borne said:
--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

In general (and I wish I could explain why, but I can't), #1 and #2 just don't grab me at an emotive level. I wouldn't hang them on the wall because they feel like snapshots of what are admittedly beautiful places. In a purely technical sense, I would straighten the horizon on each and clone out the people and bridge in #1.

#3 is better, in that I can, to a small extent, "feel" the thunder of the water. Still, in an emotive sense, it doesn't really grab me - despite the truly magnificent setting it's a little snapshotty (is that a word), perhaps? Again, I wouldn't hang it on my wall.

Maybe (?), you are guilty of what I am very commonly guilty of when trying to convey the "feeling" of a majestic natural setting. That is - taking too much into the image in an effort to capture what you are seeing (but, in fact, your eyes are only focusing on small parts of it at any one time.

I remember when I was a little kid climbing up on a high mountain and being awestruck by the vast panoramas below me, and taking photos of them with my grandmother's Brownie camera; only to be crushingly disappointed when the film was developed and the little B&W images were really boring, showing tiny distant things and conveying none of what I felt when I was looking out over the scene.

As noted above, I still struggle with trying to include too much in my outdoor images, but have learned a few things - one of them is that you often have to show only parts of a vast scene if you want to convey the "feeling" of looking at it. Maybe this couldn't be done in your situation, or maybe it could, I don't know.

To try to illustrate this - here I took a shot of only a small portion of a lake and cliff scene, tempting as it was to back up and try to get the whole vast thing in the frame, but I think this narrow scene gives a better "feel" for what i felt that day than a panorama would:

Or, maybe this. It shows only a relatively small part of what I was seeing from up on a mountain that day (and only the front porch of the cabin), but perhaps conveys the "feel" better than a wide view of the whole scene:

Feel free to ignore all of the above, but you asked...

Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/137747053@N07/4M38jj

Evenstar606 · Mar 5, 2018

edform said:
We had cold windy weather for some weeks and then a short spell of calm, really quite warm days before the snow came, so we took the opportunity of that break to fill up two large garden bins with leaves from our monster walnut tree. Under the mulch we found lots of treats...

We have a sort of 'woodland glade' beneath the walnut tree filled with ferns and other shade-loving stuff - and loads and loads of these.

The snowdrops were tall enough to show above the carpet of leaves but we had to clear it away to reveal these...

These miniature irises have flowers wider than the plants are tall - they're only 3 inches high.

In the patch of garden that isn't dominated by the huge tree there were more, equally lost beneath the six-inch deep carpet of leaves...

These things are quite exquisite to look at: tiny blue and gold gems.

The snow came as a nasty disappointment because buds on the acers had us convinced that spring was just around the corner...

Makes for a good composition of soft life against black. The buds are about two millimetres across.

Who would have guessed that Siberia was going to pay us a visit a week later.

--
Ed Form

These are lovely, I like the idea of a “woodland glade” under the tree.

--
Courtney

Birddogman · Mar 5, 2018

Thanks for the critique! The pics were already cropped a good bit in post. The reason I didn't crop tighter was that I was using the little RX100V for convenience and further cropping would have eroded IQ beyond my ability to tolerate it. To my eye, IQ is totally lost in your cropped version. Had I been using the RX1r II, or even the Fuji XT2, further cropping without unacceptable IQ loss might have been possible, but the RX100V, handy as it is, has its limitations due to the tiny sensor.

Aquaroid · Mar 5, 2018

Every year I can't hold myself from making similar pictures because after the winter months it feels right to do so and make sure that your mind did not miss that simple fact of coming spring.

Love the pictures, Ed. Thanks for sharing.

Nick

Birddogman · Mar 5, 2018

All grouse, Blues included, when not under much hunting pressure can become what we call "fool grouse" and be taken with a .22 pistol, if that is one's bent. I've seen them stand on a tree branch and look at me from 2 feet away. That is NOT the case around here - grouse are very rare (I could kill ten nice whitetail bucks with the time and physical effort it would take me to bag one grouse) and VERY wary.

When I was a kid, growing up in the rural PA Dutch culture, I often killed game birds (grouse, pheasant, ducks, etc) on the ground. If i expended a cartridge, I had best have some game to show for it or my PA Dutch grandparents (who were like my parents and only spoke a little English) would be unhappy. If I could ground sluice more than one with a single cartridge, that was considered a good thing (and I often managed that with ducks). But that was a vastly different time (late 1940's, early 1950's) and culture and hunting was as much food gathering as sport.

