What did you shoot? September 27th - October 3rd

[StapledPhoto]

Sean and JJ, Thanks for the comments!


JJ, no flash was used, but the tree this guy was pecking away at was right at the tree-line on some bluffs so there was quite a bit of light coming from behind the camera.


Sean, the trees were huge, but you're right that the shots without anything other than other trees didn't illustrate the scale properly. One thing I had a lot of trouble with there was the serious difference in levels between the lower areas, the upper canopy, and the sky. As seen here: http://www.flickr.com/yonirab/5035060615/lightbox


Would a flash have been good to fill the darker areas near the ground? I took some bracketed exposures so maybe I should experiment with exposure blending, but I'm not a huge HDR fan.





Sean, I really like your second image. I love the lighting on the subject and the way the wide angle and yardlines connect the subject to a nice full background. It makes it feel like less of a backdrop and more of a scene to me.


Jayson, nice set of images. I like the ladybug best Something about the bloom-like look that it has and the detailed face. Is that cropped or with an extension tube? Looks too big for 1:1


Denise, I think that woodpecker shot has a lot of character. It looks soft which really works with those colours. Is that the product of some noise reduction in post or just cropping the high pixel density of the 7D? I'm thinking it's not too cropped unless you bumped the contrast up to compensate. I normally prefer 3:2 frames but you won me over with that one.


KingB, that's a pretty cool shot. Have you considered getting a ND filter to allow you to do this sort of shot wide open? That'd help blur out the background even further, unless keeping the background details intact shows the motion blur better. I don't know much about panning blur, as my last sentence should have made clear, but that looks pretty damn good for 1/10th to me. Nice job! Standing farther back and using the 200mm end of your lens would probably have yielded more motion blur in the background if I'm thinking this through correctly. More compression = more movement in the background over a given period of time because you're looking at less background moving faster across the frame. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't like giving bad advice.





-Yoni

[Jayson]

Yoni, it is cropped a little bit. I had a 100mm macro with 1.4x TC attached. He was sitting on the kids slide and I actually took that upside down with the built in flash on the camera to balance out the sun. Thanks for the comment.


Loving the woodpecker shots from you and Denise. I have only seen one of them all year around here and he was way up in a tree, so nothing good came of that. Great capture.


Sean, awesome light as always!

[bob williams]

Went to the zoo today and as expected, lighting was horrible, crowds were thick and most animals were lethargic, but.....I did manage to get a few decent ones--not great, but ok.