Be Excellent To Each Other

I like both of those, Mark. Nice how you caught just the one flower in the light, and the gargoyle looks like he's crouching to squeeze into the shot.

We have a funky church spire





punk kid by Learnin' Curve, on Flickr



punk kid again by Learnin' Curve, on Flickr

Nice subjects, Decca. The church spire is really unusual. Did you take any of them in portrait aswell as landscape? Both would probably suit that orientation more.

I had a real problem with "shit being in the way", my flicker has a few more town shots in it. I took 70 shots and got it down to 13 by being really brutal with picking and choosing. Strangly the ones I like the most were all one shots.

This one screws with my mind, gravestones with no graves.



graves by Learnin' Curve, on Flickr

I've fallen in love with my Tamron 90mm lens today. Got much more out of it after some experimentation.

I found the optimum settings to capture much more detail but still giving me the freedom of shooting handheld. Bugs don't like to stick around that much.











The Grass Fly above was tiny (3mm approx), didn't even know it was carrying eggs until I got the shot into Aperture.

The 'Praying' Hoverfly shot's pretty cool at full size, you can make out each cell in its compound eye.

*impressed whistle in real life*

Those are stonking shots

/bows down

I need to find out if that small spider is full size or just young. I like to name them properly in my Flickr tags

Good lord! Decca, Zardoz - you guys have indeed come far since the early days. It really is ace to see both your talents grow. I like your simple portraits Decca, full of life and light. Zardoz, your macro stuff continues to amaze. I especially like the bokeh behind the butterfly (moth?), it really compliments the downturned branch and the framing of the insect allowing it to stand out instead of being lost against dull colours. The hoverfly pics are of course lovely. Nice DOF on the Airfix, though what really wins me over are the colours of the glue and cement bottles.

Fun street punk shot there, Decca. Like the subject's reaction. I do feel that the colour, though sparkly and vivid, might be detracting from the subject in this case. The eye gets drawn up to the red and the just visible lettering a bit too much. So either a tighter crop or a B&W or both might let it speak a bit more. The cat shots are lovely too, very funny expressions. Kudos on Nebojsa Mladjenovic's praise. He's very good. (Easy on the HDR though, eh Nebojsa?) I love his snail shell, I've been trying to emulate that one for a while. And failing. Nothing got me more excited when Maciej Dakowicz complimented a pic of mine. And then I fleeced him of wine and books in a photography raffle down in Cardiff Bay. Ha! Keep on accelerating like this anyway Decca and more comments should flow. PRECIOUS COMMENTS.

You might want to be carefuly about the number of cat shots on your account though. They've all got something uniquely amusing about them with the expressions and the moments you've captured but you may lose the best ones in a general mass of good-but-not-immediately-discernably-different stuff. But then again, these are great cat shots. The solution? Well, you might want to make a 'contact sheet' of your cat shots. 3x3 square format cat portrait shots on white spaced so that there's white divides between each. That way you can fit in sequences of expression, or a different expression from the cat in each one highlighting its differing reactions - bored, cross, hunting, sleepy, etc.


Anyway, now for the star of the show - MarkG!

I think those two garden shots are frankly amazing. The gentle light just illuminating the flowerhead is delicately beautiful. Anything that makes you really look at a flower and appreciate its form is a good photo, in my opinion. The gargoyle amongst the grass stalks is excellent. I really like the dour light fitting in with a sort of fairy-tale Rackham mood. It looks a particularily sad gargoyle, hiding away and wishing to be alone. The framing of the grass stalks is perfect and the depth of focus is excellent - not too sharp, not too blurred. You really feel as if you're down there in the undergrowth. It reminds me a little of a Hayao Miyazaki shot, sort of Spirited Away like.

Some cool subjects Malc, I especially like the Monkey. I agree the breezeblock jetty is awesome. A closer up B&W high contrast shot emphasising its size might be cool. Or you could wait patiently for mist and go for low contrast ethereal.

Speckled Wood Butterfly (Pararge aegeria)


Thanks for the comments. The macro lens has certainly made me step up my technical ability.

Thanks for that, Pete, really encouraging. Strong page from everyone this. Love the bug pics Z even if they do make me have an involuntary shudder and make a "mneugh" noise. Some tight crops on those flys might be nice for showing on here as they do keep offering up lots more detail and still look sharp at much bigger sizes. I know that the Internet is mostly made of cat pics but those ones from Decca really do stand out, excellent work.

Yeah, I'll do that for the benefit of the lazy

I've got closer ones of the hoverfly that don't need cropping actually, I'll get them up on Flickr when I get the chance.

These photos are great. I wish I could take stuff like that, but I only have a simply point and click..

Very very impressed though.

You can always apply good technique to your compact camera shots. Just considering the composition of what you're taking makes a huge difference.

Working through some of the holiday's so far, here's one of my photographic muse, Sue:




Sue

I will try that..

Lovely portrait, Pete. Captured her expression well, lovely surroundings too.

Is Sue the American lady?

Ta mate!

Nah, Sue's an old friend. She doesn't normally look so serene! We're both pretty obsessed with pre-Raphealite, so give us a river and we'll give you a languid portrait.
American girl photo may follow at some point.

