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Impromptu Photo Assignment, September 14

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Okay, I've got a lot on my plate for the next week plus. Hopefully I'll get through all of the entries tonight. I'll try my hand at this, but like I said in the first post, I consider myself an ameteur at best and feel a bit out of place analyzing other peoples photos. Mostly I look at stuff and know if it works for me. Hopefully I can figure out why, and share that.

First up is Gail.
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I'll start with this; it works for me. Maybe it's the soft lighting and lack of hard shadows, also I'm under the impression, it's a great way to have superb contrast. Must be overcast or cloudy. On second thought I'll lean toward the latter. The texture of the road grime and bits of grass on the tire break up an image that we have probably all taken at some point, but maybe not so well. I was surprised to see a wet picture this week. We had a heat wave and even though much of the country was deluged, it hadn't occured to me that it was actually wet anywhere.:scratch


I posted this one.
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I chose it for the color, lighting and content. Can you tell I was practicing my "rule of thirds?"

Alex had his camera with him:
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I love that expression. It's a moment captured that will bring back memories for a long time. But I wonder... What'd he do to get the exposure so right? Great lighting that allows the background to just fade out all together, even though if you look, it's still there. From what I can tell, that's some great control of the flash. Good composition too, my eye goes to the kiddo, then moves right to the puppets. A natural progression I suppose.

wezul adds:
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(I cheated. I grabbed the next size down. My monitor isn't that wide and I was having a hard time keeping track of what I typed.)

Here is a lesson in shooting at sunset to get the colors. Normally my eye is drawn to the details, but here I'm prone to follow the grass down to where the colors are strong. Along the way I get a peek at the moon, framed nicely by the foliage. It's dramatic, I suppose one could say, with the harsh lines of grass drawn across the sky and the strong colors of opposing temperature. I like it, I says something to me, but I'm having a hard time explaining why.
 
Here comes lamble with 3 dragon flies:
#1
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#2
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#3
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I'm putting them all together because each of them has a feature that sets it aside from the others.

Top on my mind is the grain. I think that it's actually "noise" in the CCD. Typically the noise is promenant on the high ISO numbers and when using digital zoom. These three images all have a good amout of grain, or noise, if you will, that works well for photo #2, but in my opinion not as well for #'s 1 and 3. In #1 the fine details are lost in it, and in #3 the background is slightly streaked. It must be a product of the CCD. I went back a peeked into lamble's SmugMug account. Some of the dragonflies were shot as ISO 3200.

The composition of the photos are sound. All three have shallow depths of field to accent the subject while, in two cases, rendering the background into more of a backdrop. #1 provides us with a large subject, #2 reminds me about how small a dragonfly really is, and number 3 with some very nice detail- even if it bends the rule of thirds just a bit.:whistle

Individually, I like #2 the best. But as a trilogy, they work well together.

lightzoo wows us all:
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Sometimes it's not the subject that makes the photograph interesting. I pondered this one for a long time. Finally we were let in on the secret. (Okay, it seemed like forever even though it wasn't long.) Initially I looked at this and said "that's not right" kinda like when you see a picture on the National Enquirer at the news stand. You know, the one where the shadow on the face is different than the one on the body? I digress. This photo is loaded with shapes. Cylinders, arcs, circles, lines- the bottles lining up to make the optical illusion complete. Further, the apparent angle of the "mirror" doesn't match that of the bottles. Yet another "does not compute." Very well done.

On that note, I'm going to call it a night. I'm busy this weekend, then gone for a week. Sorry I didn't get to everyone's photos. Hopefully someone will take over the critiques.
 
You Rock, dude! Great job! :thumb :thumb :clap :clap

I want to apologize for not being so active in here of late, but I've been working to get some the other areas up that folks are clamoring for!

Thanks Boney!

RM
 
From an eight-day trip to Florence, the de rigor shot of the Pont de Vecchio...

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And one of a student painting the next bridge over...

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Boney,

Do you know how hard it is to get a dragon fly to pose in a rule of thirds position?

Thanks for the comments. I have no idea why I was setting the iso so high. I doubt however if the subject would still be there for a re shoot!
 
Okay Boney...here's a couple photos I took during that period of time.

MotoGP 2007 World Champ Casey Stoner with Greg White at INDY
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The Kentucky Kid & 2006 MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden at Indy (Wearing his Goober Hat)
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In Nicky Hayden's Pit
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In the Penthouse at Turn 1 at Indy
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The Indy Mile Flat Track with 7 Time National Champions Chris Carr
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