08-03-11 – Sports Photography

I was looking at the birding one too. Something just doesn’t seem right about the photo.

it looks almost fake to me, but hey maybe his skills are just THAT good? What do I know?

I don’t think it really matters, as his comments will probably drive voters away. Voters don’t come for debates about what is or isn’t a sport, they come to look at pictures (and vote for the ones they like).

I can’t speak for hummingbirds, and I agree that something does seem fishy about that photo, but some people just have a knack for birds. Like this shot of Pangolyn‘s with a wild bird in Hawai’i.

birdy three by dragondelc, on Flickr

How in hell did the Bills get so damn over-represented in this week’s contest?

orionid and kestrana‘s Steelers photos are against the Bills
my training camp pic
Eeek and Warthog have Bills playing their teams…

Seriously… the only NFL pics without Bills are two Steelers photos (for all I know the unseen opponents are still the Bills) and kestrana‘s Seahawks’ scoreboard!

Bills tickets are cheap beacause no one wants to see them play? Seriously, the Steelers shots were against the Bills because a) it was the closest Steelers game to CT that wasn’t sold out (ie: Patriots, Jets), and b) Even resell tickets were fairly cheap, which is how we got row 5. When we were walking through the gates at Ralph Wilson Stadium, I overheard a Bills fan proclaim that there was more black and gold in the stadium than blue and red. By the time the stands were full, it seriously could have been at Heinz Field by looking at the crowd (although much smaller than Heinz Field).

I was looking at the birding one too. Something just doesn’t seem right about the photo.

That one got me too, As an avid Photoshopper, I figured it’s get deleted for violating that provision. Since he re-posted it, I copy/pasted into Photoshop and took a look. There are some artifacts outside the hummingbird that would probably NOT be there if it was phhotoshopped in… unless… if he PS’d that in one size saved as a .jpg, and then saved the .jpg as another size or two artifacts would begin to appear as image quality began to deteriorate. FWIW – the bird, if copy/pasted, has no inappropriate pixels on its edges.

There’s some sort of orange “something” right at the bottom of the image that cannot be his shirt unless he’s got the strangest beard in North America.

The lighting is what’s really the most suspicious. He’s got to be under some sort of shade or something, while the bird is really well-lit. It’s entirely possible he’s got some sort of remote or motion activated trigger, but that has got to be one of the single luckiest shots in all birding history.

Honestly, I don’t care whether or not he calls it a sport or not. “Sports” is such an amorphous term it could qualify under his own definition. What gets me is the image just feels either exquisitely posed and executed or done indoors, or really skillfully photoshopped. IMHO… it feels like it falls outside the rules – but I have no hard and fast evidence for this.

If, somehow, at this point, he shot up the rankings and began to do well, maybe we challenge him further. If he languishes with 1-3 votes… meh.

The preceding is just one photoshopper’s opinion and only worth its weight in pixels…

Yes, the snark was removed. Yes, the birding photo was removed. It didn’t strike me initially is a fake, though the orange bit across the bottom seemed out of place. Regardless, I figured he had a motion detector something or other. Focus would be tricky though.

he’s apparently quite the afficionado of hummingbird photography, and in love with his subject.

According to his site he has even given a workshop on hummingbird photography: http://www.gregscott.com/workshop/index.html

given a more even temper, we might learn something from him 😛

Congrats to Ranger Joe for the win and to kashari and SilverStag for the tie at 1st in total votes.

We had some weather come through last night, which was good for the rain, but it knocked out internet & phone for several hours. The result is that there’s a huge spike in the voting charts at about 5:15am, which is the accumulation of votes from when the power first went out.

Here are the sliding quarter top ten lists this week.

By votes:

Rank  UserName        Votes

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1   U-Man             919

2   ravnostic         754

3   orionid           688

4   Ranger Joe        684

5   BecauseISaidSo    640

6   kestrana          632

7   Ennuipoet         541

8   olavf             529

9   lokisbong         500

10   SilverStag        493

By NVC:

Rank  UserName           NVC

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1   U-Man           502.35

2   ravnostic       435.05

3   orionid         402.92

4   BecauseISaidSo  394.74

5   Ranger Joe      385.38

6   kestrana        352.21

7   Ennuipoet       294.67

8   lokisbong       285.84

9   olavf           277.16

10   oddmind         261.52