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Totally off topic; I love JCP. All my shirts are med-tall, and Az Jean Co is the only place I can get 32W 36L jeans (I’m just a gangly geek, after all.)

//digression finite.

[ravnostic]

Don’t forget to take a list of the upcoming themes, and take shots that will be ultra-unique for them. My entry that’s doing well this week is exactly that–opportunistic photography. I always have ‘weather’ pictures on my mind, but I do think ‘Weather’ was already hoppered by Sept. last year?

Refers to Farktographer‘s Taiwan trip.

And by the way–why hasn’t anyone mentioned the something unusual in that picture? I cannot believe that among this group, something wouldn’t have been said..

Refers to what I thought was obvious but I guess isn’t. Plama? Of all people…

I think I’ve griped about being subtle in contests.

[ravnostic]

Don’t forget to take a list of the upcoming themes, and take shots that will be ultra-unique for them. My entry that’s doing well this week is exactly that–opportunistic photography. I always have ‘weather’ pictures on my mind, but I do think ‘Weather’ was already hoppered by Sept. last year?

And by the way–why hasn’t anyone mentioned the something unusual in that picture? I cannot believe that among this group, something wouldn’t have been said..

[ravnostic]

Sure, F’tographer, in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. It’s in the outhouse out back, unless Uncle Jessie’s been visiting, in which case the book’s down to ‘Travel Agencies’ and thereafter by now.

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olavf; count me in as one of the 5-6.

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CISS; I love when you pipe in with your charts. I was just looking at the votes, and it didn’t seem that dramatically different, IIR’dC. But I didn’t RC. The chart shows that well. Tanks!

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Jebus, there’s a dozen or so that aren’t envotenated that I’d vote for in a heartbeat. Contests like this are when I wish there was a button ‘Vote for all but selected’; it would have been faster!!

[ravnostic]

9461 is nice, U-Man. Also the silo shot.

[ravnostic]

Lots of good stuff; hope I picked the right mix!

Bees:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/may/04/bees.html

//edit to mention to click images for bigger, new windows.

[ravnostic]

a single cloud with a vague resemblance to a squirrel with a pair of giant nuts.

Someone, please take this pikchure. 😆

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U-Man beat me to the punch, CD. Go ahead and post! In re: calipers, etc.; it’s probably the same as in other contests; delete the obviously not-cloud centered ones, let the voters figure out the rest.

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Kidding. 🙂

*phew*

I think the plane is the subject and the clouds are incidental.

This. And I like the one on the left.

//but really; in the 640x, you’ll hardly see it. I think I’ll go with the natural.

[ravnostic]

I’m convince that connecticut has the most boring skies evar. Off to the archives.

I hear that; our skies have been cloud free for over a week (that I’ve seen), and I’m itching to find a third entry.

On another note–not a question of which picture to use, but of which way to render it. Here’s a snip-it of a photo I will be using, two versions. I’ve rendered it a few ways (curves, saturations, color temps, and white balancing), but can’t decide between more natural tones or using the white-balance eye dropper to make an eye-dropping color shift (almost dreamy, IMO).

I know white balancing is an acceptable adjustment, but is it going to far (keeping in mind LGT a ‘snipit’ of the whole photo)?

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/may/04/color.html

[ravnostic]

I’ve been really happy with my 50mm f1.8 (Canon, it’s the new version that doesn’t use the messy old black powder). Of course, it’s more an 85mm with the sensor size. It takes wonderful shots. I would suggest the 70-300mm; it allows for shots down to 4-5 feet, which does pretty well at zooming in on stuff for ‘macro’ work, but you’ll love having the added distance capability.

[ravnostic]

Well thanks for the opins, all. I wound up at Fry’s Electronics, looking at all the monitors in my price range with the same images being played. For my money, this displayed the images with the sense of vibrancy I was looking for:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-B2230HD-21-5-Inch-WideScreen-Monitor/dp/B0040BDOA8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1304373881&sr=1-1

I took her home, hooked her up (bonus: works with my HD antennae as a television set as well–out the door went the CRT 25 inch clunker–I now have more room to leave stuff around in before cleaning day!).

The picture is far brighter that the laptop; it has that ‘backlit LED thing’ going. The colors are excellent in comparison, too. There’s more gradation (?) in the brightest areas and darkest areas, as well. Not that you can do good justice with a camera taking pictures of monitors, I figure at least the same shot side by side would reveal something of the differences, no?

So I took the image, cropped the two to individuals, and here’s the old along side the new:

Here the new one looks blown out; that isn’t the case, but to expose the old one with any decency of brightness, I had to over-expose the new one.

All I know is I’m happy with it. Cinched two entries for ‘Cloudscapes’ instantly. Still toying on the third.

//also grabbed another CF card (8 gig, most my canon allows), a 2 gig mp3/music player (enough for my needs), a new mouse (did you know you can wear out mice? I didn’t till I had), and some CD Roms, all within my TV budget price. –>happy camper<–

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