Tell us what pictures you have taken recently (that are interesting)

[Alan_Dunkin]

I was working these photos while keeping the “Prelude to a Mountain Goat Attack” theme in mind.

Chronicle, one of our neighbor’s cats that has the run of my balcony:

Horseshoe Bay:

I had also forgotten I ran into this one time:

— Alan

[Simonout]

Here are a few images of Luzern, Switzerland from a recent holiday. Despite being winter and having snowed the night before, we had a lovely day in the sun. Luzern is beautiful if you get away from the tourist shops.

Camera is Olympus OM-D EM-5, with the 12-50mm kit lens. I’ve had it for a month.

Please critique the shots, as I haven’t used a non-point and shoot in more than 20 years and I need to learn how to improve.

Covered bridge over Lake Luzern and part of the old town:

More of the covered bridge:

Swiss guard monument dedicated to the guards killed defending Louis XVI during the French revolution:

Lake Luzern:

Luzern city walls:

Luzern city walls as the sun is setting:

part of the old town:

Thanks,

Simon

[Editer]

Dinner tonight. Wife’s away and I discovered my kid had tried Sloppy Joes at school and loved them.

[Reemul]

Yay real snow here for a day.

Snow by Reemul, on Flickr

[cheapfilms]

This thread makes me want to take a vacation.

[Alan_Dunkin]

Few more going through some oldies. This is a stack of 13 lightning images I took from the same spot in Oklahoma. Of all the stack tests I did over the weekend, taken from various areas, this was the best overall.

This still amuses the hell out of me. This on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and this couple is way beyond the safety railings. The dude is about one really bad step away from plunging to his death and he’s collecting little rocks or something. The body language of the girlfriend speaks volumes.

Pinnacles in Central California just became the newest National Park a few days ago. I haven’t been back in a few years but definitely need to go.

Tornadic supercell in Oklahoma. This old shot turned out way better than I expected after a bit of work. You can see the shelf cloud, wall cloud/meso base, thick rain shaft, a bit of inflow and the anvil overhead.

Sunset in Monterey:

I redid this one from the San Juan Mountains in Colorado to get better clarity in the sky and not make the ground so friggin’ saturated. Still one of my favorite shots from my Telluride trip a few years back. A few friends thought it was a scene from Brokeback Mountain:

Finally… seeing a bit of the Golden Gate’s “spine”:

— Alan

[Editer]

Those are fantastic, Alan. The lightning one, especially.

Spider-web, spider-web, ice-covered spider-web. Sunny day, macro lens, got a picture of a spider-web. Oh yeah, look at this cool spider-web.

[Alan_Dunkin]

Now that’s a cool picture.

— Alan

[CLWheeljack]

Alan, I may have asked this before, but when you do lightning images, how do you actually do it? Do you just run like an auto-shutter and hope you get lucky? Or is there time between seeing a strike to hit the shutter and have it register, or is it like long exposures, or something?

[Alan_Dunkin]

Depends on the frequency of the lightning and what you’re looking for, and how you set up the camera. If the lightning isn’t super-super frequent, you hope to get lucky. You have a manual or super-long exposure setting, get everything else set up properly, and just keep clicking. The situation for this particular photo was a little different–there was tons of lightning coming out of it. The exposure time was very short since it was dusk and not fully night, about 1.6 seconds each. I probably took about a hundred from this one angle, I batch-processed them, chose the lightning ones I liked then stacked them in Photoshop. Very little other adjusting was necessary.

— Alan

[Alistair]

Ok, this is only sort of a picture :) For the first 10 years I bought PC games, they came from “shops” in “boxes”. They took up 10 times as much space as the CDs they contained, and mine were shipped across the Atlantic before being expensively stored in a warehouse in Manhattan :|

Finally I forced myself to dispose of these cherished repositories of memory. I’ve kept the CDs, which now look like a small CD collection, and am throwing out all these lovely boxes. So I did a scan & collate so they can live on :)

Behold the post-8-bit, pre-DVD, pre-Steam era!

This is making me absurdly happy :)

[CLWheeljack]

Depends on the frequency of the lightning and what you’re looking for, and how you set up the camera. If the lightning isn’t super-super frequent, you hope to get lucky. You have a manual or super-long exposure setting, get everything else set up properly, and just keep clicking. The situation for this particular photo was a little different–there was tons of lightning coming out of it. The exposure time was very short since it was dusk and not fully night, about 1.6 seconds each. I probably took about a hundred from this one angle, I batch-processed them, chose the lightning ones I liked then stacked them in Photoshop. Very little other adjusting was necessary.

— Alan

Cool, thanks. Just something I always wondered how it was done.

[Alan_Dunkin]

Lightning really depends on lighting conditions–if you’re try to catch day-time lightning, good luck. I’ve only managed to do this once I think. Evening/dusk is a little easier; over night is relatively easy. A dark ND filter (which I do plan on getting) may help out in the daytime and dusk situations. People use them to take long-exposure photos in the daylight.

For the most part though it’s all about leaving the shutter open and not blowing out your image. It also depends on the lightning too. Some are just not photogenic–too much overcast can result in just white/blue light and not much else so if you’re interested in bolts and not over- or under-lit clouds, it can be frustrating.

— Alan

[Reemul]

Lightning really depends on lighting conditions–if you’re try to catch day-time lightning, good luck. I’ve only managed to do this once I think. Evening/dusk is a little easier; over night is relatively easy. A dark ND filter (which I do plan on getting) may help out in the daytime and dusk situations. People use them to take long-exposure photos in the daylight.

For the most part though it’s all about leaving the shutter open and not blowing out your image. It also depends on the lightning too. Some are just not photogenic–too much overcast can result in just white/blue light and not much else so if you’re interested in bolts and not over- or under-lit clouds, it can be frustrating.

— Alan

Yeah I have nd filters and graduated ones which work excellently in the day, however no lightning where I live pretty much ever, would love to do some lightning photography.

[sharaleo]

This one is from a while ago. Panorama of Conto Beach, south-west Western Australia. We have nice beaches in this neck of the woods.

Larger Version

[Alan_Dunkin]

Few more… I went through my astrophotography hoping I got something good (basically it meant batch processing them and turning up the noise tremendously to see anything stand out) and, dammit, I actually did capture a Perseid back in 2010 and never noticed it before:

San Fran:

Eastern side of the Grand Canyon, more detail:

Toulumne Meadows:

US 395 back near Mammoth some place (eastern Sierra Nevada). If I remember correctly this is at the end of a fairly steep incline where signs warn of engine overheating:

A winery in Salinas Valley. I’m really proud of this one.

— Alan

[CLWheeljack]

God, the Sierras are pretty. I always forget how pretty they can be.

[nKoan]

That one picture is just south of Mammoth, right? On the way towards Bishop? Its beautiful scenery the whole way down.

[Simonout]

They are all wonderful Alan. Just beautiful.

[Reemul]

Got home from work today and found this parked in my road ( To add i’m UK based and we rarely see old American cars or even cars specific to the US)

Chevy Impala by Reemul, on Flickr

Chevy Impala by Reemul, on Flickr

Chevy Impala by Reemul, on Flickr