I've come a long way since then. Would NEVER shoot a sitting bird now - ONLY shoot birds on the wing after fair chase. In fact, I won't kill a bird unless my dogs have handled it properly. Besides, .22's and the like are dangerous with dogs on the ground.

Pi lover · Mar 5, 2018

abiquiuense said:
It's puzzled me that B&W was film, and not cited as a conversion. Yet, I find discussions where in digital, B&W is a conversion whether, as it goes into the can, or, when a color capture is received in color, then post-processed into B&W.

Your earnest opinion is appreciated; I remain yours,

abiquiuense

A yucca, not the famous Spanish Bayonet, a wall in two mediums, and a crick in my neck.

Jicarilla basket in the making.

Beautiful country and nice shots.

Infrared is a conversion. I can see B+W being considered a conversion. Now if you do a partial B+W?

Processed using ACDsee with Nik collection added as plugins. The control points in Silver Efex let you choose where to add color back.

Grant.

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

abiquiuense said:
Bill Borne said:

elliottnewcomb said:

Bill Borne said:

--

Click to expand...

3 Winners Bill. I made this alternate crop, just to see more detail

none of the trees are cut off top left, dead scrub out right side, more focus on the corner turbulence

abiquiuense said:

Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Click to expand...

--
Elliott

Click to expand...

Don't like it at all. Changes the perspective and context of the photo and really draws attention to the blown out water....and lost the depth of the photo

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Click to expand...

Bill & Elliot;

I agree that a square format removes the depth, but I disagree that the water is blown out. The impact of a blown out, foaming mass of water, is for the viewer to determine. The shadow in the cliff forces your eye to over-compensate above the water. It is not blown out.

Thanks guys,

abiquiuense

I have taken hundreds and hundreds of waterfall pics..Trust me it IS Blown out..IE: lost the detail....

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

abiquiuense said:
Bill Borne said:

abiquiuense said:

Bill Borne said:

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Click to expand...

. . . the addition of an ND filter on all the photos. Wait next time for the people to move over just a bit in the first.

abiquiuense

Click to expand...

1st and 3rd had polarizer and second had couple nd filters which allowed me to get that 2 second exposure. And I wanted the people in the photo to give perspective of height of waterfall...but thanks for your comments... 3rd was bracketed exposures but water still got blown out!

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Click to expand...

You are right on the perspective, of course, but you had me on presentation, and I received perspective through the foliage in the vicinity, the leading lines in the river, context with the bridge above, and framing with the naturalness of it.

In Re; number 3, if in post process you locked the curve in the middle, developed for the cliff on the left, wouldn't the right side of the curve have fixed the water, with a slight touch down? The clouds would have remained intact.

Be that as it may, I really liked this photo which without question would make me recall the roar of the rapids.

abiquiuense

The last shot..Taking pics of water and waterfalls is very tricky as the sun tends to blow out the highlights in the water. So to fix that you could expose for the water but then the surrounding scenery would come out black so you have to either bracket exposures and blend together or take on a cloudy day. The problem with shooting on a cloudy day is there are no shadows which give depth to a photo. Sadly when I shot using bracketed exposures the water was still blown out due to me not using a wide enough EV spread in the exposures.

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

Birddogman said:
Bill Borne said:

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Click to expand...

In general (and I wish I could explain why, but I can't), #1 and #2 just don't grab me at an emotive level. I wouldn't hang them on the wall because they feel like snapshots of what are admittedly beautiful places. In a purely technical sense, I would straighten the horizon on each and clone out the people and bridge in #1.

I have many pics of the falls without people but I liked this one as they added perspective to it and look at the water line..I don't think it needs straightening?

Birddogman said:
#3 is better, in that I can, to a small extent, "feel" the thunder of the water. Still, in an emotive sense, it doesn't really grab me - despite the truly magnificent setting it's a little snapshotty (is that a word), perhaps? Again, I wouldn't hang it on my wall.

I have to disagree Greg. I do happen to have a 24x36 metal print on the wall of this or a similar shot and when viewed it give the sense of "Watch out, you might fall in" Out of all my pics I get the most compliments on that one.

