[soosh]

I’ve got to say I’m a bit surprised by how low mine did this week. Stiff competition as always, and I don’t mean to take anything away from the high vote getters, because I like all of them and voted for several. Just thought mine would get more votes as well.

Here are a few that didn’t make the cut:

[soosh]

For what it’s worth, here’s a shot I like but decided not to submit this week (since the birds are the main focus of the image).

Pelicans at sunset

It’s from yet another set I took documenting how severe the wildfire smoke/ash has been. I don’t know why capturing images of the side effects of the fires is so compelling to me. It’s not as if wildfires are a new phenomena in California. But they are much worse this time and the visual impact to people hundreds of miles away is pretty surreal.

I know what you mean about the surreal aspect. We often get altered sunsets from fires in the interior of Alaska, 600 or more miles away. On occasion, we’ve gotten haze from sandstorms in Mongolia or fires in Russia, which just thrills the weather nerd in me to no end.

[soosh]

what happened to my eagle picture? it was deleted once, and i thought there was a problem with the path, so i posted it again from a new location on my website, and now they are both gone.

[soosh]

Hey, there are 5 eagles in that smack down photo, right? Great shot. One of the best tonight.

Yes. 2 grounded and three in the caterwaul. That was one of my best shots from 3 days of sleeping in my car and never going inside for more than 20 minutes at a time in 0 to -20?F weather.

[soosh]

u-man, goddamn, I love the way you think.

[soosh]

so pictures from airplanes showing the wing are ok?

[soosh]

nothing in the photo does, but the shot couldn’t be obtained without wings/being airborne.

[soosh]

here’s one I’m thinking of

[soosh]

would shots taken from airplanes while in flight, that don’t necessarily show any subject airborne (i.e., out the window), be acceptable for this?

[soosh]

Back in town now- but I had a TERRIBLE time with fireworks this year- I’ve never felt quite so frustrated with the experience! We had thunderstorms plow through a couple hours before the fireworks, but it was incredibly humid- my glasses fogged just by me being outside, and I spent enough time over the course of the evening just wiping them off. By the time the fireworks started, it looked like we were getting a bit of ground fog, too. Another point to consider- this wasn’t the National Mall display downtown, where I’d be taking them from far off– this was the local neighborhood one, so everything was smaller scale, from the fireworks to the altitude to my distance from them.

(The other problem with the humidity is that my D70s gets cranky when it gets humid out. I wasn’t willing to do anything to change that, however.)

End result, my first shots ended up looking more like glowing balls of plasma than fireworks. I started messing around with aperture and shutter speed, to see if I could do anything to salvage the situation. d: If I shortened the exposure, I didn’t get the glowing plasma clouds, but ended up with something that makes you think “Hedgehog” more than “firework” — small, prickly orbs. I did get some, just never more than one or two together.

A couple of my most frustrating examples are here:

http://www.ooblick.com/gallery/v/anneb/Local/BadFireworks-0764.jpg.html
http://www.ooblick.com/gallery/v/anneb/Local/BadFireworks-0699.jpg.html

Now, this is the DC area, and I can expect it to be muggy on July 4th, but it’s never been that bad, and I’ve not had this sort of trouble before. I figure tho I can well expect it’ll eventually do this to me again. Anybody got any good ideas besides “move away from the swampland. Maybe try the desert?”

Anne, you get those plasma ball looks because you’re way over-exposed. Your first linked shot has an ISO of 1000, which you totally don’t want. If you have the camera on auto-exposure, it’s going to try to compensate for the darkness by increasing the length of time the shutter is open or by bumping up the ISO. For anything bright outside at night, you want to use the lowest ISO possible, both for the low color noise and also so that you’re not lettting too much light in to the sensor.

Second, close your shutter down to limit the amount of light getting onto the sensor. If you’re getting white light, you’re over exposing. You were at f/6.3 and f/8, try dropping that to f/11 – f/16.

Fireworks are maddening to shoot. Keep after it.

[soosh]

q: would this qualify for this subject?

[soosh]

god I want a 6×6 square digital format.

[soosh]

I was really disappointed to find out millera9‘s wasn’t A Bag of Dicks

[soosh]

Soosh, I thought the whale pic was “Blow it out your hole!”… 😉 again, Interpretation

“blow it out your blowhole, blowey!” is a favorite phrase in our house.

[soosh]

one statistic I haven’t seen on the FSM is number of first place finishes.

[Author]

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