UnknownSouljer
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A Picture I Took 2015
- Thread starter MN Scout
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The instrument panel is a little indistinct; is that deliberate? If so, can I suggest it needs to be even more indistinct so that the focus is even more on the child? Alternatively, make the instrument panel much more distinct and you could have a contrast between the softness of the child and the hardness of the chopper. I've a background in aerospace and am drawn to helos and planes.
madFive
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Nice shot! I am liking the drama, light, and sharpness of this.
I started processing my photos from the Boston trip last weekend.
Lots of fun aerial shots. I got a ton of crazy glare from the plane window that I now need to photoshop back out...
Skyline overlook
Nice sunset flying back into Atlanta
Empty_Quarter
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Love the middle one!!
A quick trip to Niagara
Frostbite [Explored] by Empty Quarter, on Flickr
Grande Hermine by Empty Quarter, on Flickr
Lewiston-Queenston by Empty Quarter, on Flickr
Niagara Falls by Empty Quarter, on Flickr
A quick trip to Niagara
Frostbite [Explored] by Empty Quarter, on FlickrGrande Hermine by Empty Quarter, on FlickrLewiston-Queenston by Empty Quarter, on FlickrNiagara Falls by Empty Quarter, on FlickrPanzerBoxb
2[H]4U
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I was torn on blurring that portion of the image but now that you bring it up I may go back and do that. I did bring up the shadows and black a little to keep the spotlight on the infant.
Right now I am so glad spring is in the air. It gives some nice color to shoot.
Purple Pretties by Gear Driver, on Flickr
Herald of Spring by Gear Driver, on Flickr
I just received my Fotga adapter to use Canon EF/EFS lenses on my Sony A6000. My first test was with the 70-200 /2.8 lens but the auto-focus seemed way off so I switched to the 100mm macro lens.
Sony A6000 Fotga EF Adapter Test by Gear Driver, on Flickr
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UnknownSouljer
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It's currently blowing up on 500px. Would really appreciate a "Like" or a "Favorite" if you're on 500px. Never gotten a 90% or above.
Not on 500px but amazing shot! The juxtaposition is what makes it for me.
UnknownSouljer
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It was by design. Two weeks of preproduction went into this... to get a ballerina in the desert. There is a lot more to come.
Wonderful shot! Put it on my Fav on 500px.
Thanks a bunch. I gave both you (or I assume it's you lol) and Empty Quarter a follow. Much appreciated. Also, soooo close. Just can't get over that hump. 88.5% right now.
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Thanks for the follow. I haven't put anything on 500px. The images there are way above my level, feel very intimidated. Big fan of your work.
UnknownSouljer
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Thanks for the follow. I haven't put anything on 500px. The images there are way above my level, feel very intimidated. Big fan of your work.
Thank you for your compliment.
I don't want to keep replying (as this is a picture thread! Less chatty, moar pictars! etc
) but I would encourage you to not worried about feeling like others are above your level.I'm massively intimidated by 500px. Why don't my women look sexy and sensuous as Sean Archer? Or dreamy and sweet like Jessica Drossin? Why aren't they as dramatic and contrasty as JoeyL?
Trust me, I understand, it's easy to play the comparison game. There are two short things I can tell you: when Zack Arias met Jeremy Cowart for the first time, he felt so small because Jeremy is a phenom. Zack felt Jeremy's work dwarfed his and Zack was so into everything Jeremy was doing. But an interesting thing happened, Jeremy was just as excited about Zack's work and what he was doing. Perception and perspective is an interesting thing. We're used to looking at multiple photographers work, noticing that they're very different, but thinking that they're both cool. Why is it that we fail to apply that same sort of mentality to ourselves? I just posted 5 different photographer links. Take a look at each of them, all 5 are VERY different, are they not?
Two: Chase Jarvis says it like this: "Don't try to be better, try to be different". As I noted, I don't shoot like those other people on 500px. And I am getting more and more comfortable with that fact. My stuff doesn't look like theirs. And that's okay. It's a good thing even as it differentiates me. I have tons of influences. Among them people I've already named in this post and before in other posts. Influences are great, but don't let their vision cloud yours and what it is you do and what you bring to the table. It's true, you DO have to produce work that doesn't look like it was taken at Sears. Yes you have to have professional standards and techniques. But what Chase was trying to say: after a certain level trying to be better on a technical level than someone else doesn't matter. Being different is what you bring to the table. Being different is what gives you a client/fan base that is uniquely yours.
Here's my secret: I'm constantly terrified to put my work out there. Because I, probably like you, compare my work to whom I consider the best of the best. I want to be at the world/international level, which sounds either very ambitious or very arrogant, but I don't see a point in trying for less. I'm shooting for as high as I can go. And it's damn scary wondering where you fit in or if you even fit in. It's scary to have other people judge your work, because it's personal. You made it, you love it, a part of you is in it. But if you don't just act a little brave and put yourself out there, no one else will have a chance to tell you how great you really are.
