Salem swingNikkor 18-200 at 40mm
1/30 sec F27
Maybe this should have been cropped to portrait. However, I left it landscape to retain the blurred, movement-streaked background. This is the best of about a dozen attempts to get the child's eyes in sharp focus. I nearly managed her hand. This sort of shot is intensely difficult to get right.
From a moving trainNikkor 18-200 at 20mm
1/30 sec F22
Shot through the filty, scratched, graffiti-strewn window of a Boston tram, I was amazed that this one came out in any way acceptable. The blurred background of parked cars, plus interference patterns between railway sleepers and fencing all serve to accentuate movement.
Night trainNikkor 18-200 at 48mm
1/4 sec F6.7
Not actually shot at night, but in a tube station. Other attempts to take photos with even longer exposures were thwarted by the Tripod Police. I was leaning against one of the columns and a Metro employee seemed to think that I was trying to shoot passengers with some (unspecified) firearm.
The Hare and the TortoiseNikkor 18-200 at 62mm
1/500 sec F6.7
Bronze statues in Boston, Massachusetts don't actually move very much. The fable in which they appear revolves around the subject of movement, so it counts. Image cropped in Photoshop(TM) and an annoying distraction has been clumsily cloned out of the image.
Boston lightsNikkor 18-200 at 32mm
1/1000 sec F6.7
The green traffic light is for "Go", hence movement. I tried to clone out the annoying power cable but it proved too difficult for me. The repetitive pattern of the building's windows was too hard for me to align accurately enough to fool the average bear. Fail.
Moving bridgeNikkor 18-200 at 22mm
1/250 sec F16
The bridge at Mystic, Connecticut opens at twenty minutes to every hour, at which time there is a procession of boats up and down the river.
We're on a road to nowhere...Nikkor 18-200 at 18mm
1/750 sec F3.5
I wanted everything in focus, but in a moving vehicle it wasn't likely to happen. The large discrepancy between bright outdoors and dark car interior has almost lost interior detail. I used a little Photoshop(TM) to burn in the highlights on the dashboard. In retrospect I could have improved depth of field by closing the aperture, relying on the lens' vibration reduction to deal with camera shake, and setting the 'film speed' to automatic to allow a moderate shutter speed.
Posts
Salem Swing
ReplyDeleteNicely done, I like the idea of these panning shots, just couldn't think of a concept for this. It's a classic of motor sports but think it needs a lot of practice.
As you say it is a little bit soft, what focus mode were you using ? Servo / predictive mode may have helped.
From a moving train.
Works well as it gives a sense of exactly where you are. If the window wasn't there it would detract from the shot.
Might have been nice to have another train coming but that would require very very lucky timing.
Night Train.
A classic shot, looks like a shot from a movie.
Shame about the tripod police. I saw a copy of an NYPD memo about the rights of photographers and it is very good. Basically the police have no rights to stop you unless they have real grounds. Shame we don’t have the same here.
Hair and the Tortoise.
Nice, love the aspect ratio.
Crops like this and cloning out litter are what Photoshop is for.
I MUST try to do more non standard aspect crops !
Boston Lights.
Nice shot with the mix of the light and the pattern of the building.
To take out the cable I would have copied a section of building into a new layer and pasted it over the cable. That would have maintained the pattern better.
I'd also have added some green as a dodge on the arrow to brighten it up.
Moving bridge.
Nice might have been better if the boats were coming towards camera.
One even closer in foreground may have helped. The bridge house is nice but to far away to be the whole image.
The sweeping curve of the jetty is a nice leading line.
We're on the road to nowhere.
The frame of the car window is nice. I'd have been tempted to do a Photoshop composite and do one slow for the window view and then a fast (maybe higher ISO) to freeze the inside of the car. But as I'm always being accused I'm a naughty photoshop boy.
p.s. Another person on a great photo location, starting to feel very jealous. Hope it's helping people stretch them selves further than holiday snaps.
Might have to be brave and take my camera on next work trip. However, as it cost me two cartons of cigarettes (one for Immigration and another for Customs) to leave the ship in Mexico my camera might be a bit brave.
Cheers,
Richard B.
Salem Swing
ReplyDeleteIs this a sign of the world gone health and saftey mad when a kid has to wear a 3 point harness on a play swing!!
I was going to try my hand at this idea but wasn't brave enough, and couldn;t think of a suitable subject. Agree woudl have looked better if the face was in sharp focus rather than the hand but a sterling effort none the less.
For a really good effect you could have tried doing the zoom out effect at the same time as tracking the kid and holding the focus.....what do you mean you only have two hands. Come on boy challenge yourself ;0)
The Night train
This would have worked REALLY well if you did hte pan focus technique (not sure if thats the proper name) on the train, leaving the train in focus and the rest blurred. Nice position and composition within the frame though.
The Hare and the Toitoise
I like this, it makes me chuckle each time I look at it (the subject not the photographers skills by the way) and the cropping works really well for the subject. The only thing that would have made it a better image in my mind is if the DOF was much shallower to throw the background out or shot from the other direction (if that resulted in less clutter).
Are you still at the place where this was taken? A WICKED shot would be to get down real low and shoot a shot of the tortoise straight on with the hare in teh background as if chasing after the toitoise.......would look great.
Boston Lights
This is may favourate of the set. Love the dark light against the shiny building etc. Great composition. Only way this could have really been better is if the sky hadn't been so overcast. A few clouds rolling over would have given it some lovely 'punch' but sadly even the best photographer can't control the weather in Boston.
Sorry mate, the moving bridge shot really didn't do it for me. The subject itself is of course interesting (bridges and boats) but the shot didn't tell me anything.
Keep shooting, and see you when you get back to the sand pit.
For my mind this would be a wall shot, or at the very least a 'keep in the album' shot.
O Yellow One:
ReplyDeleteWhat the cropping of Hare and Tortoise doesn't reveal is the park bench, cleverly located so that it's impossible to get the tortoise in transit with the hare. And then there'd be another park bench in view too. Point taken about the DOF; perhaps I could fake it with that Adobe software which you and Richard go on about.
Thaks for the feedback on the others too. I can of course bore you in due course with many, many photos of skyscrapers resulting from a day trip to the Big Apple.