The Official S-T.N Photography (methods) Thread

[torags v2]

 

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Damn.. Could I attribute that to a "senior moment?"      

Nope!!    I hope to get some Chicago night photos next month. I am going to have to move out by torags he has all the great scenery.  

[doodah man]

These are ironically the first motorcycle pics I have posted.  Overcast, crappy looking day in Nelson BC so outdoor photo opportunities were not great.  This bike was not exceptional, located in an ugly industrial setting, so I took it as somewhat of a challenge to make it look good.  This is all I was happy with.  I was once again shooting in manual so my first shot was massively overexposed, but it kind of looks like a line drawing effect in B&W so I kept it as it quite nicely eliminated the butt ugly background.





Here are some other Nelson shots.  On such an overcast day I either try to avoid shooting landscapes or convert to B&W to emphasize tone.

[Craigart14]

I have a quick question to everybody that takes photos. When does a photo quit being a photo when its photoshopped or some similar program? I for one have no skills in it at all and just read a article in Popular Photography that some are arguing that the Photo isn't real. Anybody else believe this? Please pardon my ignorance about this I am just starting to learn somethings in photoshop.

It's not a simple question.  I think manipulating a photo in your computer is fine.  The great photo artists of the past did plenty of manipulating.  Matthew Brady even dragged corpses into position for better composition in his Civil War photos.  Ansel Adams, aside from inventing the Zone System, did plenty of dodging and burning on his prints.

It gets trickier when you're talking journalism or that hazy area between art and journalism.  Art Wolfe, the famous wildlife photographer, used a shot of zebras on the cover of his book, Migrations.  The photo jumps off the page because there are so many zebras in such a small space.  A closer look reveals that some of those zebras turn up in the shot more than once.  A great photo, but does it misrepresent the number of zebras left in the wild?  It makes it look like there are plenty, when maybe there aren't.  Art or wildlife photography?

Every portrait artist fixes up faces in the computer.  Before computers, they did it with airbrushes.  Watch an old Doris Day movie sometime; she was a knockout in the 1950s, but they shot her through cheesecloth to get rid of the freckles.  Bob Guccione, the Penthouse guy, smeared a little Vaseline on a filter to get those soft focus shots I've heard about.

When photography first appeared, many people thought it would be the end of painting.  But painters make their subjects look the way they want.  Photographers do, too.  They just use a different set of tools.

Shoot what you like and how you like.  If you represent it honestly, there's no problem . . . IMHO.

Craig

[torags v2]

I don't know if honesty has anything to do with it, that's a moral judgment to me.

Do what you need to do to make the image as presentable as possible to the viewer (who may be you alone)

my .02

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Welcome Craig,
Well since I suck at photoshop the only thing I really adjust is the contrast, shadows and lighting. Other then that I am done. I wish I knew how to do all the cool stuff just not yet.  

[Thunder7]

I have to say- Its taken me an inordinate amount of time to learn all (Ok, many) of the ins and outs of my Nikon D300. Its wasn't as easy as I thought and on top of that I had to go through an almost entirely different workflow process due to Nikon's less aggressive in camera sharpening which initially led me to believe that all my images were terribly soft.

This is the first one off my D300 that I feel somewhat positive about- I used my Tokina 12-24 f4 zoom @ 12mm, wide open. exposure was shutter spd: 1/10 sec @ f4. ISO 1250 (Gaze upon the low noise!).

[torags v2]

Yeah its a pain to get used to the ergos of different cam families. Canon really throw saturated images, most times it's fine. My D200 is steps behind Canons, but not the D700.

I went to Tahoe this weekend (with my daughters dog) to pull my boat down the hill. The weather wasn't good - rainey & flat light.

Here's one of the dog (an 11 month puppy or retarded adult)



The sun came out a little, I was lucky to be near this stream..

[Thunder7]

Still nice stuff. Funny about the 4 legged, fur coated 'tard.

