Official Photography Thread

[Scott R Nelson]

Hubbard Glacier

At the end of last summer my wife and I went on an Alaskan cruise. The day that I liked best of all was when we went to see the Hubbard Glacier and the cruise ship parked out about half a mile for a few hours so that we could stare at it. Glaciers are so cool (no pun intended).

I probably took several hundred photos, but it was tough to get any good ones that work as a single photo. I tried to hang out with the "photographers" who had the expensive equipment and pick up whatever tips I could from them. Here are three of the photos that I took that, at least to me, capture the feeling of that glacier.

The path of the glacier coming down through the hills:


The mountains, the sea, the glacier in between. That opening on the right goes back to a large arm of water. This is one of the few glaciers in the world that is still growing and within a decade or two it will close off that waterway and a bunch of wildlife will die because of it. And a new lake will be formed and it might even make a new waterway out the other side when that overflows. (I loved learning about that glacier.)



I never realized that glacier ice is blue until I saw it for myself. I haven't adjusted the colors of this photo in any way, that ice is blue.

[mtnbiker]

I've often thought about adding a couple photos here. Now's as good a time as any. My favorites tend to be candids. Since I finally got a DSLR (Nikon D90 with 28-200 lens), I can snap away.

Here's one from a few weeks ago of my stepson and grandson. Fully auto mode here, though, so I could just zoom in and click.


And this one is from 2006 with a little point & shoot camera while waiting near Fisherman's Wharf for the cable car.


Or do you like that one cropped?

[Scott R Nelson]

And this one is from 2006 with a little point & shoot camera while waiting near Fisherman's Wharf for the cable car.

I would have rotated this photo counter-clockwise a little bit to get the horizon straight, but otherwise I like it. I've found that when I photograph the ocean and get the horizon, I tend to "list to starboard" a couple of degrees for some reason. I always have to rotate those photos back to horizontal.

The Golden Gate Bridge is probably worth of its own photo thread. There are so many ways to photograph it and make it look good. Somebody start a thread about that and I'll post a couple of dozen photos on the subject.

Actually, sometime in the near future I'll post one I especially like.

Oh wait! I just realized that I put a photo of the GGB at the bottom of all of my posts.

[mtnbiker]

Thanks. Is this better? I thought about rotating it a smidge back when I first downloaded it from the camera, but didn't think about it today. I almost never manipulate my pics; haven't had much luck with photoshop elements or irfanview for some reason, and I don't normally like to mess with the image, anyway. I have a feeling that the D90 tends to be a bit strong in the yellows, though. Maybe I should pick up a few tips & tricks. Anyone have some basic how-tos to share?

[Scott R Nelson]

Thanks. Is this better?

Much better.

Now I don't have to tilt my head to look at it.

A person could spend days taking photographs in and near San Francisco and still not run out of interesting things to take pictures of. I'm seriously considering spending a day over there on my Honda XR650L - the one that would be so easy to park anywhere - and just photograph everything of interest. I could probably take 500 photos over there in a day.

[Katy Lied]

I almost never manipulate my pics; haven't had much luck with photoshop elements or irfanview for some reason, and I don't normally like to mess with the image, anyway. I have a feeling that the D90 tends to be a bit strong in the yellows, though. Maybe I should pick up a few tips & tricks. Anyone have some basic how-tos to share?

You did fine on this crop.
Sometimes you'll have several horizontal elements that are unbalanced. In that case, I usually take the strongest element (usually the darkest, starkest, boldest horizontal line) and put that one on the horizontal. Our eyes draw to the boldest line for horizontal resolution.

If your D90 is stong yellow--Have you messed with your white balance? I almost never mess with color aspects other than the white bal. Too many unexpected consequences.

I have a link to some great internet lessons on Photoshop elements, if you have that. I still think that nothing beats Irfanview for ease in resizing images, so I keep that around.

[tooblue]

From our nature walk this morning the official flower of Ontario, the wild Trillium, was in bloom all over the place:

[mtnbiker]

If your D90 is stong yellow--Have you messed with your white balance? I almost never mess with color aspects other than the white bal. Too many unexpected consequences.

I have a link to some great internet lessons on Photoshop elements, if you have that. I still think that nothing beats Irfanview for ease in resizing images, so I keep that around.

No, I haven't touched the white balance. But the camera body was a demo, so someone might have accidentally done something. Most pics are ok, as you see with the backyard picture above, but some definitely come out with a yellow tint. Those would be indoor pics of people, so maybe it's more sensitive to lighting. But I've never had that problem with previous cameras (mid-70's Minolta XG7 and digital Canon p&s). Maybe I should post an example and see what the cognoscenti say.

Nice to hear a good review of irfanview. I've used it for years for resizing and viewing. The photoshop elements lessons would be good to see. I may need to upgrade a bit; I think I have ver. 3 or 4. What are they up to now? 8?

[Scott R Nelson]

From our nature walk this morning the official flower of Ontario, the wild Trillium, was in bloom all over the place:

As a fan of photographing flowers in the wild, I'm impressed with those two shots. I like what is in focus and what isn't in the first shot and the way the flower fits with the background in the second.

Amateur's opinion, of course.

[scandell]

nevermind.

[falafel]

nevermind.

wimp.

[FN Phat]

nevermind.

Why did you change your mind?

[scandell]

Oh...I wimped out because I included my images as attachments...and it seems that our little forum really kills the image quality of attached images. They looked all grainy and bad.

[falafel]

Oh...I wimped out because I included my images as attachments...and it seems that our little forum really kills the image quality of attached images. They looked all grainy and bad.

chuck it up on your blog and then link it. Or just use photobucket if you don't want people to jump to your blog.

[Katy Lied]

the camera body was a demo, so someone might have accidentally done something. Most pics are ok, as you see with the backyard picture above, but some definitely come out with a yellow tint. Those would be indoor pics of people, so maybe it's more sensitive to lighting. But I've never had that problem with previous cameras (mid-70's Minolta XG7 and digital Canon p&s). Maybe I should post an example and see what the cognoscenti say.

You should post a photo with yellow tint. Is the photo indoors with flash or without flash? Have you returned all your settings to default on the camera?

Lesa Snider has some great Photoshop Elements lessons that are easy to understand and are practical for the home photographer; she comes from the Scott Kelby stable of photo manipulation teachers. Her tutorials are taught on Elements 8 I believe, and I think the latest is 9. I'm one of those people who thinks that Adobe Software gets more intrusive and bloated with unnecessary memory suckage with every edition so if you like your older version and it works for you, I would stick with the older version.
http://graphicreporter.com/tutorials...tutorials.html