[soosh]

I’ll have to look for it. I was out with the dog at 5am the other day and venus was definitely way brighter than I ever remember seeing it, but that night there was a half-moon.

right now, though, our skies are clouded up and we’re having quite a bit of snow. it should pass through and be clear again for a while, though.

[soosh]

I’ve looked through the entries again, and added a considerable number of votes I’d declined to earlier. I guess I’m more relaxed (the beer says so…) and viewing with a more open mind having followed this thread over the last 24 hours.

kes I, too, loved the colors, but I didn’t even notice it was a flower. I saw the stamens/pistils (I always forget which is which) as hooks, metallic in nature, and the lighter bits behind them as a chain tying them to the piece. I thought it was jewelry. I knew the image was organically inspired, but just thought it was a really great artistic image of someone’s craft (I have friends who make a living off such artsy things). So then everyone makes me look closely. ‘Doh!’ IMHO, it’s an even better shot for it.

ennui I echo the masses. Get any shots of them as a family?

I’m doing remarkably well, which really surprises me. It’s more than I’d hoped for, especially as the origami shot that I took specifically for this contest is faring best of my 3. It was a difficult choice of which shot to use–I spent several hours trying different ways to compose that image with a particular wanted result at the end. I came close to what I wanted.

And just now I had an epiphany. I went about it backwards. I should have laid out the papers first, then imaged me removing them one by one. Same net effect, but I get to choose the final layout with precision.

Damn.

I love that shot of the papers. It’s one of my favorites in this contest.

[soosh]

Wow, I remember you were ill, but I think the magnitude escaped me. Yikes! I am much better than I was this time a week ago. I went in Thurs morning with a 101.7 and got Amoxil, and 3 doses later went back Friday evening with a 104.2. At that point, they gave me a shot of Rocephin and a Z-pack (but not just any Z-pack…2 pills a day for 3 days) and told me if the fever wasn’t down in the morning it was time to go to the ER cause I might have moved into abscess territory. My 5 year old literally thought I was dying; they aren’t used to seeing me sick at all. But the fever broke (though it came back some and broke again a couple times over the weekend), and my regular doc gave me the all clear yesterday. I haven’t been that sick since high school (the last time I had strep). It started with the cold that’s going around, but I’ve been running myself ragged with PTA and volunteer stuff, so it finally caught up with me…

that sounds plenty awful. mine started off with a fever and rapidly developed into a 4-inch abscess that required surgery. after that, I was in the hospital for two or three days just still sicker than hell. it was the worst sickness I’ve been through since mono.

[soosh]

with coming back from the strep-from-hell

hope you’re feeling better from that. A year and a half ago, I got a strep infection deep in a very personal area that turned into two months on my back with a vacuum-sucking wound healing machine that I had to wear 24/7 and twice-daily in-home nurse visits for unpacking and repacking of my temporary don’t-want-to-think-about-it very deep marsupial-type pocket until it healed up.

/that may have been the most convoluted sentence I’ve ever written without the help of gin

[soosh]

Should have gone TTV of a pintglass.
/Lovelovelove the canoes, btw.

Thanks 🙂 That one actually won the color category of a local contest this past year and was featured on the cover of the mag that sponsored the contest. It and the Pear Blossoms shot I’ve used before are my favorite TtV’s. Unfortunately, with coming back from the strep-from-hell, I just wasn’t able to shoot anything fresh for this one.

I never feel like I have any cause to gripe about how I place, because I’ve had so many photos finish really high, but it’s frequently humbling to be a part of this group, because there is some fantastic talent and imagination to be found here.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I’m griping. As above, after almost landing in the ER with strep-from-hell, my time and energy for photography in the past 2 weeks has been nonexistent (not that I’ve had a lot of time for it the past 6 weeks), so it was going to be an archive dive either way. But in retrospect, I think the Canoes TtV and Foggy Drive shots would have been more appropriate for other themes. I’m scratching my head as to why the Bluelight Special spirograph thing is doing as well as it is, as I kind of entered it as an after thought and didn’t figure it would speak to voters. But as always, voters are fickle.

/thank you, Uranus 🙂

Oh, I totally wasn’t trying to say you were griping. I just always feel, when one of mine is halfway down the page of votes, that there’s no way I can bitch and moan because I’ve had so many (many that surprised me totally) work out so well.

