YEEEEEAAAHH....
.... nothing beats an open fire!
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Taken with the old trusty - the Panny FZ50 (my sole canon lens won't focus as close as this - I'll just have to get another!)
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Uploaded on Dec 1, 2009
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EYE (EDITED)
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Heavily edited in elements, in another moment of experimentation.
Please bear with me - normal service will resume soon...!
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Uploaded on Nov 30, 2009
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SHELLING PEAS
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After rushing around like a blue-arsed fly, feeding the hens, collecting the eggs, preparing some woodpecker bait, tripping over the kittens etc... etc... I realised that the moon (not quite full) was in a good spot and the wind in the right direction again - so that planes taking off from Heathrow might just cross the moon from my viewpoint far below - so (even though I said I'd lay this bogey to rest after this shot -
www.flickr.com/photos/the_black_rabbit/4075293267/in/set-... )... up went the tripod again - and back on it went the FZ50 tonight.
For TEN minutes only!
Not as good quality as my first (and "last"!) "fly me to the moon (and stop)" shot, but I have managed to get the red port wing light in this shot - if you look REALLY hard!
NB.
Another reason to upload this shot is to remind any interested viewers that we have a BLUE MOON coming up in December - the first since summer 2007.
Of course, this depends on what you define a "blue moon" to me (as in "once in a blue moon").
I define it as the second full moon in a specific calendar month.
What with each month being roughly 30 days, and each lunar cycle (full to full) being about 29.5 days, it doesn't take einstein to work out that blue moons are rare indeed. In order for their to be a blue moon in any month (bar February, if you use my definition of a blue moon), the first full moon has to occur on the 1st or 2nd of the month (it does on December 2nd this year) and the next (the second, ie the BLUE moon) will then occur on the 30th or 31st.
December 31st - New Year's Eve is the date for our next blue moon then - lets hope for a clear night. A big hogmanay party with plenty of plonk and you may even get to see a few blue moons that night!
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NB.
The shot above was taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ50, attached to a Nikon TCE17ED 1.7x teleconverter, on a very cheap celestron tripod.
I'm proud to say that NONE of my moon and plane shots are faked - this was cropped in photoshop elements, and the levels altered slightly - and thats all.
TBR
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Uploaded on Nov 30, 2009
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MOON EXPERIMENT
Bit tired of this weather now....
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Technica data:
RAW.
Edited and converted in DPP.
Further editing in photoshop elements.
Tripod (but no self timer - a mistake).
Exposure: 0.3
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 165 mm
ISO Speed: 1250
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
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Uploaded on Nov 29, 2009
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SPOSTLE (OLD STYLE)
I admit.
I went in my hide this morning - and got a load more shots of our visiting male woodpecker (with tongue flicking out n all!)
BUT.
I've not uploaded them.
As I hinted in my "end of year report", I'll certainly still photograph my beloved birds and wildlife, but thought I'd push myself a little this year - wildlife photography is very often my lazy choice.
I was reading a column in outdoor photography this month which suggested many digital photographers are not "embracing the medium" fully yet. This meant that they were simply taking a record of what they SEE, rather than what they see and HOW THEY FELT about it, I suppose.
Examples of how to do that included jagged panoramas (cliche?), ragged edges to photographs (ditto?) and Andy Warhol type pop-art (ditto!).
Now many of my contacts deliberately ONLY upload records of what they see (NO photoshopping) and I think that is very commendable, and there's certainly great skill and honesty in that - a record is taken, and when the photographer looks back at the record, he or she will look at an image exactly how they saw it at the time.
Whilst I edit virtually all my photos in photoshop (cropping if necessary, noise reduction, a little sharpening occasionally), I very rarely change their character, or alter so much that they don't look anything like the view I saw through the viewfinder. If they do look very different, I'll generally add an "altered reality" tag (see my set).
BUT.
I thought I'd have a GOOD play around today, in RAW, with our beautiful kittens (on their first play outside), and see if I could come up with IMAGES (not records) that pleased my eyes...
Two of my contacts do this very well (Steve and Al), although Steve tends to mess around with editing tools (mirror images etc...), whereas Al adds filters etc to his photos.
I've gone for a few black and white (or sepia) images, and changed each technique slightly to see which I prefer...
I am well aware that many people won't appreciate these images, and will want me to get back to my macro work (or something similar!), but like I said, I need to open up new photographic doors, and you should always try things!
This is Malu, our wee tom, by the chicken bin in our back garden.
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Uploaded on Nov 28, 2009
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