I've seen your work, I think it's good. Do you have room for improvement? Sure, we all do (not least of all me). Don't be afraid of the journey. I know my work has a long way to go to. I'm not where I want to be. I want to shoot better. I want to produce more cool-er and more awesome-er work. If I'm lucky, I'm just getting started. Don't shut yourself down while you are too.
===
Edit: Also, woohoo, just broke 90%! Very cool, super stoked. I didn't think it would happen.
Edit #2:
Thank you everyone yesterday for checking out my work: "In Canyons".
It's received the most reaction of anything I've ever posted online.
It reached over 92% on 500px. There's still a chance it will go higher, but most of the time things reach a peak on 500px and then drop off.
It got over 150 +1's on Google+ (when accounting for +1s on shares to specific communities, still over 110 on the original) it gained 10 or so reshares and some comments. I got probably half a dozen new followers. Even now it's STILL generating interest on G+.
I'm thankful for the response from all of you, I've never had that level of public reaction to anything I've done. I'm hoping it only goes up from here!
Edit #3: Here let me add an image to keep this a photo thread.
Also up on 500px.
That's it for me this week. Catch you guys next week.
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Psylocke Cosplay w/ Cyd Cherie by davidgevert, on Flickr
Yes, there will, of course, be more to come.
UnknownSouljer
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Nice effect David. Bet that was fun to make. Coulda doubled down and put the "psy blade" in her other hand.
On 500px.
On 500px.
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madFive
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^^ Wow - great city shots!
UnknownSouljer
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Daggah and Empty_Quarter's landscape shots blow anything I ever did in that realm out of the water. It's hard work and they got skillz. Just straight up.
On 500px.
I like these two.
I like her look. Head is turned just right.
Cool flames and pose on the second.
I like her look. Head is turned just right.
Cool flames and pose on the second.
...snip...
Edit #3: Here let me add an image to keep this a photo thread.
Also up on 500px.
That's it for me this week. Catch you guys next week.
Thanks guys! I think Empty Quarter is way better at the scenic stuff than I am though. But I'm very happy with how my shots have been coming out recently.
The Tokyo Tower amongst the sprawling Tokyo metropolis by davidgevert, on Flickr
The Tokyo Tower amongst the sprawling Tokyo metropolis by davidgevert, on Flickr
northrop
grumman
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This. I hope to get back to photography with full swing this year as time permits and contribute to this thread a little (I will need to step up my game to even come close to you guys
). Haven't shot more than a few frames this year This. I hope to get back to photography with full swing this year as time permits and contribute to this thread a little (I will need to step up my game to even come close to you guys
I'm low on frames this year also. I'm biking every day to train for my big bike tour and there are only so many pictures I can take of the same locations. The pictures will come during my bike tours.
UnknownSouljer
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This. I hope to get back to photography with full swing this year as time permits and contribute to this thread a little (I will need to step up my game to even come close to you guys
Get on it son! We need more contributors here. Love to see the work.
Get a GoPro and an iPhone (or whatever your cellphone flavor is). Always a project you can do on the go. Don't knock the cellphone camera, tons of projects you can do with just that. Jeremy Cowart's coverage of Apple's Spring Forward event with just an iPhone was pretty incredible. I bet people that didn't know better on Instagram thought he was using much more sophisticated hardware.
You won't see me dissing cellphones and Go Pros as picture taking devices. I have a handful of favorites from my 500 mile bike tour in MN last July that were taken with my Galaxy S4. I really like the panorama function that can give me 24+ megapixel photos. I'm normally happy enough with the panos, that I don't even take out my D800 and tripod. Often times on my training rides it is a decision to either stop and take photos or to put the miles in.
I'd really like a Go Pro, I just have so many other things to do that I shouldn't add video editing every day to that list. If someone has a 4k go pro that they aren't using and want to loan me, I wouldn't turn it down.
Here are a few of the panoramas from July of last year. I just finished sorting through and editing the good pictures from this trip. I still have my Netherlands trip to go.
Trail just north of Hinckley, MN:
My tent site overlooking the old mine outside of Gilbert, MN:
Path to the west of Virginia, MN. I had to wait from 9 to 12:30 for a violent rain and wind storm to stop. This picture was taken once I got going again.
Morton Mine:
The government building that I had to get to by 4:30PM to get a key to the bathroom at the city campground in Nashwauk, MN:
Those are some nice panoramas. Are you just using the built in camera app or something else? I have started messing around with panoramas on my Galaxy S5 but I havent had much luck so far.
They are all from the built in camera app. While I'm eating lunch I'll type out what I do.
My routine:
1. Pick my subject(s).
2. Hold the camera vertical and walk back and forth to get it framed vertically how I want it. Leave a small amount of room on the top and bottom that will get cropped from the stitching and auto cropping.
