The Photographers' Corner - 2021 to ?

[street]

mathjak107, those are beautiful!! Thank you for sharing your work/hobby.

 

[doneat54]

Huge dead tree (oak?) with vines growing around it, against a brilliant blue sun lit sky.

Ballyvourney Ireland, 26 May 2022

 

[doneat54]

Huge dead tree trunk (oak?) with vines growing around it, against a brilliant blue sun lit sky.

Ballyvourney Ireland, 26 May 2022


SORRY FOLKS, despite 3 different attempts to rotate this picture before saving it and uploading it here, in 3 other apps that all display it upright, this board forum app is insisting you see it sideways. Stretch your neck a bit before looking at it so you don't cramp up.

 

[aja8888]

Fixed it for you.

 

[street]

That is a beautiful picture.

 

[mathjak107]

Old westbury gardens on long islands Gold Coast

 

[tmm99]

My wife and I love photography.

We are out daily shooting .

These are Nikon z6 with Nikon 200-500mm , except the last which is the z6 with 50mm z series macro

bee

Were the backgrounds added later? For example, with the red-winged blackbird, the leaf in the foreground is in focus as are the clouds in the background...? I see something similar with all the photos except for the photo of the bee... Just curious.

 

[mathjak107]

Many times I will change skies out .

Lately we have such crappy looking skies here.

One thing I love about digital is it is easy to merge photography and art ..

I get to take the same ole boring shots and have Them look they way I want them to as opposed to being stuck with whatever the scene hands me that day

 

[explanade]

Oh I would never do that.

Some post processing software touts that, automated sky selection and replacement.

I just don't get that mentality, part of the appeal of photography is to capture a given place at a given time. I've been on many trips where the weather wasn't great but I went out there and got pics, not my favorites but still worth keeping.

Ansel Adams used to wait hours for the perfect light. Would he have used AI-based sky replacement features? Maybe.

I tried using masks and local brushes to lift shadows and tamp down blown out clouds.

Way too much work. I won't touch Photoshop even though I have a CC subscription because it's not worth painting pixels for a given photo.

I appreciate features like context aware fill or whatever they call it. But I never erase people who happened to walk into the frame.

Then again, I try to cover group so I'm usually not setting up tripod when there's daylight, other than to do time lapses.

 

[mathjak107]

I am the opposite in my thinking …

All of us seem to visit the same places and take just about the same shots .

After a while with so many photographers taking the same shots day after day the photos become the same ole same ole .

When i go out to shoot I will shoot flat and blan in camera .

Then once I am home I will decide how I see that photograph in my mind at at any given point in time .

Then I will strive to make the photo look the way I want and not just accept it day after day as it is handed to me

Actually ansel was the grand pappy of post processing.

No camera or film ever had the dynamic range he displayed .

He learned to do that in processing….so he really was the first to post process the photos to look the way he wanted them to look .

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.” – Ansel Adams.

It's easy to ignore the fact that landscape photographs were being “post-processed” long before Photoshop.

 

[mathjak107]

When I shoot macro I never count on the days lighting .

I use the Nikon macro flashes . The r1c1 …


I control all the lighting and effectively bring my own sun .

I can control how much of the background I want shown , from a full background you can see to my images floating in black space .

Nature can be cruel to photographers and the more I can control the situation the Better I like it.

So typically my macro is shot in manual ….

Nikon has two flash modes .

One mode does not talk to the camera at all …that is called TTL .

The other is called balanced mode …

The camera and flash talk so the subject is brought up the the background level .

Like taking a photo of someone who is at the beach with their back to the sun .

Balanced mode will bring their face up to the level of the back ground .

That is the opposite of what I want in macro

it is like having two different exposure systems .

I can set up my camera in manual for the amount of back ground I want with the flashes off .

Then I can turn on the flashes and adjust them for the subject .

So typically I will usually use iso 400 as a base , 1/200 as a speed and then vary the aperture to how much of the background I want shown .

Then I will turn the flashes on and walk them in to highlight the subject I want .

So the flashes control my subject and the camera is deciding the back ground look .


So I am usually very in control of my lighting

 

[mathjak107]

Here are some examples shot at mid day in horrible lighting but with the macro flashes controlling the scene

 

[street]

Photo taken with spotting scope and cell phone so again nothing great about the photography skills. Just wanted to share the interesting subject.

 

[Ronstar]

Nice photos everyone!

Street - do you have a bracket to hold the phone to the spotting scope? Or you just holding it? Yours looks a million times better than my cell phone attempts through my scope

 

[f35phixer]

Photo taken with spotting scope and cell phone so again nothing great about the photography skills. Just wanted to share the interesting subject.

Thanks for update Street.

Did they have only one?

 

[street]

Ronstar, mine isn't exactly like this one but close. It will attach to any optics. I also zoom in all the way on my phone as well so that magnifies to object as well. All the magnifying is kind of a challenge for to get it all in sync.

 

[mathjak107]

One thing I want to mention is that for those who use lightroom , lightroom can read the in camera settings of some of the newer cameras like the Nikon z line in raw .

Typically adobe could not read the in camera settings in raw …whether you picked portrait, vivid or landscape as an example meant nothing to adobe software as it applied its own adobe look on raw images .

Only jpeg used what you picked in camera typically .

The new cameras have profiles that adobe can read .

In preferences you select use your camera settings as a default and you will see each in camera picture control settings is displayed as set in camera .


I use flat in camera in my z6 for the most accurate match to my histogram .

Don’t forget the more saturation and contrast that is added , the more to the right it pushes the histogram .

That can cause you to under expose since the raw image actually has more leeway for higher exposures resulting in less noise when processing .

Which brings up another point .

In Lightroom’s develop section there are drop down choices to add the different in camera looks after the fact ….

many people think they can just change to any in camera picture setting at will regardless of which they picked in camera.

That is not quite correct .

The difference is if say you shot vivid in camera your histogram exposure is going to reflect hitting the right side walls so you will back down your exposure so as not to blow out .

When you change settings after the fact the images will not be the same as in camera since you would have initially shot with different exposure settings if you watch a histogram for blow out .

So my opinion is don’t change picture control choices in lightroom after the fact if your camera model is able to be read by Lightroom like the Nikon z line can .

They are not the same as actually shooting in that profile from the get go

 

[Ronstar]

Ronstar, mine isn't exactly like this one but close. It will attach to any optics. I also zoom in all the way on my phone as well so that magnifies to object as well. All the magnifying is kind of a challenge for to get it all in sync.

Thanks - That's like what I have too, but I can't seem to get the lens to line up to the eyepiece very well.

 

[mathjak107]

Some from the last few days.

We spent a few days in Norwalk ct

 

[street]

mathjak107, those are great pictures!!! Thanks for sharing them. So, what kind of butterfly is that blue one?

 

[mathjak107]

No idea ……some I never saw before

 

[pacergal]

Beautiful photos everyone!

 

[Ronstar]

Nice photos Mathjak!

 

[mathjak107]

Thanks

 

[aja8888]

mathjak107, those are great pictures!!! Thanks for sharing them. So, what kind of butterfly is that blue one?

According to Google photo matching it's a:

Gossamer-winged butterflies

Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies, with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly species. The family comprises seven subfamilies, including the blues, the coppers, the hairstreaks, and the harvesters. Wikipedia

https://observation.org/taxa/266/?genus=Plebejus