Thanks for the encouragement and advice pete

I've favorited your sue picture because it's exactly what I want to achieve from my photography. The DOF has given some very pretty bokeh in the background without spoiling the effect of the water, the light is natural and bright and the shadow from the hat prevents her facial features from being blown out. The flowers on her dress are very sharp and clean even at original size and they contrast nicely with the rest of the shot without looking to fussy. Your model looks relaxed and like she's having fun, I've seen too many portraits ruined by models not knowing what to do with their hands and she has managed to avoid this.

Your exif info is missing on it details pretty please.

Yeah, that's much better.

Ha. Nicely done.

I love the shots you have taken with your new lens Zardoz, the detail is fantastic. One day I will have the kit to do proper macro stuff too.

In fact, a lot of the things I have seen in this thread of late have been pretty amazing, I need to get my camera out more and play catch-up!

CamPhoneTastic!

Dude, that is *blue*.

blue is the colour of all that i wear?

Yeah. No shoppery, either.

I'm blue but if I'm green I'll die.

No wait, hang on!

Is there a decent website that provides beginner-level photography advice? I am really struggling to get to grips with the basic concepts such as ISO, aperture and how they should be used together to get results. This is mainly due to my laziness I admit.

I remember this being quite handy, if it is the right site I'm thinking of: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/

Otherwise ask us!

Spent another day in Bute Park having a BBQ with six or so friends. More hammock action and playing frisbee in the river. A few top shots, too. I've almost made the deal on the D40x for a friend. He was test driving it today and seemed fair pleased. It's strange using it after the D90 though. I really feel the difference in build quality and control now, and it seems so incredibly light with such a titchy screen!

I shall never forget you though, D40x, for the times we had.

How to get using S mode, without the need to look confused at all the god damn charts, graphs and equations you see on wiki in 5 steps

1. Take someone out to the garden and put them in front of a bush
2. Set your iso to 100 and your camera to S mode
3. Focus so your camera can properly meter, A digital camera will have a warning saying "subject too dark", turn the dial until you get the F numbers coming up.
4. The lower the number the more bokah (background fuzz) you get. If it's a high number then the more focused everything will be. The best F number for colour is F9.
5. Now turn the iso up to 200, you will see the numbers change, this is because the higher your iso the faster your shutter speed can be. But be warned you get more noise the higher the iso number.

That's it, it's a simple as that, now you need to practice and look at other people stuff till you can instinctively know what settings you will need. I like to play guess the F number on people's flicker photos.

I like the last two.


Decca - I never use shutter priority mode unless I'm desperately trying to get light into a handheld shot. I always control the aperture, because that decides depth of field and I want that to be under my control.

Oh, I really fancy a fag now.

As you said it depends on the situation but for someone learning it's much easier to get going once you work out shutter speed as it's the most confusing, especially with hand held shots. Don't know what canon's UI is like but Nikon's noob friendly one makes it very easy to set your aperture up in S



I'm fairly confident that someone on the nikon UI design team went "now how can we piss off a large amount of elitist nerds in one fell swoop? I know!..."

I tend to underexpose my shots a little, I just like 'em that way. I can always add a little light post-processing. That's why I go fully manual. Plus it's easy with the D90 to switch both speed and aperture. Sir Hugh, if it's a newish camera you probably won't need to worry about noise until ISO 800, 400 should be fine. But make sure you correctly expose and don't underexpose as underexposure increases noise (which is where I make the exception, ISO 800 over and I never underexpose).

Nice windmill framing there Grim...

Decca, thanks for the lovely comment! For some reason Flickr ignores my EXIF data uploads and I can't figure why. I have the option ticked and everything. So here it is from Lightroom - ISO 1/1250 (!) at f/2.2, ISO 160 and with a 35mm f/1.8 ( ) lens. It was a VERY bright day.

Anyone in need of a Desktop Background? Taken in Roath Park on Sunday:




Tulips

Check the spoiler

Heh, I've been there.

And now Second and Third in my Pre-Raphaelite Folk in Hammocks...




Pre-Raphaelite Alice







Pre-Raphaelite Fenton

My friends have learnt to accept my pappin' nature.

Excellent hammock action there Pete. Great portraits.

Thanks for the tips Pete and Decca. We should have a technical 'critique this photo' thread. It may come to blows*.

I really need to get a decent PC, monitor and photo editing software too. This crappy old laptop simply does not slice the condiment.

*SPELL CASTING: Z.A.R.D.O.Z.

I'd quite like to see a "'shop this photo" thread, we're we all have a crack at editing the same photo.

Ooh, I like that idea.

Two more portraits from that day:



Fenton Stands Tall




Old Time Alice

BTW, can I apologise publicly about subjecting my flickr buds to endless pics of MiniPaz? It's my mum's fault.

I use Picasa for that sort of thing and Flickr I try to keep for my artistic photographic works of great artistry.

I might set up another flickr and move the family guff to there.

But unless you pay you'll be stuck with the measly upload limits. Picasa is better in that respect.

Point.

Investigating...