3. Decide where I want the subject placed in the frame.
4. Frame up where we will start the pano. I find it easiest to start on the side where the subject is. In the GS4 the camera exposure for the whole scene is based off the starting location. Also the whole frame of the initial start location is saved, and not "sliced" like the rest of the pano.
5. Press the record button. Only watch the little tiny pano preview box on the bottom of the screen. Pay attention to the colored box that shows you how level you are. You can slowly shift up and down. Do not shift quick because you will get a stitching error. You want a slow steady movement. What I've noticed is the camera must grab 2 exposures for each slice of the frame it records, one using a high ISO, and one using a low ISO. You want to move slow enough so that it always picks to record the low ISO shot, the better less noisy one.
6. Once you see in the preview box that you moved enough to finish your composition press the stop button.
7. Look at the picture. How was the exposure, did anything blow out or go totally black. If bad you'll need to pick a starting location that is maybe a little brighter, or dimmer. Pick the location so that you can crop it out of your composition. You may have to start on the opposite side of your subject. Also check for stitching errors. If you at any time jerked up or down there will be an error.
For the photo of the path with the storm clouds on the right, I had to get just enough sky on the left so that it would force the metering down enough so that the clouds on the right wouldn't blow out. When I started the pano on the right, the path would end up solid black with no detail. I wish there was an exposure compensation button for the panorama program, but there isn't. We have to do it ourselves.
Don't bother taking pictures if there is movement of grass, cars, people, water waves. The program grabs small slices of the frame, and there will be noticeable artifacts. Casually moving clouds are OK. Tree branches are also normally OK, but if they are whipping around NO.
Another thing it won't deal with is featureless landscapes. Like a lake where the horizon is far off and small with no clouds in the sky. The picture lacks any detail, so the stitching program can't tell if you moved. Since the sky is empty and boring, I get down lower and include mostly shoreline, or switch my subject to a tree or rock grouping.
Ask me any questions you want.
Here are a bunch of photos. I don't think I posted any of them here in the 2014/2015 threads:
Here are some I posted in General Mayhem in the biking thread:
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Empty_Quarter
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Ty! But you guys give me way too much credit. You two both have your strengths and put quite an effort on your photos, and it shows
As for me, for the first time in a while, i've been slacking. Toronto is becoming boring. Need to travel more =\
madFive
metal[H]ead
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^^ I definitely know the feeling. Been slacking for a couple years now, but I'm trying to get back into it this year. So far so good! Still wish I had the opportunity to do as much traveling as EQ and some of you others.
Here's some from the aquarium in Boston a few weeks ago.
Here's some from the aquarium in Boston a few weeks ago.
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Playing around with some natural lighting
full heart by jamsomito, on Flickr
beauty in the dark by jamsomito, on Flickr
full heart by jamsomito, on Flickrbeauty in the dark by jamsomito, on Flickrcp_kirkley
Limp Gawd
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[url=http://imgur.com/TK6YPso]
[/URL]
Took this with Sony A7 and Zeiss 16-35 F4. This is the Waterwall near Galleria Mall in Houston.
[/URL]Took this with Sony A7 and Zeiss 16-35 F4. This is the Waterwall near Galleria Mall in Houston.
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UnknownSouljer
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Cool panos MN Scout. I like to do those with my phone as well, but I think your locations are cooler than mine generally are heh. I've been finding that "iPhoneography" is a great way to practice and keep working. As a result I'm posting a lot on Instagram now (which I never did before about a month ago). Unfortunately as you know, square format doesn't really allow for panos on Instagram, and zooming also isn't possible. Still, it puts images through the crucible of being good or not purely by content.
Latest work. I'm almost done getting all of the stuff from this shoot out there. Another 6 images to go I think? I won't spam it all in here though.
On 500px.
Latest work. I'm almost done getting all of the stuff from this shoot out there. Another 6 images to go I think? I won't spam it all in here though.
On 500px.
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Like the dragon. Who doesn't? Did you try the composition with some ground on the bottom right of the frame, or some creation of movement of the gal coming from the right?
I've been trying to do something with my pictures in the physical world lately. Worked for a week on a photo book from Shutterfly. Daily photo journal of a bike tour. Just submitted it, since they had 50% off all sizes and it stacked with a free 8x8 coupon that gave me another $30 off. Ended up at $26 shipped instead of $85. I sure hope it looks OK.
I got another email today from AdoramaPix. They have 60% off their lay flat photo books expiring the 22nd. Code PXSAVE60. They use actual photo paper for these books. If I hadn't spent days laying my book out in Shutterfly's interface I would have submitted it to AdoramaPix instead. Searching through my emails I can't find any coupons that get remotely close to 60%, most is 30%.
