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Rented a Tahoe from Avis. I had the option of choosing white, silver, or black. Went with the white one.

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My cousin 'Bully Boy' and wife Caron. Fire fighter and nurse. You guys might recognize the location from a movie.

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srika

mmmmmmmmm I mean, I love that heat blur!

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haha the heat looks pretty intense.

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It's incredible. I would say it's magical lol. I browsed through a Hawaii Flickr group and I didn't even begin to capture anything. I'm heading back a year from now and will have a lot more time to make photos.

srika

Don't be discouraged. There are many many factors involved. At the core, it's your camera and lens. Some are simply sharper than others. Then, it's your settings - tighter apertures will give you sharper images. So if a certain lens looks dull to you wide open at f/3.5 or 4.0 or whatever, try stopping that down to f/8 or 9 or so - see how it looks. Generally speaking a lens is considered to be at it's sharpest right around f/8 but it will vary with lens. This is a part of the learning curve for a lens - you have to find out by trial and error where the sweet spot is for your copy. But wait, there's more. After that, it's your skill in holding it steady (using IS if it's available as assistance) or using a tripod or other method to stabilize. Optional: Use a shutter release or the self-timer to maximize your sharpness even further. Optional: Use mirror lockup to reduce even more possible shake.

After you've done all of this, you have your photo in the camera. If it's not looking sharp on the LCD at this point, when you zoom in and look at the details, no amount of post processing is going to give you a sharper image. You will be trying to sharpen something that is fuzzy to begin with. And these are not knives. This part has to do with focus - you must obtain sharp focus. Now, you CAN get away with this to a certain degree if you use a small image size such as 800px wide or something like that. Resize to that, and sharpen there, and you can get away with some. But if you want the best images you can possibly get, you must start at the sharpest image you can get, straight out of the camera.

Ok. So you have your sharp image, now you get to the post processing part. There are many tools at this point to take your images to the next sharpness level. You ideally need to do RAW pre-sharpening (if you are shooting RAW that is) to add that initial "kick" to it. You can do this in Camera RAW or Lightroom or DPP or whatever you use. Hope you are using Lightroom because IMO that is the easiest and most user-friendly, speaking in terms of the whole process. The big thing that makes it more friendly than using Camera RAW for instance is that the sharpening steps are always adjustable like regular adjustments, whereas in Camera RAW you get that initial screen open where you can fine tune everything, but once you hit open after that, you are done you can't go back and change any of that. Can you make that work for you? Sure. I'm just speaking in terms of most pleasing user experience.

Ok next post-processing steps - there are many more I am not even going to elaborate on because I don't use them myself - local contrast, unsharp mask, other masking methods, there are separate sharpening methods and processes out there that individuals really personalize to their own liking and workflow, have a look on Google for "image sharpening workflow" if you want to see a lot about it.

Next sharpening processing step for me occurs in the final stage when the image is saved. You are going to want to sharpen the original image again, if you intend on printing it and having it look its sharpest. But if you are only publishing to web, you don't have to do that. What you have to do is, resize the image, using the resize window. There is an important variable in here, and that is the resizing algorithm. I use "Bicubic (best for smooth gradients)", I don't know if that is the best one, all I know is that it works for me and I am pleased with it's results.

Next step - once I've done this - typically these days I resize to 1920 wide for landscape and 1024 tall for portrait - next I open Nik Sharpener Pro 3.0 as the final sharpening step. I have custom presets I generally use in there but for each image I fine-tune those presets to get the exact look I want. This is the icing on the sharpening cake (for me, again, there is more than one way to do this - this is just how I personally do it - I strongly recommend you look into it further on the interwebs or books (there are entire books about sharpening alone) before you decide on what you want to use - personal preference is so super important in all of this, you must feel comfortable using the tools at your disposable - it must not be annoying - of course at first it likely will feel uncomfortable, and that is a part of the learning curve. Ok I'm really rambling at this point).

I want to tell you something that should make you feel better - when I first started doing HDR and the architecture work and all of that, my images were piss-poor in the sharp department. I didn't know how important it was to get sharp initial images and the multi-exposure HDR bracketing only made it worse. Sure Photomatix has alignment tools but there is only so much it can do. Looking back at some today just makes me cringe. But this is all a part of the learning stages and getting used to everything. It took me a good few years to really get used to it all. Practice, practice, practice. The more you do it the better you will get at it and also the more efficient you'll get. You'll learn shortcuts and timesavers that make your experience all the more rewarding (read: not annoying).

