Photos Photo of the Day

You are absolutely correct; large format photography is all about patience. I don't think there is any efficiency to gain with the goal of speeding up the process. That's one of the best reasons to shoot large format - sitting under a hood, staring at the glass for a long time while you compose, focus, re-compose, and re-focus. It definitely is not for people who don't like the idea of taking over an hour to shoot a single picture.

I have many fond memories of driving around town in the middle of the night, during winter, looking for places that took on a certain appeal under the glow of street lights. I froze myself while I stared into the loupe, making sure that my focus was exact. Then came the long, long exposures. Fond memories, which reminds me - I really need to get those negatives scanned before they disintegrate.

Have fun with it, Tim! I'd love to get back into 4x5, but I have neither the time nor the money to do it now. Someday.

EDIT: I just noticed this statement:

I'm probably interpreting that sentence wrong, so apologies in advance if I got the wrong idea. I'm not sure Tim should alter the white balance to force the path into a certain color temperature just because so many other "path in the woods" look that way. As Tim mentioned, it was a gloomy day when he made the photograph, and it seems that this is more or less the image he visualized. I don't think he was trying to evoke a warm, happy feeling. Quite the contrary it seems.

 

I'm not sure my opinion really counts but on the white balance score, I have to say that I agree with Monkey that it really works as a cooler image rather than warmer.

Anyway...

Some night shots from the observation deck of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas.


Vegas 3 by angad84, on Flickr


Vegas 2 by angad84, on Flickr


Vegas, Baby by angad84, on Flickr


Vegas Panorama by angad84, on Flickr

You can click the panorama to view it at approx 8000px wide.

They were all shot handheld, so there's a fair amount of blur evident at full resolution. No tripods allowed up there, as it was at the Space Needle. Greedy toads.

 

That panorama shot is fantastic stonedsurd, very well done .

How did you take the panorama shot? Does your camera have a panorama preset or did you take the photos individually and piece them together? Or do you have a massive wide angle lens haha?

 

I took them individually and hacked them together in PS.

 

Ah ok, thanks mate, i'll have to try it sometime.

 

Making it sound a bit harder than it is there ey stonedsurd? Photoshop, automate, photomerge. Done.

 

My first post and my first shots with a DSLR.

They were took in Sheffield this spring

 

It is actually pretty hard for me. I was talking my panos in general, not specifically this shot (because it was at night).

The reason is that my lens vignettes noticeably at 17mm, so photoshop just tells me "could not align images" or something like that. This shot messed up the first time because one of the parent shots was blurred. Deleted that and it worked fine.

Other panos (which will be up soon-ish) have taken me about an hour each (not counting time spent waiting for photoshop to actually merge them) because I have to manually fix the vignetting, making sure that the sky colors are as close to identical from one shot to the next, then send them to Photoshop. It also doesn't help that I'm doing this on a 3 year old C2D notebook, which means I send a batch of fixed pictures to photoshop, go cook a meal or something and come back to (hopefully and infrequently) a finished pano which I then touch up. More often than not, I come back to an error or to a messed up pano.

Not really hard as much as frustrating.

PS: If there's an easier way and I'm being moronic, someone do tell me what it is. I rarely spend time processing because most of my shots come out fine from the camera but with the shots from this roadtrip, I'm having nightmares (combination of a lightmeter gone bonkers and serious haze at the Grand Canyon).

 

I've just tried a program called Hugin which seemed to do a good job.

 

RX7 by jaikdean, on Flickr

 

IMG_3090 by jpb814, on Flickr

 

LOVE.

Here's the first of the Grand Canyon shots, taken from the North Rim.


Sunset at the North Rim by angad84, on Flickr


Looking South by angad84, on Flickr

And here's a pano that took me well over an hour - eight images that had to be fixed in LR3 to get the sky in each one close to identical, then merged in PS, sent back to LR3 for final adjustments.

North Rim Panorama by angad84, on Flickr

The pano is something like 11000px wide, can be seen in original reso on Flickr.

 

@stonedsurd,

Vegas baby. I love it.

 

NiHiLiST - stunning!

Few of mine from the Long Division festival in Wakefield


The Finnlys @ Long Division 2011 by Stagezero Photography, on Flickr


Spectrals @ Long Division 2011 by Stagezero Photography, on Flickr


Napoleon IIIrd @ Long Division 2011 by Stagezero Photography, on Flickr

 

Both of these are great. Nice captures guys.

On the subject of panoramics, a colleague recently turned me on to Hugin. It does have a couple of minor issues with image alignment, but I would second the recommendation made earlier. It's a good free alternative to some of the other stitching programs out there.

You can also look into making an adapter for your tripod that will allow you to rotate the camera on its nodal point.

 

I thought that couple pic at the VC riots was pretty clever as of 2011 and interesting - has anybody linked that yet?

 

Don't you stop down? Surely it should not vignette at f8 and up?

 

Those were shot at f8. I think the polarizer was to blame, but with the amount of haze at the Canyon, I would have been a fool to shoot without it.

And thanks Monkey

 

Some more of my shots from the Grand Canyon:


South Rim Panorama by angad84, on Flickr


The Colorado River and the Grand Canyon by angad84, on Flickr


Awesome Arizona Clouds by angad84, on Flickr


(Black) Mesa by angad84, on Flickr

 

I love the pic of the RX7, very nice. Those Grand Canyon photos are pretty stunning also.