Also have 4 empty picture frames waiting for some prints from BayPhoto. Biggest one is 24x33.
I've been trying to do something with my pictures in the physical world lately. Worked for a week on a photo book from Shutterfly. Daily photo journal of a bike tour. Just submitted it, since they had 50% off all sizes and it stacked with a free 8x8 coupon that gave me another $30 off. Ended up at $26 shipped instead of $85. I sure hope it looks OK.
I got another email today from AdoramaPix. They have 60% off their lay flat photo books expiring the 22nd. Code PXSAVE60. They use actual photo paper for these books. If I hadn't spent days laying my book out in Shutterfly's interface I would have submitted it to AdoramaPix instead. Searching through my emails I can't find any coupons that get remotely close to 60%, most is 30%.
Also have 4 empty picture frames waiting for some prints from BayPhoto. Biggest one is 24x33.
UnknownSouljer
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Thanks.
The internet is a really weird and fickle place. So this particular image has been really popular amongst people who know me (on Facebook), but hasn't done much business elsewhere. It's gotten one of the lowest scores on 500px in this image series and not gotten much attention on G+. I have one image that got over 380+'s on G+ and over 92% on 500px. So it's weird.
I sometimes think it's luck in terms of who sees your stuff and therefore reshares it giving that snowball effect. Sometimes you just get unlucky and the first 50-100 people that see something all just don't like it. Then it just drops on down. In a perfect storm the opposite happens. Maybe I'm wrong. I have no idea really.
I have a brief overview on 500px/Facebook about how I worked on this photo. It set me back another 5 days and wrecked my release schedule. Anywho, I went through at least a dozen revisions because I had a hard time figuring out how far to take it. Mostly because I didn't want to beat my audience over the head with the concept. So this is a more mild take on this piece, the most mild not having the fireball either.
I toyed around with giving the Serpent a flaming red snake eye.
Giving Leslie Motion Blur
Giving the Serpent Radial blur to make it appear like it's moving or in the process of attack.
I put in a massive firewall behind the serpent to make it look like it itself conjures flames.
In the end I felt like all this stuff was too much. And that simplicity was better and to trust that my audience would get the idea with less. I also of course had to decide what I liked the most and I went with less. I almost decided to not do the fireball either. But after a few days of staring at it with and without, I felt like it was a strong enough element to keep.
In terms of the ground, it was intentionally framed out of the shot. So even in the original before compositing out the background, it was intentionally out of frame as to not give the viewer any sort of perception of height from the ground. As it stands you can make an assumption that the ground is just out of frame or imagine that they're both 1000 feet in the air. It leaves room to the imagination. And when the title of the image is: "Fearless" and the idea is conquering a physical manifestation of fear, a little room for imagination is good.
Good questions. Those are my artistic choices, hopefully that gave you clear answers.
Sounds awesome. I'd love to hear how it turns out as I've been looking into prints again myself. I generally go to whcc for everything, but from what I've seen I haven't been as interested in their books. Shutterfly and others just seem to be better at their price points, but I don't know if they're as good or better or whatever than the competition. It would be nice to hear some first hand experiences.
With luck I'll be printing something on canvas here soon.
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madFive
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Dude, the photoChop forum is << that way.
But seriously that is really cool - makes me want to get some fun projects like this going again.If you don't mind a bit of critique: I like several of the components of this, but honestly they’re not meshing all that well in this version here, and the composition isn't doing much for me. I think playing with the proportions and placement-balance might help; I’d also like to see some other angles, but guessing that’s not an option at this point (you might try some overlapping to indicate more dynamic perspective). Try making the model larger/smaller in proportion, and try giving them more breathing room (sky) to get her more vertically centered and/or closer to the 1/3 mark in the image.
The biggest issue though is that the quality of the 3D render doesn't look photographic like all the other elements, and the lighting doesn't match, so it seems really out of place. It mostly looks like a roughed-in comp for a more advanced render later. If you can get the textures and lighting of the render more photographic and more in-line with the lighting of the model, I think that'd go a long way toward making this a more cohesive image. The other option would be to paint over the entire image in PS to at least give the same stylized look and texturing to both the model and the 3d-render, but of course that'd be many hours’ worth of work to complete.
My favorite part of this is actually the fire-ball. I’m very curious to know if you took the photo of that, or if it was part of the 3D generated part. I think it’d be pretty awesome to see a version of this where the primary light of the whole scene is an orange glow emanating from the fire.
Lastly, the model’s outfit seems really out of place with the fantasy theme of the dragon. If you do end up doing a full-blown PS painting out of this I assume you’ll paint her in a more interesting outfit.
Oh, and yeah, it really needs some ground or something under/above the model to indicate how she got up there – suspension of disbelief and all that. She just looks a bit cut-&-pasted there at the moment.
Great work as usual overall – can’t wait to see the final product on this!
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