PHOTO COMPETITION — COMMENTS THREAD

beed84

Having picked up an Olympus OM-10 from a charity shop a few weeks ago, I loaded it with it a spare roll of film I had and took a few shots in York today during my daily walk. And I really enjoyed it.

As I sat by the River Ouse, a beautiful Dove came to inspect me – I just managed to whip my phone out in time before it sauntered off elsewhere. I thought it would be a suitable for entry for this month's competition.

Anyway, feeling positive with photography once more, the annoying part of this tale is that upon rewinding the film, the film had torn – I think I took one shot too many. I'm a bit peeved because I think I took some good shots. I suppose what I really need to do is get a decent digital.

EDIT: I should add there are some damn fine entries this month. I'm genuinely impressed 

paulnb57

Had to go to our woods yesterday to repair a bit of fencing, which would have allowed next doors sheep to escape, so I took camera and the dogs and combined my “allowed out” time.....took loads of photos then struggled as to which to post.....so I chose the least rubbish one!

skullfunkerry

There are some great entries this month - voting will be tough! My image this month is my wife's eye; when we were dating we went to a pub for lunch and she was sitting in the sun; I'd never noticed that her eyes were two colours before, and in the sunlight the hazel part was so bright, I was spellbound

 @ThePrettyDamned I can only see your image when I look on my phone; for some reason on my laptop I just get a blank post.

ThePrettyDamned

skullfunkerry said:

There are some great entries this month - voting will be tough! My image this month is my wife's eye; when we were dating we went to a pub for lunch and she was sitting in the sun; I'd never noticed that her eyes were two colours before, and in the sunlight the hazel part was so bright, I was spellbound

 @ThePrettyDamned I can only see your image when I look on my phone; for some reason on my laptop I just get a blank post.

Bugger, it's because it's from Instagram. I'll see if I can get it on imgur and edit the post  

Mine was a tough one to take. I sowed the honesties last year and they're flowering now, so thought they'd be a great subject as a cut flower. I used a cardboard background perched on a shoe box, and put the vase on a vintage lens rear cap that had an indent in it. Lens was a vintage Tamron adaptall macro with a 2x teleconverter and it's somewhere between half and full life size on the sensor (closer to half size) - they're fairly small flowers.

Lighting was two vintage flashes off camera, one in my favourite modifier (parabolic cheap umbrella) above camera left for soft fill and the main light was hand-held behind an also-hand-held diffuser on camera right for a slightly harder light to get some sharpness from the old lens.

The wireless trigger was the super cheap neewer set you can get for about 15 quid. Works flawlessly on my Canon 6D (obviously no TTL functions - it's just a dumb radio trigger). Flashes were a pair of old favourites I'll not name because they're still cheaply available online and much better functionality than most of the more popular cheap "strobist" lights (such as vivitars).

All in all, set-up took about 45 minutes then about 4 cut flowers to get a composition that I thought was pleasing without being panoramic (I'm really into my weird long ratios at the moment!). I had another idea but I'll save it for another day - I'm actually exhausted now  

skullfunkerry

ThePrettyDamned said:

skullfunkerry said:

There are some great entries this month - voting will be tough! My image this month is my wife's eye; when we were dating we went to a pub for lunch and she was sitting in the sun; I'd never noticed that her eyes were two colours before, and in the sunlight the hazel part was so bright, I was spellbound

 @ThePrettyDamned I can only see your image when I look on my phone; for some reason on my laptop I just get a blank post.

Bugger, it's because it's from Instagram. I'll see if I can get it on imgur and edit the post  

Mine was a tough one to take. I sowed the honesties last year and they're flowering now, so thought they'd be a great subject as a cut flower. I used a cardboard background perched on a shoe box, and put the vase on a vintage lens rear cap that had an indent in it. Lens was a vintage Tamron adaptall macro with a 2x teleconverter and it's somewhere between half and full life size on the sensor (closer to half size) - they're fairly small flowers.

Lighting was two vintage flashes off camera, one in my favourite modifier (parabolic cheap umbrella) above camera left for soft fill and the main light was hand-held behind an also-hand-held diffuser on camera right for a slightly harder light to get some sharpness from the old lens.

The wireless trigger was the super cheap neewer set you can get for about 15 quid. Works flawlessly on my Canon 6D (obviously no TTL functions - it's just a dumb radio trigger). Flashes were a pair of old favourites I'll not name because they're still cheaply available online and much better functionality than most of the more popular cheap "strobist" lights (such as vivitars).

All in all, set-up took about 45 minutes then about 4 cut flowers to get a composition that I thought was pleasing without being panoramic (I'm really into my weird long ratios at the moment!). I had another idea but I'll save it for another day - I'm actually exhausted now  

I'm pretty tired after just reading about it! My photo was my 27mm lens with an 11mm macro tube, and getting my wife to sit still near the window while I took about 20 shots

YellowLedBetterMan

I'm really struggling this month for motivation. The whole thing has got me depressed to the point I'm struggling to plan, get excited for, or do anything productive.

ThePrettyDamned

skullfunkerry said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

skullfunkerry said:

There are some great entries this month - voting will be tough! My image this month is my wife's eye; when we were dating we went to a pub for lunch and she was sitting in the sun; I'd never noticed that her eyes were two colours before, and in the sunlight the hazel part was so bright, I was spellbound

 @ThePrettyDamned I can only see your image when I look on my phone; for some reason on my laptop I just get a blank post.

