NikonsAndVStroms Photography Thread

Thank you for the input - I like what you did.

Cowboys Stadium 2/16/13. Hand held and it was cold out, lucky to hold it still.

Shooting on P mode with my new friend auto ISO. D 700 with the 17-35 F2.8

This is really tripod territory with a long shutter but that wasn't an option.

, the D700 just spoils you.

Angling up with an UWA can be a bit risky, here it has the front of the facade looking normal at first and then getting more and more distorted which becomes the focus and a distraction to the cool shapes going on.

This is the type of photo where I'd use it more as the raw material for an artistic image than trying to capture reality. You have the really cool curving steel support and then the very geometric part of the stadium in the left hand corner. I'd isolate these by burning the rest of it down to black. Then rotating it to a portrait orientation, either direction looks like it could work. What you're left with then is a nice abstract.

*Just a quick PS, I know you like shooting bikes, have you seen the news about the D7100? If it's everything their claiming it'll be a sweet camera for that, and will give you extra reach along with AF points covering most of the frame. It'll also be good for landscapes or detail work since there wont be an AA filter. That's the big news to me, if there are no major launch issues I might get it over the D800 for my studio work.

I have not. I love the D700 but I'm in a dilemma. The 700 is covered under the Best Buy Black Tie extended warranty, the SB900 is not though I did buy it from them. The SB was flashing erratically, sometimes on it's own, sometimes it wouldn't fire. Assuming it was the speedlight I sent it in to Nikon, they replaced a bunch of stuff and charged me about $125 and deemed it ready to rock. Got it back and it's still doing it. I send in the D700 to Best Buy, they replaced the flash board, clean and shine, update software blah blah blah, and send it back.

IT's still doing it. I'm going to send both items into Best Buy and tell them when I get it back, if they still do it I want the camera replaced. They did that with the D40 and the D300 enabling me to buy up each time. A little whining might get me my full purchase price back and I get approx $2800 store credit for Best Buy then I'd get a D4.

I just googled the 7100 it's a $1200 DX camera I want to move up not down. Not meaning to sound like a camera snob but the better camera's cost more for a reason, reason is they are a better product. The D700 seems kind of slow on FPS @ 4 while the D4 @10 seems like you are armed for big game. I really don't want a D800 I want a D4 but would need Best Buy to replace the 700 which they just might if the camera/flash comes back again. Heck they might do it now they replaced my 300 when it came back from service and one thing that it went in for wasn't addressed and I whined a little and they immediately said, we'll replace the camera.

Okay I'll play. I'm still a novice, I suppose, but I love shooting sunsets..



Critique away. I don't photoshop my photos unless I have to, so most of my stuff is directly off the camera.

Oh nice, I thought you were looking at the D800.....the D4 is another story, and good luck with best buy.

Right now the top is mostly negative space being that solid color and since the real interesting parts are the color gradation and the mountains I'd zoom in on them. In your browser look at the the photo as it is now, then scroll down so you cut off everything until you get to the solid yellow. Doing that for me made it look a lot stronger.

With the mountains there is also a good bit of negative space on either side, here you can leave a little bit to still show the complete chain of them....or crop closer inside the mountains. Either way works and I think really makes the image pop a lot more.

Also with photoshop I'd bring any image in even if for a few seconds and play with curves. Being able to make a dark area black, or bring out the mid tones or highlights can really help.

It's not that I'm opposed to using PS, it's just that I like the way the picture turns out from the camera. I've used PS before to make some fancy pictures, or adjust colors or what have ye..

I appreciate the comments though. I always like seeing what others think of my work

I import my pictures into Aperture, then export them to the image stacking program. When Aperture exports the image, it converts it from RAW to JPEG.

I took the picture for the star trails, I just needed a good foreground subject. My wife and I were on a pier in Sturgeon Bay, WI and it was about 10° out. My wife being me wife under dressed and was complaining from the second we got out of the car (the DHS no trespassing signs didn't help either, we were on Coast Guard property).

Long story short, I could and should have composed the picture better.

Thanks for all the great and obviously professional advice, I will take it to heart!

Here's another one for you, if you'd like.

No problem, as technical tests you've got something that could be cool. Taking a night scene, making it lit like day almost and having the star trails would be an interesting thing to differentiate your landscapes which is the big challenge since we are so flooded with images now.

