That’s one of the things I’ve tried… Haven’t gotten satisfactory results yet. I’ll have to try again.
You should lock the aperture and switch the shutter time for this. You don’t want each image in the stack to have a different DOF here.
Also, if at all possible lock in a specific white balance. This is especially true if your camera doesn’t record RAW images so you can’t do a true modification of the WB later.
Took these Friday evening after work at Torrey Pines State Beach:
CCZ: Love the last one best. The bird pictures probably would have benefited by placing the bird off-center and having more room in the direction they were looking/moving, but other than that small suggestion, I really enjoyed all the photos.
Thanks!
Yeah my compositions of wild animals and birds tend to be my weakest ones generally because I’m always in a half-panic that they are about to take off/run/whatever. I constantly have to remind myself to just calm the eff down and take a good picture, and if they fly away, so be it, I’ll get them next time. Easier to think/say than to do though.
I know next to nothing about photography, by couldn’t you just pull the bird shots back a little when you’re taking them, and then crop to get the framing you want?
Yes, I could pull out and crop, but like most decisions you make in photography it comes with a cost… the more cropping, the less detail. My camera has a 15mp sensor so that gives me some pretty good cropping leeway unless I want to make really big prints, but even just pulling back is a bit of a chore that could easily cause me to miss a shot… if I move at all, I’ll probably spook the bird, even at a pretty good distance away, and with bird shots I’m usually using my 100-400 handheld, often extended all the way out at 400mm to start with, and it is a fairly hefty lens to handhold and simultaneously manipulate the zoom, even just to zoom out for cropping space. Perhaps I need to get on the Wonginator’s camera endurance workout plan.
Also there are sometimes composition issues that can’t be solved by cropping (eg. distracting background or foreground elements), though that isn’t much of an issue with the shots above.
Nice birds! I love water birds. I fell in love with this little guy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
He has a crazy beak!
wow, that’s an odd one. great pictures!
he’s both really cute and also slightly scary looking (more so in the second picture) because of that crazy long & bent beak.
I love the Ren Faire photos and the bird walking through the sand is awesome CCZ.
I got a new ice cream maker for my birthday, so we’ve been playing.
Black Pepper and Strawberry
Vanilla Bean and Peanut-Butter Cup
Then a couple from the local bird refuge. The first in the afternoon, the second around midnight (taking similar scenes at different times during the day for a photography class).
Keep the pictures coming, I love seeing what everyone is shooting.
I was pleasantly surprised when I learned how well this combination works. Those pictures make me hungry.
Thanks for posting the LA fire pic! I flew out the day before it started and came back to a smoke-filled Glendale.
I’m not a photographer at all but here are some from the San Diego and Fort Worth zoos:
Tortoise stretching out (SD)
A sleepy lioness (SD)
A ram trying to rest (FW) - he has grooves on his flank from sleeping with his horns on his back.
Lionesses taking a break (FW)
Black Pepper and Strawberry sounds awful. Is it really good? Those pictures do look delicious - I love food photography. Tastespotting, oh god.
What kind of class are you taking? Is it online or at a community college? I signed up for a class at a local CC but dropped it when I found out we needed a film camera and were going to do dark room stuff. I have no interest in doing any of that especially since I just bout a digital SLR camera. I just want to take pictures that don’t suck.
What I love about digital photography is post processing - or what I like to call the digital darkroom. It’s always fun to take a photo and play with it and see what can be done with it. I’m sure you had fun at the Zoo - the San Diego one is a great place to spend the day!
I was apprehensive as well, but the pepper just gives the strawberry some kick. It’s great as jam, too.
Tastespotting, oh god.
Why did you have to show me this? Now I’ll never stop being hungry.
Thanks! I definitely could use some practice with this…definitely brings them to life more.
Actually it’s a photography class at a University. After a ten year break I’m finally going back to school to finish my degree, and this class satisfies the last art credit I need for a BS. It’s the first digital photography class they’ve offered, so the teacher is kind of figuring out the class as he goes, it’s turned into 1/3 photography knowledge, 1/3 digital photography stuf and 1/3 Photoshop.
You would be surprised. You don’t actually taste the pepper at first, then as the ice cream melts it just gives it a slight kick at the end. I loved it and plan on doing something similar with chili peppers eventually.
Great shot! I usually hate HDR because they’re usually processed in such a way that the highlights go to white and are totally desaturated, but I love the bright yellow-greens in your leaves. It looks like an idealized, fantasy garden.
I had a chocolate ice cream with hot pepper flavor. You can find something similar in most chocolate stores as a candy, but I found it as an ice cream and it was really really good.