Haha, “West Region.” Though my favorite president is Teddy, so it’s not all bad!
America, the nation that shoots its signs.
I’ve been to Pittsburgh twice. That’s honestly something I didn’t expect to be saying based on old preconceived notions of Steeltown. The view from Mount Washington is wonderful. This shot was taken at the top of the Duquesne Incline in the evening.
Pittsburgh-2013-05-18-078 by pquan, on Flickr
Reemul
2005
Visited Portland Bill in the west of Dorset, bout an hour from where I live. This is where the 2012 Olympic sailing etc was held, I was passing on the way to a hosiptal visit so thought photos.
This picture is taken from the new Jailhouse Cafe and Restaurant. At the top of Portland is HMS Verne Prison and the cafe here has just been opened and is run by the prisoners. This is the view from the cafe garden, taken using the 12mm UWA on the nex’s worst lense :).
Portland Harbour by Reemul, on Flickr
Just down the road is Portland Bill (The Lighthouse). This is shot taken with me lying on the ground looking up for a slightly different perspective. Taken with a 12mm UWA converter and slight cropped to remove the damn tourists. What was even cooler is the house on the right of the picture is available to rent. Almost worth it for a winter let to do some great winter photography. Jack my eldest and I went to the top of the Lighthouse but getting shots was pretty impossible but the view was great.
Portland Lighthouse by Reemul, on Flickr
There was probably one of the most photogenic (and noiseless) lightning storms I’d ever seen in California over the peninsula tonight. And you’re damn right I got pictures. Round 2 might be on the way, coming from the southeast.
— Alan
Hal9000
2007
Alan, how long does your workflow take you after a standard day getting pictures? I’ve been traveling like mad (3000 miles in the past week) because of work, so I’ve just not had the time to do them. I’ve gotten some nice shots, but it’s all a bit overwhelming.
It doesn’t take too long to get started–if I have stuff in the same lighting conditions it’s super fast when you just start copying your entire profile from one shot to the next, then you can just make easy adjustments as you go (moving filters, etc).
Tonight I started with individuals…
Then I was like, to hell with it, I’m gonna mass process these then merge a ton of them and see what it’s like.
— Alan
nKoan
2009
Oh geez, I didn’t read that those last two pictures were merges at first, and they freaked me out a little. Nice pics!
Man…your neighbor must have really pissed Zeus off.
I KNEW I saw lightning flashes in the sky last night. The person I was with told me I was seeing things.
According to this, there were around 15,000 lightning strikes in the Bay Area last night: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=weather&id=9212261
RichVR
2013
Holy fuck, Alan. Those are amazing. I hope you have a watermark on them, especially the last one.
I was wondering if I could get a pointer on how to remove the smudges that appear on many of my trip photos – they started appearing last year during my Pacific coast trip. I looked into getting it fixed but it was pretty expensive and I ended up (very stupidly) using the camera for my trip a few weeks ago. Examples of the smudge can be seen here and here.
Reemul
2015
You need a sensor clean. You can buy the stuff and do it yourself or pay. Personally I am poor at stuff like this so paid the £40 ($65) to get it done. Well worth it in the end.
You could also try a blower and a lens sensor pen but I found them pretty inadequate.
I need to look into getting that done – I seem to remember it being more than $65 when I priced around, but it may also be due to it just being a Cybershot, a pretty cheap camera to start with, maybe places didn’t think it worth their while (heck, it may not be).
I was also wondering about removing the smudges on the photos I’ve already taken with post-processing. I’ve never done that sort of thing and other than “use Photoshop” I’m pretty clueless – and Photoshop is super expensive so some other software recommendations would be grand.
Edit: Looking at Photoshop Elements 11 and Lightroom 5 – looks like Lightroom 5 may be what I need/want? Appealing that I could select that smudge area and do it batch on a ton of my photos. I’m assuming you can compare the software’s modification against the original easily enough? I think I’ve seen reference to Lightroom in this thread earlier, and as it is still available stand-alone that is a tempting pickup (even at just north of $100).
Edit the second: Looks like Lightroom is pretty popular among you all. Ran across a post from Alan about it being 60% off, down to $120, back in 2011. It is 10% off at $135 now – did it get much cheaper since then? As long as it is stand-alone I’m good – don’t want to get into that Creative Cloud stuff.
Edit the third: Ooooh, just saw this thread started by CLWheeljack! http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?72446-Photo-Management-for-Newbies
Edit the fourth: Ah, I see in that other thread that the price was slashed from $300 to $150 last year. Awesome!
Reemul
2017
Lightroom is a doddle to use and smudge removal is pretty easy. Just a circle which can be made the size you require. It picks a similar spot on the photos and replaces it, not great for clouds but is fine for sky and a few other bits, really depends on the size.
Looking at the two sample images, those smudges are pretty big. Dust specks are pretty easy to remove, but as the smudge gets larger, it becomes more difficult to make it look seamless.
Awesome thread guys. I hope to post some of my pictures some day (once I have permission to post attachments). Your work really serves as an inspiration for someone like me. Thanks for sharing!
fire
2020
Lightroom 5 is $50 off which drops the price to $99 at B&H. Not sure if it’s a good deal but thought I’d pass it along.
