wndrlst

Just a few shots taken yesterday at my mom's place in Maryland. It was a beautiful day to be outside.

badboy

This is a very nice shot.

wndrlst

Thanks!

EuRTSX

Wow, nice!

Dan Martin

Looks like a very relaxing place. Nice work!

wndrlst

A couple more - from the creek:




















Thanks! It's a great place.

wndrlst

ILLustriousUA6

iTrader: (2)

your photos are on point. keep it up!

wndrlst

Different farm, but still a farm tour, so no point in starting a new thread:

6/20/06


timber

waTSX

Nice shots! Looks like a great day to be outdooors Maryland is one state I have not been to.

Good job.

MarbleGT

Those are great man! more, moRE, MORE!!

wndrlst

Hey thanks!!

wndrlst

You should check it out sometime. Spring & fall are gorgeous out here. The last set at my friend's place in Virginia, also beautiful.

Your neck of the woods isn't exactly shabby, though. I have family in Mukilteo right on the water - not too far from you, I think. I envy your easy access to the Columbia River Gorge. It's one of my favorite places to hike.

wndrlst

Went out practicing again yesterday morning at Mom's place. A few of my favorites:



The old barn




Maple leaves in the creek




Bee in a wildflower








Ryegrass with dew

Dan Martin

Nice series! I love backlit shots and I really like the leaves in the creek.

jupitersolo

What are you shooting with? Great pictures, what part of MD. Can't be PG.

wndrlst

Thanks Dan! I haven't gotten to use the sharpening file yet, as I don't have PS yet, but It's hopefully going to be on my comp. very soon.

JS - I'm using a RebelXT w/ the EF-S17-85IS lens. I just got it in August, which is somewhat embarassing given the volume of hard drive space I'm already occupying with photos! The farm is in Howard Co. (Clarksville). It's a far cry from PG, but not as pretty as VA. Thanks for checking them out!

Dan Martin

Those shots look plenty sharp enough for me. I know Flickr sharpens automatically when it resizes, so it that's probably enough for this resolution. Use my action on the original size shots if you want to print them. If you do print, let me know and I'll give you some suggestions based on how big you're going to print.

Try using the "highlight recovery" action on the leaves in the creek photo. It will bring out a little extra detail out of the small green leaves in the top right. Use the mask on that layer to hide the effect from everything else in the frame.

waTSX

Backlit shots are way cool. I find myself looking for opportunities to shoot them.

Wndrist, the last two shots are really nice examples of backlighting.

waTSX

I didn't know flickr did any in program sharpening. This fits my criteria of learning at least one thing everyday

Dan Martin

They roughly use the equivalent of "Resize - Bicubic Sharper" in Photoshop. Ah the wonders of Flickr...

wndrlst

Thanks for the tip on the highlight recovery. Ahhh, all the more reason to get PS! Would a circular polarizer have minimized the loss? That will probably be my next minor purchase. I'm still collecting reasons to justify the purchase of PS.

I, too,love backlight - especially through colorful, translucent objects (as opposed to silhouettes).

I'm learning so much about color photog. & processing right now. There's so much to know. The only formal education I've had was a high school B&W class, which is great, but color is a new world. Not that I haven't shot a bit of it, but I've never been so responsible for the final image. I had to turn it all off last night, because I felt I had lost all judgement about appropriate saturation and contrast. It's great to have that control, but I can no longer blame the lab for crappy colors. This instant gratification bit has me shooting a lot more picturesm, though. (Better odds of getting something good! )

That's cool that flickr sharpens as they re-size. I'm loving their site. So many gorgeous photos for inspiration. The software that came bundled with the camera has a slider that I've used to varying extents as well. It's a cool thing to watch when the raw file is at 100% zoom. Good stuff.

wndrlst

Sounds like I'll want Photoshop before I print anything. Sounds like the justifications are mounting. Now, if I can just convince the hubby.

Dan Martin

That's the beauty of digital, you get control over the picture both at the time of capture and the time of development. Few film shooters bothered to develop their own shots so they had limited control over what the final result looked like.

The hardest lesson to learn when developing your shots in Photoshop is self control. I often ask Street Spirit "does this look natural to you?" when I'm working on some of my stuff. It's too easy to get caried away.

The one thing I keep in mind when I'm manipulating my images is pretty well every adjustment you make is destructive in one way or another. Some of your adjustments might add noise, some might clip a color channel, others might reduce dynamic range. The trick is to find the balance where the changes you make don't hurt more than they help.

guia x

Nice shots wndrlst. I wish I could go to a place for a day and take photos. So far I'm just stuck at home. I have PS 7.0 but I just got CS2 the yesterday from my coworker (sssh don't tell Adobe) . I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet. I have very little PS skills, normally use Corel Photopaint. I have so much to learn, not only with the camera, but the post processing stuff too. BTW, what is this "action" stuff you guys are talking about?

stogie1020

Is that the "kit" lens that comes with the Rebel? Your pics are GREAT! I am thinking about getting the new Rebel, but not sure about the kit lens.

wndrlst

It's not the standard kit lens, but you can find it bundled with the camera, as I did. It's overpriced, but it was such a good compromise/ beginner walk around lens, that I decided to get it anyway. The combination of lenses I would have otherwise needed would have broken my budget if I'd gone for similar or better quality.
They make the same lens w/o the image stabilizer (I think), but the lens isn't very fast (f/4.5-f/5.6), so I went for the IS version. It's been a good choice for the type of shooting I've been practicing with. I bought mine at B&H. Thanks for the compliment!

guia- If I understand correctly, "action" is just the PS term for any change you make to your photo, such as sharpening or increasing contrast, brightness, etc.

