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I think this is my favorite bird photo I’ve ever taken, but I’ve used it in farktography before

I remember that one and think it’s fantastic.

I had lots of b-sides this week. All the ones I finished up for final review are in this gallery. But the ones I wanted to call out are a female Northern Harrier gliding low over a field, just beyond a hilltop. And a group of roosting cormorant on a rock wall at the ocean in Santa Cruz.

And finally, does anyone know what king of duck this is? I don’t recognize it and don’t think they are in the San Francisco area year round. I think they migrate through.

PS – After a few rounds of GIS’ing for ducks I figured out that it’s an American WIdgeon, it common in the upper midwest and migrates through California.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I didn’t feel well over the weekend and my car was in the shop making shooting for this week’s contest close to impossible until today. So I rushed to a park on the way home this evening to get some shadow pics for tomorrow contest. The sun was very low but bright so the shadows on the hills had potential. And luckily I think I got a couple I like.

But more importantly, in reviewing the shots I noticed a few sequentially taken shots had a certain goofy animation quality as I flipped through them. If you want to see a full body shadow puppet type thing, click on the image below. It’s a crude ani-GIF and is just over 700k. So if you’re on dial-up it’s definitely not worth the download.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Well hell, I’m finally going to have to create a Facebook account now…

It had to happen eventually, and this sounds like a great way to get started.

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I’ve been privy to quite a lot of bad news about accidents, health crisis and other general bad personal news the last few months. And I’m sorry to hear you’re part of that group SilverStag. As your story sounds particularly scary, I’m delighted to extend a “glad you’re getting better” greeting.

[Choc-Ful-A]

yeah, I would think a projection onto another object would be a shadow, even if you were looking at the shadow from underneath a translucent material.

For instance, if you project hand shadow animals onto a sheet in the middle of the room, it doesn’t matter which side of the sheet you view the images from, they’re still shadows.

I’m fine with that definition, but since my calling in life is to identify edge cases to demonstrate where there really are no firm boundaries…

Consider a setup where a light, a hand puppet, an opaque glass panel and a camera are arranged along a straight line. Assume there’s as little distance as possible between the hand puppet and the glass… Using this definition, the photographs would be considered shadows. But imagine the glass was perfectly clear, then the photos would be silhouettes. So what if the glass was just a tiny bit opaque? Which would it be?

[Choc-Ful-A]

Not that my opinion is what matters here, since it’s not my theme, but I here’s how I think of the two. If you are taking a photograph of a object which is between you and the dominant source of light, then it’s probably a silhouette. If the dominant source of light isn’t lined up with the camera, then darkened areas behind illuminated objects are shadows. The object itself may appear as a silhouette depending on how much of the detail is lost in capturing the image. So, if you buy into that model, the only way to capture a “shadow” is to photograph an object from an angle that shows the area directly behind the dominant light source.

I think your photo (if I remember from the silhouette discussion) was complex in that there’s a translucent leaf between the camera and another leaf behind that. So the question is whether or not all those elements line up directly with the light source? If they do line up,then I think it would be a filtered silhouette. But if the line is zig-zaggy at all, then it could very well be a shadow of the far leaf seen through the translucent near leaf.

Does that help or just give you all a headache? Maybe both? 🙂

[Choc-Ful-A]

Hmmm, according to various websites, the Chicago shot I posted is a moose not a reindeer sculpture (despite what I heard from a tourguide). I have no idea if moose are close enough for the contest. If not please go ahead and delete that entry. The timestamp is 2009-04-23 05:42:14 AM.

If this doesn’t make sense, I blame the time change. I was in Chicago this morning and the SF bary area now, a little bleary…

[Choc-Ful-A]

lulz 😉 btw, I really like your pyramid shot!

Thanks! That’s from the Buenos Aires cemetery where I got locked. It took a Lomo with me and shot couple rolls of B&W film between meetings. Half the images on two different rolls were completely white, which is the part I hate about using those camera. But when they only screw up a little bit I it’s worth all the blanks.

There’s some really strong photos this week IMO. And to give props where due, I wanted to not that I found the color/composition of I’m No Big Deal‘s entries powerful. Maybe blue just works for me today? 🙂

[Choc-Ful-A]

d’oh! Thanks for the correction.

It’s was nothing, NOTHING, zero! Get it! I’m so funny…

[Choc-Ful-A]

Oh man!! Glad you got out fairly quickly lol

Contest linky:
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=433121

The contest link above it missing a zero on the end. I think this,

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4331210

will get you there.

[Choc-Ful-A]

I agree about it seeming like an act of appreciation. I always thought my looking through the stones and taking their pictures meant that those people were not forgotten for that day. Sort of cheesy, but still.

How did you get out of the Buenos Aires cemetery??

After I realized what was going on I rattled the gates for a few minutes and the caretaker showed up eventually. I think he heard right away and just took his time getting there. He didn’t open the gate though since he apparently was intent on chastising me for being stupid first. But even though I speak a little spanish, and picked out some nasty words, I pretended to be a clueless American that had no idea what he was saying. When he heard I was just replying in English he just sighed and opened the gate.

I was freaking out though, since I had to get to the airport to fly back to the US and didn’t have much time. My co-workers had left on earlier flights and I’d checked out of the hotel already. I wouldn’t have minded spending more time in Buenos Aires, since it’s an amazing place. But I wasn’t up for spending the night in the cemetery and having to find a way to let people at home know I was OK.

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That’s quite an accomplishment, congrats!

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I always thought graveyards were tailor made for photography, so it never occurred to me that people might consider it odd or uncomfortable. I can see how it might be awkward if you were taking photos of something when family/friends arrived to visit the grave. But since taking photos in a graveyard always seemed like an act of appreciation, I would hope they would take it that way.

For someone learning to use a camera graveyards are perfect. There’s usually something dramatic, there’s lots of opportunity to frame a complex set of things into a shot, the contrast of colors, textures, etc… are pretty wide, and most importantly things are stationary. So I’ve ended up wandering through graveyards taking photos on several vacations. I even got locked into the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires because I didn’t recognize the “get the hell out” bell that signaled that the guard was about to close the place up for the night.

[Choc-Ful-A]

When I rated them each on these criteria,

– drama/tension (whatever word you choose) from the B&W contrast

– framing of the primary component of the image

– amount of “extra’ impact from the clouds

– how inviting (or enticing?) the image was

then #2 won on points. The structure is completely visible, there’s an open door teasing you to enter, and the clouds line up in angles that compliment the roof line.

[Choc-Ful-A]

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