Here is the one on the wall..Don't remember if it's a different photo or I edited the blown out water.

Birddogman said:
Maybe (?), you are guilty of what I am very commonly guilty of when trying to convey the "feeling" of a majestic natural setting. That is - taking too much into the image in an effort to capture what you are seeing (but, in fact, your eyes are only focusing on small parts of it at any one time.

Actually I am guilty of taking pics zoomed in TOO much cause I like to see detail. When I shoot I frame a shot exactly the way I want it. I seldom ever crop shots. And I usually take 1 shot or series of bracketed shots never reviewing and go on to the next shot. Don't see them till I get home, except if it's a shot I think I might want to print. At that I have gotten 95 % or better keepers from any cam I've owned. One problem I have is if it's skewed then I lose some in straightening!

Birddogman said:
I remember when I was a little kid climbing up on a high mountain and being awestruck by the vast panoramas below me, and taking photos of them with my grandmother's Brownie camera; only to be crushingly disappointed when the film was developed and the little B&W images were really boring, showing tiny distant things and conveying none of what I felt when I was looking out over the scene.

As noted above, I still struggle with trying to include too much in my outdoor images, but have learned a few things - one of them is that you often have to show only parts of a vast scene if you want to convey the "feeling" of looking at it. Maybe this couldn't be done in your situation, or maybe it could, I don't know.

To try to illustrate this - here I took a shot of only a small portion of a lake and cliff scene, tempting as it was to back up and try to get the whole vast thing in the frame, but I think this narrow scene gives a better "feel" for what i felt that day than a panorama would:

Or, maybe this. It shows only a relatively small part of what I was seeing from up on a mountain that day (and only the front porch of the cabin), but perhaps conveys the "feel" better than a wide view of the whole scene:

Feel free to ignore all of the above, but you asked...

I value all comments...good or bad.... That's how one learns and no one is too good to not learning more! Although I've seen a few on here who think they are ;-)

Birddogman said:
Greg

--
Check out my photos at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/137747053@N07/4M38jj

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

PMUK said:
Not technically the greatest photo I’ll ever take (someone left the IS on the lens in the Off position for starters :-D), but one which I think captured the moment - and sometimes that takes it.

The scene was an exposed area of woodland, ambient temperature -4C with 40mph winds (around -14C wind chill). I was doing a lap, dishing out seed to the needy and trying to take the occasional shot.

So, there I was shivering in my thermal underwear, double layer trousers, lined water-proof bottoms, thermal shirts x2, fleece, winter coat (with hood worn), neck warmers x2, thermal hats x2, thermal gloves, thermal socks x2 pairs, walking boots and my question as I took this shot was - 'how about you little buddy?'...

Shot RAW and post processed in Lightroom.

So, you think you're having a tough week?

Nice shot. The flakes add to the context of the shot.

I'm surprised you could walk...I was picturing you as I read each added item of clothing

--
Bill
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos
Using Rx10 IV at Present

rjbSony · Mar 5, 2018

This was done as part of a 2 week holiday in Scotland from 27th May to 9th June 2014.Our accommodation for the holiday was this:

(taken 22:50 on 27th May - 20 sec exposure)

That was our last (7th!) holiday in it before selling it a few weeks later :-( (boo hiss!)

OK,back to the 28th and Bo'ness:

Bo'ness station

Train arriving (hauled by ex-LNER Class D49 62712 'Morayshire' running tender-first - Class 20 diesel alongside)

A better look at the locomotive.This is the only surviving D49 and wasn't supposed to be making its debut in BR black until that weekend.(sorry about the blasted-out sky)

Cab detail

On the move (1/10 sec exposure - we were probably doing no more than 20-25 mph)

Interior of a BR Mark 1 compartment coach (at least,I think it's an ex-BR coach and not something older)

Rounding the curve into Manuel station.Wouldn't have thought the loco spent time as a stationary boiler before being preserved,would you?

62712 runs round.Edinburgh to Glasgow main line alongside.Captured during video recording.

Class 170 diesel unit flies past on a working from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street (captured during video)

More coming soon

Phil and Karen · Mar 5, 2018

Bill Borne said:
Nice shot. The flakes add to the context of the shot.

