[Barracuda]

Great shots everyone so far, fluffybunny, for a ‘damened clouds’ shot, the wide landscape of the first shot appeals to me. We had those same clouds, and they didn’t move an inch right through sunset so I didn’t even bother getting the camera out at all.

[Barracuda]

If that’s the proof of concept, I’m really looking forward to seeing what you turn out as a polished attempt.

[Barracuda]

Damn did someone fart in the thread this week, where are the voters?

I was wondering the same thing. Wasn’t me, I swear. Though it seems two of my entries are real stinkers, at least according to what voting there has been.

[Barracuda]

Finally got through all of them and got everything worth sharing up on the album. There may be some more that can be salvaged with more processing, but most of them are duplicates of better shots that are already uploaded.

[Barracuda]

Trust me, for every ‘great’ there was more than a few ‘fail’ along the way of these shots. Total shutter clicks were somewhere around 1200 for the 3 days, a lot of good composition with crap lighting, or bad focus, etc etc, or great lighting and pin-sharp focus but I couldn’t tell you what the hell I was trying to take a photo of. Hopefully I learned a few things along the way, though one thing I am learning as I sit here with my head swimming a bit is that I really should have slowed my ass down a little and not tried to cram quite so much in 3 days time.

[Barracuda]

I’ve found that small P&S’s often do have a fairly good macro ability to them where otherwise they are full of fail. I keep meaning to get the batteries charged on my old Olympus camera that has something called ‘super macro’ that allows focal lengths down to like half an inch or something really close like that. Of all the shots above, I like the pavement the most. 🙂

[Barracuda]

fluffy, didn’t make it to either BBQ joint, but a beer and some BBQ sounds like a worth while reason to make another trip down that direction some time in the future. I could easily spend more time at Dinosaur Valley as well as the Glen Rose area in general.

A bunch more photos uploaded to the Picasa album linked above. And I’m still not all the way through the photos. But since this whole vacation was meant to get me away from the computer screen as much as possible, I’ll save the rest for later.

A few more samples from the album:

Another shot of the locomotive I posted for this week’s farktography contest:

Dragonfly at Fort Worth Nature Preserve:

Scenery along the Mineral Wells Trailway

Statue at Clark Gardens

And another shot of the Baker Hotel

[Barracuda]

Alright, posted, even used one shot from this past week’s adventures. Now, I must sleeeeeeeeeeep.

[Barracuda]

Quick update on the trip, half way through day two and there’s over 600 shots taken so far between the two cameras. Historic downtown Grapevine, Ft. Worth Water Gardens and surrounding buildings, Ft. Worth Nature Preserve, downtown Mineral Wells including a few of the defunct Baker Hotel, sunrise at the Mineral Wells State Park this morning, and most recently along the Mineral Wells Trailway. Right now trying to find the get-up-and-go to head over to Clark Gardens before heading back to the State Park to try to find a vantage point to get the sunset this evening. It’s far clearer today than it was yesterday so we’ll see what sort of sunset we get. This morning still had enough lingering cloud cover to make for a nice sunrise. Looking forward to getting them home to see on the full screen and process in Lightroom.

[Barracuda]

Outdoor photography is probably 90% of what I’ve got stored on the hard drive. If it’s outdoors, and not likely to come banging on my door if they don’t like the photo, it’s likely to get a camera aimed at it. 🙂 I bought the camera as a secondary facilitator for getting outside and away from the computer as often as possible. There are times that getting on the bike and taking a ride just isn’t in the cards, but jumping in the truck and driving somewhere to take a stroll in the evening hours at the park or somewhere can get me out from behind the computer screen. So far on my trip I’ve taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 photos, and could probably count on one hand how many of them have person in them as anything close to primary subject.

While part of me would like to branch out, do more people, probably sports or even street photography, doubt that’s going to happen any time real soon. I do want to get the 300mm lens to a AAA baseball game soon before it gets too crazy hot outside.

[Barracuda]

Good suggestions Rav. I like this result nearly as much as the split-tone. Even backed off the post-crop vignetting a tad as the background had darkened up enough after working with the black levels.

Ok, seriously, that’s the last upload till I get back Wed. evening. I’ve got a few possible shots queued for the contest this week, though I probably won’t be rolling back into town till after 9 or so depending on where I stop along the way home from Mineral Wells.

[Barracuda]

Per request, here’s the farktography approved (still has some post-crop vignetting applied) version as it currently sits.

Oh, and totally was not thinking of the Shephard Fairey angle when I was working on this either, that’s kinda funny and kinda scary at the same time. Wish I could say this one was some sort of skill on my part, but most of it falls to the lens and the lucky timing for the pose. All I did was crop it down some for composition.

Tomorrow I depart for a 3-day photo/bike/hike road trip. Hopefully there’ll be a few good keepers at the end of it. 🙂

[Barracuda]

And now for something slightly different than my usual. Candid capture of one of my coworkers, he generally dislikes having is photo taken, so I make a point to snap one of him when the opportunity presents itself. Taken with the 50mm f1.4, and obviously some tweaking in Lightroom:

Used the split-tone for the monochrome look, brought the saturation of everything but the red channel to 0% and then lowered the red just enough to bring out the shirt some but not make it out of place with the rest of the image.

[Barracuda]

Some weeks I’ve voted for 4, others 20+. Depends on the theme, the quality and quantity of entries.

[Barracuda]

Hyperlink color is the only thing that really jumps out at me. And perhaps the fact that when you first load the home page it is virtually empty. It takes a few seconds for the first line of text to appear in the fade-in. Might I suggest instead of and all-black background for that putting a faded-out image behind the text. That way there is something on the page for the visitors eye to focus on before the text appears.

[Author]

Posts