Bugger, it's because it's from Instagram. I'll see if I can get it on imgur and edit the post  

Mine was a tough one to take. I sowed the honesties last year and they're flowering now, so thought they'd be a great subject as a cut flower. I used a cardboard background perched on a shoe box, and put the vase on a vintage lens rear cap that had an indent in it. Lens was a vintage Tamron adaptall macro with a 2x teleconverter and it's somewhere between half and full life size on the sensor (closer to half size) - they're fairly small flowers.

Lighting was two vintage flashes off camera, one in my favourite modifier (parabolic cheap umbrella) above camera left for soft fill and the main light was hand-held behind an also-hand-held diffuser on camera right for a slightly harder light to get some sharpness from the old lens.

The wireless trigger was the super cheap neewer set you can get for about 15 quid. Works flawlessly on my Canon 6D (obviously no TTL functions - it's just a dumb radio trigger). Flashes were a pair of old favourites I'll not name because they're still cheaply available online and much better functionality than most of the more popular cheap "strobist" lights (such as vivitars).

All in all, set-up took about 45 minutes then about 4 cut flowers to get a composition that I thought was pleasing without being panoramic (I'm really into my weird long ratios at the moment!). I had another idea but I'll save it for another day - I'm actually exhausted now  

I'm pretty tired after just reading about it! My photo was my 27mm lens with an 11mm macro tube, and getting my wife to sit still near the window while I took about 20 shots

Yep, it's pretty exhausting but I'm pleased with the result, and I'll be printing it for the wall somewhere between A3 and A4 in size so worth it for me for me, the print is the ultimate goal for any photo not printed is somewhat a personal failure for me. 

Yours is great, I love the sunstar you got in the catch light - you must have had a good bit of light to get that through the iris blades! No shame in "spray and pray"!

Can anyone help me with my imgur link? I've pasted but it won't appear

ThePrettyDamned

Fixed it!!!  

Voting will be bloody hard this month. Always is, but I usually use the accuracy to theme to guide me. This month, everyone has great shots that are right on theme! 

ThePrettyDamned

This was my alternative. I didn't enter this one because it's not quite on theme, but I was pleased with it nonetheless. I stuffed the vase with some leaves to try to give an illusion of swirling - the vase is just plain glass. A gold reflector added a flame-effect. The photo is a stack of 5 images to get more in focus, but it's far from perfect and there are a lot of imperfections around petals. I will print this, but the poor stacking means it'll not print well as a huge enlargement.

If anyone else is experienced with focus stacking and wants to share tips, please hit me up I used to do it a lot using a very precise copy stand but that was work and this is fun. I suspect had I done 20 images in the stack it would be better... 

boogieman

Some great shots already this month, I’ll need to up my game. 

ThePrettyDamned

@wolfetone please tell me more about your photo, it's fantastic. 

ToneControl

how about we have a competition one month where the subject is explicitly specified? some folks find it hard to narrow it down I think
e.g.
an electric guitar
a pedal
a face
a building
a lake
the woods
a river

ToneControl

skullfunkerry said:

There are some great entries this month - voting will be tough! My image this month is my wife's eye; when we were dating we went to a pub for lunch and she was sitting in the sun; I'd never noticed that her eyes were two colours before, and in the sunlight the hazel part was so bright, I was spellbound

 @ThePrettyDamned I can only see your image when I look on my phone; for some reason on my laptop I just get a blank post.

great, I had been thinking of doing an eye too
Always nice to see this done well

westford

Been messing around with my kid’s pocket microscope and my phone camera.

skullfunkerry

westford said:

Been messing around with my kid’s pocket microscope and my phone camera.

I've just come to this thread to ask you what your picture was of! That's come out really well

westford

skullfunkerry said:

westford said:

Been messing around with my kid’s pocket microscope and my phone camera.

I've just come to this thread to ask you what your picture was of! That's come out really well

Thanks, it’s a flower petal. It started out like this - 

https://i.ibb.co/W20ypLh/9335-E63-A-6-D21-416-E-A068-A42720237-DC3.jpg

But as I tried to move it around to get a better shot it got pretty beaten up and made a more interesting abstract image (well, I think so).

ThePrettyDamned

westford said:

Been messing around with my kid’s pocket microscope and my phone camera.

Really cool! Would love a microscope. 

westford

ThePrettyDamned said:

Yep, it's pretty exhausting but I'm pleased with the result, and I'll be printing it for the wall somewhere between A3 and A4 in size so worth it for me for me, the print is the ultimate goal for any photo not printed is somewhat a personal failure for me. 

That will look great!

Wolfetone

ThePrettyDamned said:

@wolfetone please tell me more about your photo, it's fantastic. 

@ThePrettyDamned ; I took it on my old Lumix GX1 with 150mm telephoto beefed up in the menu using the Ex Tele Conversion setting.

It was taken last July in Florida.

ThePrettyDamned

Thinking I maybe should have waited. Had another go today and came up with these. These are very small, straight-from-camera jpegs, just to assess overall quality (which isn't fantastic, but it was a fun, if challenging, piece of work). Again, used a pair of 35-40 year old flashes, a 40-50 year old lens and 2x teleconverter and the patience of a frigging Saint with a pair of quite unreliable radio triggers. 

This challenge, coupled with quarantine, has really fired up my creative side.