I'm surprised you could walk...I was picturing you as I read each added item of clothing

edform · Mar 5, 2018

Evenstar606 said:
edform said:

We had cold windy weather for some weeks and then a short spell of calm, really quite warm days before the snow came, so we took the opportunity of that break to fill up two large garden bins with leaves from our monster walnut tree. Under the mulch we found lots of treats...

We have a sort of 'woodland glade' beneath the walnut tree filled with ferns and other shade-loving stuff - and loads and loads of these.

The snowdrops were tall enough to show above the carpet of leaves but we had to clear it away to reveal these...

These miniature irises have flowers wider than the plants are tall - they're only 3 inches high.

In the patch of garden that isn't dominated by the huge tree there were more, equally lost beneath the six-inch deep carpet of leaves...

These things are quite exquisite to look at: tiny blue and gold gems.

The snow came as a nasty disappointment because buds on the acers had us convinced that spring was just around the corner...

Makes for a good composition of soft life against black. The buds are about two millimetres across.

Who would have guessed that Siberia was going to pay us a visit a week later.

Click to expand...

These are lovely, I like the idea of a “woodland glade” under the tree.

We had a large part of the second of our two rear gardens paved leaving large beds at one side and in a sweeping arc across the front. We also used old railway sleepers to define an open area at the base of the walnut tree - the tree is 50 or more feet tall and, even after a substantial haircut, some 60 feet across. You must leave a reasonable sized area of open soil at the base of a tree so that the net of fine roots that all big deciduous trees send out, just under the surface, to the same footprint as their canopies, can drink water.

Walnut trees are notorious assassins, determined to kill anything that tries to share the goodness of the soil they occupy, so for good growth to cover the bare ground within our sleeper boundary, we planted ferns, woodland carpet flowers - bluebells, snowdrops etc - and various shade-tolerant species that walnut trees cannot kill, such as Hellebores and the irises in my images. The hope was that it would look like part of a woodland glade and it has pretty much succeeded. The ferns nicely hide a hefty LED floodlight that points up into the canopy and makes the tree into a giant green party light when we switch it on - frightens the field mice poopless when it first lights up but they get used to it after a few minutes and we see their little eyes peeping out. Various little troves of seeds and mealworms are just too good to resist. :-D

--
Ed Form

edform · Mar 5, 2018

Aquaroid said:
Every year I can't hold myself from making similar pictures because after the winter months it feels right to do so and make sure that your mind did not miss that simple fact of coming spring.

Love the pictures, Ed. Thanks for sharing

Thank you Nick.

rjbSony · Mar 5, 2018

Right,here goes - another string of photos from this fine railway in Scotland:

Birkhill station

Manuel station (2nd trip along line - only about 20 mins each way.There is no main line interchange.

Banana van at Bo'ness (just had to - love bananas

)

Diesels on shed:Class 37 in the middle,Class 47 behind and to the right a little,Class 20 on the far left.Also a marauding steamer :-D

Unrestored Andrew Barclay industrial steam locomotive (they really should restore it - agree?)

Now for some pics in the Museum of Scottish Railways at Bo'ness.First up,two looks at a Class 27 diesel locomotive which last ran in 2001:

Anyone seen the missing pane of glass?

As of now it is being overhauled.I have never seen a Class 27 running.

Static model of Alloa station,set in the 1960's

Class Y9 0-4-0 - sole survivor.Only recently found out that's what it was.

There were many other things on display - I highly recommend visiting.

Lastly,this one - not the last photo I took that day but fitting nonetheless:

Sadly,we did not 'haste back' - nearly 4(!) years later we have yet to visit Scotland again :-( but then we do live in Gloucestershire...

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

PMUK said:
Bill Borne said:

Nice shot. The flakes add to the context of the shot.

I'm surprised you could walk...I was picturing you as I read each added item of clothing

Click to expand...

Bill Borne · Mar 5, 2018

[No message]

Birddogman · Mar 5, 2018

The differences between #3 and your wallhanger version of the same scene are subtle, but significant. I MUCH prefer the wall hanger version - it does give that feeling of being there. To me, #3 was close but didn't quite get there.

KBTinto · Mar 5, 2018

Recent shots ..

Walking home .... (a little cropped at bottom)

Sidewalk shoe repair ... cropped

Subway songs ....

Phil and Karen · Mar 5, 2018

Hi KBTinto,

All great shots, number 1 is the stand out one for me - fantastic.

Phil

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