As for going out to shoot - just go somewhere. It doesn't have to be far away or exotic. I've made several short roadtrips in the past month just to get the practice. I hadn't shot fully manual in MANY years, so I've had to re-train myself. Now I've worked out a few kinks, gotten to know my camera, and gotten some stupid mistakes out of the way (I hope).

For instance, I hope I will always check my ISO before shooting now that I have already wasted a beautiful morning of bright light shooting at ISO 800! It's unfortunate, because I otherwise like some of the photos (they're the ones above from the farm that isn't my mother's - hay bales, horses, etc.), but hopefully I won't do it when it matters.

guia x

So the action set you guys are talking about is a list of steps Dan uses on his post processing or are they like macros that perform specific actions on a file?

Anyway, about going out. I would love to just be able to go out even just to the local canyons on my motorcycle, but I can't even do that. I have a three month old baby to take care of. My wife and I take turns working and staying home. So I've got hundreds of pictures of the baby and that's about it. I also just go around the house and take pictures of my statues and stuff. I'll have to wait until the three of us goes on a trip or to a party or something. The holidays are coming so that's something to look forward to.

I also need to keep my eye on my settings before shooting. I always forget to set the right ISO and white balance.

wndrlst

[














...and some ice...

jupitersolo

^^ WOW!!! Where did you take these?

I know you are in Va. Do you have your own horses?

wndrlst

I took them at my mom's place in Howard Co. Maryland. She's still got a few horses out there, but I had to put my horse down this past summer. Someday I'll get another, but for now I'm riding friends' horses. The one in my avatar belongs to a client.

The old wood doors are from an 18th century carriage house that was just moved onto the property and is being re-constructed by developers in the area who had to arrange its preservation in order to develop some nearby land. It's a great old building.

Oh, and the little bird was taken with my new lens. That sucker's going to take some practice!

Dan Martin

Nice series!

Could you post a slightly larger version of #1?

wndrlst

Thanks! Is this large enough?


(Constructive criticism is always appreciated.)

wndrlst

...or this one...

Dan Martin

Thanks! Those are nice.

I think perhaps just a little more DOF on the first one would reveal a little more detail, but it's nice the way it is too.

wndrlst

I agree. When I got it up on the monitor, I was wishing I had stopped it down just a bit. I was trying to keep it soft, but not quite that soft!

jupitersolo

Sorry to her this. My wife use to go to a local barn EVERY Saturday, sunup to sundown to ride and muck the barn and what not. We didn't own she was able to "rent" this one horse when she wanted. She hasn't been in a long time, 5 years.

The place that she would go to was in far western Fairfax County. The people with the horses didn't own the land, the owner sold it and they had to split everything out to a few different farms. Things just fell apart after that. She really liked that place, the ones who ran the barn were very down to earth people and she fit right in with them.

Street Spirit

One of my absolute favourite locations to shoot is old, abandoned, decaying barns and farms that are falling apart! Some are just nasty and old, but others are aged and have SO much character. I LOVE it!!! I'm always on the lookout for a property that's abandoned, so I don't risk getting shot in the name of photography!

Dan's suggested that you and I have a similar style of shooting, wndrlst. I can see a lot of similarities now in a few of the pics you posted today.

leftride

iTrader: (1)

nice shots wndrlst, i LOVE #4!

what lens(es) were you using on those shots?

wndrlst

If she's interested in getting into riding again, let me know. There are still plenty of places offering horses for lease, partial lease, or even free "catch rides" if she's experienced - just to keep the horses exercised. The practice I work with services Fairfax, Pr Wm, Loudoun, etc., so I could maybe recommend places close to you. The barn she used to ride with wasn't Bay Ridge, was it? PM me if I can help at all. Maybe she'd like some lessons for Valentine's Day!

As I drive around the countryside (which is rapidly morphing into suburbia), I really find my eye drawn to some of the old barns we go to. So far, I haven't propositioned any of my clients to let me come shoot, but it's been a near thing once or twice! I have thought before, that I wish you shot more digital, so we could see some more of your photos - go get some negatives scanned! Now I'm even more curious.

Thank you!

#1 - EF-S 60mm macro - has proven to be a VERY sharp little lens, and is extremely light and compact. It does have a short focal distance (as Dan pointed out when I asked about it), so if insects are your thing, it may not be the best choice, but I intend to use it more for flora & table top shooting, along with horse portraits, so I think it will be a great fit for me.

#2 - 70-200 f/2.8

#3-7 My trusty walk-around EF-S 17-85 IS.