[Choc-Ful-A]

That’s fantastic news! I’ve been a fan of your photo style for a long time, so I’m glad to hear other people “get it” too. No idea on price, but I agree that framed would be better if you can afford the up front cost. But if the model is like a consignment shop, meaning you get back what doesn’t sell, you might not recover the cost of the framing.

But definitely limit the run and sign them in some way. If you provide a fact sheet with details about the shot, which you could attach to the back of the frame, that might appeal to people as well.

Oh and definitely congrats!

[Choc-Ful-A]

That lens is currently the top of my wishlist and has been for over a year. So I’d be very interested to hear how you like it after living with it for awhile.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Another option to consider is to download and install ufraw, which is free and reads a wide variety of raw camera formats. With it you can read the raw files and save them a JPEG, or even better PNG, format.

[Choc-Ful-A]

That composite image showing the timeline of the eclipse is fantastic CauseISaidSo!

[Choc-Ful-A]

I posted a few more in the gallery link above. Various sizes, including full res, are available. Gimp doesn’t retain the EXIF data though so ask if you want that info.

[Choc-Ful-A]

What the hell… I stepped out on my deck and caught some shots between clouds. Nothing came out great compared to what I’ve seen posted by our resident astro-experts. But I like some of them anyway since the colors are interesting. I shot in raw mode, converted to PNG with “auto WB” and saved as JPEG. I didn’t make any other adjustments.

I had to shoot longer and time went on so I guess I caught the eclipse in progress but not fully there. The clouds completely obscured the moon before it was over so I didn’t get to document the full cycle.

This one is ISO 400, 300mm, 6 sec exposure

And this was later and things were darker, so it’s ISO 1600, 300mm, 6 sec exposure

They are in this gallery and I’ll add more if I find anything else interesting after going through the batch of photos.

[Choc-Ful-A]

all cgi!?!? color me skeptical. regardless, jaw-dropping scenes and colors and light.

Yup, I agree. I don’t believe it didn’t start with photographic elements of the objects at a minimum. There’s just no financial reason to render a lemon completely from scratch when you just take a photo of one. All the exploding things and composed movement/rotation, that I can see. But that’s not quite the same as “100% CGI” as the comments claim on the page.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I really, really like this theme. There are a whole lot of fantastic entries and the range of ideas is much broader than most weeks. Too early to vote this a “classic” so we can repeat it periodically? 🙂

Here’s a couple of b-sides.

I’m gonna smack you! parrots

Spider web fractured wetlands

Trail of flapping birds in fog

[Choc-Ful-A]

I had several ideas for this one but RL conspired to make sure I had no free time. So archive hunting for me unless I do something weird like take photos at work tomorrow. We’ll see if that happens… Either way best of luck to everyone! I’m looking forward to seeing the shots this week. I like things partially in focus with interesting blurry bits here and there. It reminds me of meeting people at “last call” in bars/clubs back when I used to do such things. 🙂

[Choc-Ful-A]

I shot photos for this contest yesterday and yeah, it was a challenge not to change the zoom. But I expected that when I read the theme description so I chalked it up to learning from the contest. What I didn’t expect happened later. While working on the photos I took to check the contrast, color balance, etc… I found I needed to crop the images. That’s allowed in general, but is it for this contest? I hope so, but with a high enough resolution camera, it’s entirely possible to crop a tightly zoomed shot out of a very wide angle original.

So I thought I’d at least pose the question here. Do normal cropping rules apply to this contest?

[Choc-Ful-A]

FWIW, all the charities suggested sounds deserving to me. So if this is going to some sort of decide by participant votes place, I’ll defer to the majority.

[Choc-Ful-A]

There are lots of photos I really like this week, but I wanted to mention how much I like the composition of Mopsy‘s Stars and Stripes in particular. I really like how the way it’s cropped runs the diagonal line of the flag right into the top left corner of the image.

[Choc-Ful-A]

For what it’s worth, I prefer the “‘Best effort’ with curves/bright/contrast/sat/etc in PS CS4” images in both examples orionid posted above. Everyone has their own aesthetic, but for me tone mapping and HDR tend to produce results that look like something generated by animation software which was designed to look “real”. There’s something artificial about them to me. YMMV of course, and I’m not arguing for or against any change in the rules here. I’m just noting a personal opinion.

[Choc-Ful-A]

…

did we decide on hints? titles? linking to the song on you tube?

I didn’t see an answer on the subject of including info about the album/song. I’ve only got one so far and it doesn’t needs hints or links. The people that know it will get it and nobody else is likely to care. 🙂 But the second idea I have would need a link since it’s not a group that’s widely known. If it’s allowed I’d post a link to the album if I went ahead with that idea. So, what are the guidelines for what info we can post in the text of our entries this week?

[Choc-Ful-A]

Elsinore, you mention “curves” in post processing. That’s the second time I have heard that process lately. I know I’m showing my lack of experience, but where is that. It’s probably real obvious and U-Man is shaking his head.

I use Gimp, so I don’t know how to get to the curves tool in Photoshop. But a couple Google searches says it’s “Image -> Adjustments -> Curves” to bring up the tool. Once you’ve done that the info on this page might be helpful. The site pops an midly annoying request for your e-mail address, but the info is pretty good IMO. And you basically play around with the shape of the curves until you like the results in case you’d rather just wing it. 🙂

I would recommend getting the master levels the way you like first, meaning the one that changes all channels. Then pick another channel, like “red”, and refine the look from there.

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