I’ve been completely out of sync in taking photos since August, when I dropped my 20D in the Anchorage airport and fucked it up. For a few months, I thought I’d try to save up for a 60D instead of replacing it, but that wasn’t going anywhere, so a few weeks ago I sent the 20D in. Got it back yesterday, and I can’t wait to get back into the swing of things. I’ve got three Minolta manual focus primes that I’m itching to try out, and also I’ve got a highly-regarded Nikkor large-format enlarging lens that I’m going to try out on the 20D. I’ve got it set up as just a straight prime, and then also finally figured out my old Vivitar macro bellows enough that I can mount my 20D body on one end, and either the enlarging lens on the other end, or one of the longer Minolta primes (probably the 135 f/2.8), with the Nikkor enlarging lens reversed for super-close macro work.

[soosh]

I knew I had a thinner one.

[soosh]

In regards to voters this week, I got nuthin. I know it’s early yet, but with a total of 11 votes, this is my worst pull out of the gate in over a year. I try not to let votes get to me, and won’t comment on a specific photo unless it’s a glaring rules violation, but this is the first time since I’ve started that I’ve felt downright insulted by the voters.

I wouldn’t say I feel insulted, but I do feel like I basically wasted two of my favorite photos that, hindsight being 20/20, would probably have been better used somewhere else. Ah well. I wonder if the “artistic” thing just doesn’t speak to Farkers in general…that they think it’s too lofty maybe?

I’ve got a ton of photos that are my favorites that are way way down at the bottom of my FSM profile page. Sometimes a certain photo just doesn’t jump out on the page, either due to the photos before and after, or just due to the overwhelming amount of great images. It’s a whole different ball game than looking at one photo on a neutral background and being able to see the detail without distraction.

I never feel like I have any cause to gripe about how I place, because I’ve had so many photos finish really high, but it’s frequently humbling to be a part of this group, because there is some fantastic talent and imagination to be found here.

[soosh]

nothing there that I need, but it sure is cool. I’d post a thread on photo.net if I were you and see if anybody is interested.

[soosh]

I’m not quite sure what you mean? They’re all static shots, one shot. What do you mean by motion and contrast?

[soosh]

So the mushroom you are talkin about sounds like an (Amanita muscaria) Very poisonous but very pretty mushrooms. I once saw one that was probably a foot across but alas I had no camera with me back then.

not actually poisonous in the kill you way, but certainly not without effects, and ones that are not particularly pleasant.

there’s a lot of horribly tortured sleep, for example, and the loss of the ability but unfortunately not of desire, to try and walk around.

it falls squarely into the “do not recommend at all” category.

[soosh]

black light is really good for night viewing. I prefer it over red or amber.

[soosh]

I usually shoot fairly wide-open at night, because mostly I shoot really wide (12-24mm) so about all I gain by stopping down is enhanced dust on the sensor and longer wait times in between shots. I get the best colors when it’s pretty much black out to the eye and wide open exposures at f/2.8 and ISO 100 take 5-6 minutes. It’s gotta be really dark for that.

You gotta realize, too, that darkness in Alaska means winter, and winter means snow, and it doesn’t take too much moon to turn the mountains into great big light reflectors. When there’s a full moon and snow on the ground, once your eyes adjust, you can walk around just fine. With no moon and no light pollution, you can’t see your hand at the end of your arm.

also, a sign I found out in the woods:

[soosh]

Please tell me you are going to email the pics to the bride and NOT the photographer.

I tried. I had just started changing a roll when she asked and I said “Sure, just give me a few minutes to change out the roll.” So they went about their merry way taking more shots while I finished up, and when I caught up with them the bride had just started to go into “We really need to hurry up” mode, and the photographer gave me her card to make things easy.

I’m generally not too keen on watermarking or copywrite stamping my shots, but I really have an urge to do so on these. We’ll see how they turn out.

Around here all the bored housewives get a DSLR, a few bridal magazines and call themselves wedding photographers.

around here, too. and never take the camera off the green square setting.

/Facepalm.

how many 620 spools would you want? I’ve got a bunch of old 620 cameras that are never going to see film go through them again, and I’m willing to bet there are spools in most of them.

That would be awesome! Four or six would be plenty, what would you want in exchange?

well let me see what I can scare up.

[soosh]

Oh, I follow moon phases a lot, because too much moon ruins night photography. You really don’t want much more than a crescent because there’s a whole lot of light in that thing.

[soosh]

Oh, come on, soosh! Surely you’ve gotten a better thin crescent than that! You’re a astrophotographer’s dream, for crying out loud!! I am constantly green with envy at your shots!!

/Isn’t that the shot you used in one of the more recent contests, btw?

well, it isn’t something that I’ve really gone out and looked for.

I’m opportunistic. I can’t go when there’s an event in the sky as much as I can go when the skies are clear and see what there is to take a photo of.

Of course, right now, they’re completely clear and my digital is fubar.

But we get around 300 days of non-clear sky here a year. It can make it tough to capture a particular phase.

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