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Ahh what a weekend, Went to a camp ground that specialized in this for Halloween. Just one of many outside camp bars 

[torags v2]

My gawd... Does rum and Koolade make you grow coconut boobs?

 

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

My gawd... Does rum and Koolade make you grow coconut boobs?

 

   The fun part was to watch all the women make sure they try to fill them out.  Theres nothing funnier then drunk hockey/soccer Moms 

[torags v2]

Shutter speed

1/100 sec (look at the feet...)


1/800 sec... sharp subject but no panning blur....

[torags v2]

Guess who... where?



Going to the limits of my new D700//// 1/3200 sec shutter speed; ISO 6400

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Nice photos torags, I see you are enjoying the new camera.    

[torags v2]

Yup.

Say for those that use Picasa2 there is a new Picasa3 with new features. You might like to check it out.

Rags

[doodah man]

I haven't taken any new photos for a few weeks so I have started going through my backlog.  Here is one where a polarizing filter was used to darken the sky.  I converted to B&W and added a red filter effect in Canon DPP software to darken the blue sky even more.  I then increased contrast to emphasize the darker and lighter areas and knocked the brightness down a little bit.

Edit to add: ultimately I liked this photo better in color than in B&W.  The B&W conversion did help to hide the unevenness of the polarizer on such a wide angle shot, though.

Edit to add (again): well I obviously don't know what the hell I'm doing with this one.  Now I've cropped it to take out the worst of the unevenness of the polarizing effect.  I think I've improved composition as well because the big cloud is no longer dead center.  I've added a sunset photo I am happy with just to balance my obvious incompetence with this one.

[torags v2]

Nice doodah....

Well I sold my D70S a dependable back up cam......





Then I sold my D200 also a good backup... a good sports cam (with high fps) but poor low light performance........




For what.... A D300. This DX cam compliments my full frame D700. I started using the D200 as more than a backup. The limited reach of the full frame hampered some shooting at Laguna Seca.
Now the D300 DX gives me a 1.5X crop on stated lens reach (200mm stated = 300mm on DX) with high iso noise mitigation.

It looks like I have the best of both worlds for the Baja1000. The only problem now, is the competence of the the photog.......

[torags v2]

Well... I canceled the D300 from a private party on the internet who failed to ship after 4 days of charging my card.

After I insulted a few more people with my offers; then I tried a new tack. The D300 gives 6fps. My D700 4.5 fps, Except when you add a battery pack to brings it up to 8fps.

A full Frame with 8fps is sexy. Then I looked at the Nikon D90. This cam has good low light performance, a auto selection (good when traveling....., here - please take our pic) and movee selection. The first dslr with a movee component that you can use different lenses.

I got a new D90 + the battery pack for the same amount as the used D300 w/o warranty.

Hey do you guys have low batteries? No pix? Here's a local Japanese garden

[vitaminC]

Meet Claude the albino alligator:



Probably would have been better with either a tripod or higher ISO, so I could go with faster shutter speed. Guess it's time to upgrade the from the D70 so I can get better high-ISO performance!  

[torags v2]

Nice. Hey VitC my shot is of the San Mateo Japanese Garden. You might consider visiting - it's neat.

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Had another lighting and protrait class last night here are two out of around 200 I took. I think the are okay need to learn Photoshop   



[/quote]

[torags v2]

#2 is better for me.

Seems to me a loss of detail tween blouse and left chest. Low contrast probably (skin color/blouse). So how does one establish a line between the two? (lighting?)(Is it important??)

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

The two above were took with 6- 400 watt Alien Bee lights not turned all the way up of course. I didn't edit much just softened the skin. I am still knew to this so I don't know the proper terminology for lighting yet other then its a fun process to me at least setting the stuff up.

[DavidLSI]

I found another cool photo stitching program called clevr http://www.clevr.com/

You download the program put the photos you want to stitch together and then your get the ability to to this... (i hope this works it seem to be like the video emmedding)

Panorama of Pool View in Sunlakes, AZ on CleVR.com