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I pretty much determined the sharpest images are usually shot through the 70-200 so I went and got it. The ones I posted aren't edited.

srika

And you bring up a great point. The post-processing stuff I wrote above is not *necessary* to get a sharp image. They are steps to enhance the sharpness of your image. If you get a sharp image with a sharp lens straight out of your camera (as you ideally should) and uploaded that original file to flickr, it will look quite sharp at any of flickr's smaller sizes.

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The Raleigh-Durham Intl Airport caught me off guard with some nice architecture.

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My brother lurking in the tunnel at Chicago O'Hare Intl.

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Most of these flowers are on the grounds of the Hale Koa Hotel located in Waikiki.

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View from the room. One morning while eating breakfast I looked out and the water on the horizon was DARK blue. The beauty of that place kept putting me in a daze.

srika

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8697252063/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8697252063/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

srika

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8700273226/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8700273226/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

srika

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8700225918/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8700225918/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

is300eater

I don't know how "street photography" is defined anymore, I've been reading up a little about it, and I'm not sure if this is considered street photography, so I'm just going to post this here


__________________________________________________ ___________________________(...oh and )
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63271580@N00/8699940049/http://www.flickr.com/photos/63271580@N00/8699940049/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/63271580@N00/, on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/57553669@N03/8701087092/http://www.flickr.com/photos/57553669@N03/8701087092/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/57553669@N03/, on Flickr

Sly Raskal

iTrader: (1)

This is the Tomcat I photographed a couple weeks ago at the USS Hornet Museum. Mizouse, did you ever make it out there?

asianspec

iTrader: (1)

He's on his own version of Eurotrip right now.

srika

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8704678029/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8704678029/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr


http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705707506/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705707506/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

srika

from everything I've seen and read, this is what I get:

Street photography involves people, usually just 1 or 2, not more than a few. The photo is an emotional one, evoking some feeling in the viewer, showing some mood or scene that provokes thought of some kind. Well of course you could say that about any photo, but this is a specific type of human connection of the person(s) and their surrounding. Wider shots are usually not classic street photography - those would be more just like urban views. Also classic street photography does not have HDR or tonemapping or Topaz or anything like that going on. It is pretty simple and to the point. And it is usually B&W.

Your two shots above, the first one I would not say is street photo -- because it is a wide shot, but mostly because of the HDR type of effect on it. The 2nd photo I would say is street photo, because it's only 1 or 2 people and it does not have any HDR effect. Also, look at the emotion coming from the woman. And the man - it's a very emotional shot.

srika

my 2nd photo right above of the couple walking with backs to the camera could be a street photo if I made it B&W. In fact I am going to do that right now.

srika

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705074777/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705074777/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

srika

of course you realize this is a point where we are emulating the look of street photography - I mean the greats like Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't have to "do" anything other than develop their film to get their look.

srika

with added grain

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705094623/http://www.flickr.com/photos/delobbo/8705094623/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/delobbo/, on Flickr

pttl

Like the grain in BnW.

einsatz

These are the original columns of the US Capitol's East Portico, which were relocated to the National Arboretum. More info on the history here.


Capitol Columns by ep_jhu, on Flickr

Highlights a little blown on some columns but I didn't notice until it was too late. This is heavily processed. People removed, perspective corrected, etc.

is300eater

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63271580@N00/8706689880/http://www.flickr.com/photos/63271580@N00/8706689880/ by http://www.flickr.com/people/63271580@N00/, on Flickr

Sarlacc

Shooting a commercial for a Korean Spa...Today was a white cyke stage...shooting at the actual spa next week.

The big challenge/pain in the ass was her hair...EVERY fly away hair shows on a white backdrop. We did the best we could, but it was still a headache all day.

Sarlacc

photobucket has really gone down the shitter in terms of linking, ease of linking, and quality of the image getting linked.

Might be time to dump them.

EDIT:
Or its my retina display...have to check the other computer...just realized that might be culprit.

Sarlacc

Yup...its the retina display. Looks better on the other computer.

Undying Dreams

iTrader: (3)

Why don't you use Flickr? Photobucket's quality is horrendous.