[soosh]

Also, many different colors of signal flare are available from marine supply houses – the white handheld flare is typically used for collision avoidance signaling.

I’ll have to look into that. Thanks. You know any names of marine supply houses?

[soosh]

You mentioned that you didn’t feel comfy submitting stuff you’d tweaked a lot with channel mixer, but we’ve considered that fair game for b/w conversion for a long time, and I wouldn’t necessarily see the color version as out of bounds for the current rules.

Good to know. I really like the shot with the yellow/green glow, and hope to use it at some point.

[soosh]

Filters? Different colored flares?

Photoshop Channel Mixer.

[soosh]

All three are fantastic! Road flares for each? I especially like the middle one.

Yeah, road flares have been a great find. Self-contained, put off a lot of metallic light, a bit of smoke, and last about 15 minutes each. Police seem to like that I’m using them and not something more homemade. Really big sparklers, the huge jumbo kind, give a cool white light. I’d love to find a white road flare. That would truly rock.

[soosh]

for night stuff, take off the filter. That’s a ~ $100 lens, and you’ll likely get a lot less flare. I wouldn’t go up any higher with ISO. If anything, I would try to get those same shots a little less exposed. Are you shooting in manual mode? I’d back it off to about 1 stop under-exposed from what you have and see how that works. It looks like you’re trying to get long exposure streaks. If that’s the case, a Neutral Density filter may help you keep the long exposure times without washing out the scene. You can go a lot darker with your dark areas and the lights will stand out more.

If you’re not shooting in Aperture priority or Manual mode, try switching to that. I shoot probably 80% of the time in aperture priority, only switching out to manual when I want to go to bulb or otherwise beyond what the camera thinks I should do.

I do most of my night shooting with a Tokina 12-24mm f/4 lens that I absolutely love. When it’s too wide, I use a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Both of these lenses are phenomenal, and if you can afford them, I highly recommend them.

Also the f-stop will have a huge difference in the kind of halo you get from lights. Play around with all different settings. I rarely go beyond f/16, because then diffraction can be an issue and introduce fuzziness in the scene.

[soosh]

staplermofo, one can’t help but wonder if your Jesus couldn’t use one of these:

That is awesome.
I’d like to say more, but I’d also like to not start a religious flamewar.

Did you take that?

nah, it’s a quick and dirty photoshop from

http://ladyrae.com/images/glass/jesusHalo3.jpg

and

http://pro.corbis.com/images/OOF095.jpg

[soosh]

I didn’t see that, either. I rely on the “new post” feature a lot, and I don’t think it’s bulletproof.

Those are great. I have little to no experience in that kind of setting, but what I have tried didn’t work out nearly as well as that.

[soosh]

You’re dealing with some pretty difficult lighting situations. What sort of lens are you using? What’s your f-stop, ISO, and exposure time in those shots? Do you have a filter on the lens? Are you using a lens hood?

[soosh]

In fact, I’m not going to ever point out any specific examples, but it’s rare that my favorites of any given contest are the crowd favorites, and there’s always something very popular that just doesn’t resonate with me at all.

It’s *Fark*.

You were expecting artistic taste?

Oh hell no. Keeps it interesting. It’s almost like my own personal random vote generator, some weeks.

[soosh]

staplermofo, one can’t help but wonder if your Jesus couldn’t use one of these:

[soosh]

The voters are a fickle bunch. I’ve been really disappointed in my showing the past few contests.

I thought my palms would get a far better showing than they did, and there’s a lot of quality stuff with not a lot of votes this week.

In fact, I’m not going to ever point out any specific examples, but it’s rare that my favorites of any given contest are the crowd favorites, and there’s always something very popular that just doesn’t resonate with me at all.

[soosh]

Maybe I will finally get a 2nd place finish with this theme. Soosh’s entry is just awesome.

(2nd and 9th place are all I need to have entries that finished in places 1-27.)

Thanks. I had a few others from that series I thought of using, but I did too much channel mixing with the colors to consider them, even with the new rules.

[soosh]

I’d say no to the shot of the model. I’m torn on the balloon….can something translucent also be a silhouette?

[soosh]

have you checked white house custom color? whcc.com? Their customer application process is a bit tedious, but they do first-rate work.

[soosh]

I’ve never been there, so no, I’m not going to be using a shot from there.

[Author]

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