The compositions will be key though, think of this like HDR which is something people add to all sorts of images, a lot of time more for the HDR effect than anything else. You can have images initially grab people mostly due to the technical aspect but it's hard and you need to be doing something few others have.

An example of something like that would be my senior thesis. This was back in the days of horrible cell phone cameras and I was able to get images with a 2.0 MP one that could be printed to 8x10 and once the faculty and visiting artists heard that's what I used in the critiques they couldn't believe it and that was a big impact of the series. But even there the compositions/subject matter were good documentary images, and it had the tie in of my disability to the story all of which added to it. But it was that quality of print that got them first sucked in which is what's important.

Try thinking about the technical aspect, composition, and story all as part of the image/series. You want none of these to bring down the images but if you can make one really stand out on top of that then you have something special that will keep a viewers attention.

No problem, feel free to keep em coming. I've got ~420 images to process and more studio shots to take :eek1 so these are a nice break....and will help me keep my sanity this week

This one is pretty much the reverse of the first shot in that the subject is the thing really grabbing the attention with the background playing second fiddle.

For the overall exposure I'd try taking out a few of the stacked images to bring it down. Right now the bottom of the tower is blown out, as are the areas around the lights.

For a basic composition one thing I'd do is not cut off the top of the tower. You have a very busy area up there and it's just cut off abruptly. Ideally you'd have it all included along with a little breathing space up there. The bottom has a similar thing going on but it doesn't bother my eyes as much at least. Dealing with crops like this is necessarily some times and getting it to the place where the image still looks complete can be a real pain in the ass.

The red dots to the right of the structure are something I'd take out but those don't look too hard to do. Being so bright they are a bit of a distraction and bring the viewers eyes to a place away from the "meat" of the image.

What's your current shooting process for this? With a subject like this I would just mess around taking shots at different angles and orientations to see what works to get the most interesting composition. And you said these shots are at low ISO right? It might be a good thing to jack your ISO to max (since this is just to test out the composition the noise doesn't matter) and take test shots, then when you find something that looks good on the LCD set your ISO back down and go through the normal process.

I had a borderline angry wife in the car for this picture again, (it was right after I took the last one you critiqued) so my shooting process was plant the camera, aim it and start shooting.

It was in an awkward spot. I had a very small area to work in, and this was the shortest lens I had. It seemed more important to me to get as close to the base of the tower and wasn't too concerned with the top. Looking at them when I got home I realized my mistake.

I'd like to think my composition is usually much better, I was surprised at how well they turned out in spite of the composition for both of them. I had a bad feeling after taking them that they both would be sub par.

We don't have many clear nights this time of year, but when we do I will go out hunting for more pictures using your very helpful critiques. Thanks again.

Perfect!

Now the next time you want to go spend a few hours photoing stars.. you can invite her along and she'll remember how bored she was this time and turn you down. Then you can spend all the time you want!

That's what we do now. It works well until I get the "we never spend time together anymore..."

OK,,, I'll throw this one out,,, tell me what's good, what's bad.

Okay here's another one of mine

Good:

The waterfall, you've got that nice silky look going on

Overall framing is pretty good too, the only thing that strikes me as out of place is that tiny bit of the trees up top. Basically the viewer is getting to see enough of them to know what's up there but it's abruptly cut off.

Bad:

You couldn't really get around much of it due to that type of photo....especially with the waterfall so much darker than the snow. That snow is just blown out to white which stands out a lot more than the subtle waterfall. And the leaves look like they are blurred a bit from the long exposure but you can't tell at this small size for sure.

I'm trying to think of some easy solutions and HDR came to mind. Not the crazy overdone look which you see so much of but if you could add in an exposure with the snow in properly (with a smaller aperture so you still get the same effect from the water) then it could work. The challenge would be to get a day with no wind so the trees aren't moving around.

Man you guys just don't want to take easy photos!

Composition at least is the part that isn't too hard to change....right now you have a ton of negative space up top so maybe a slight angle down to get more of the mountains would help that.

Now for the exposure, this is where it's sensor limited (what kind of camera did you use?) and you did a good job of not having a huge area blown out, but in doing so the rest is underexposed. I'm going to sound like a huge HDR fan but here again it could be a good tool if it's not pushed too far. I would expand the dynamic range and then use curves to bring down shadows a bit more. As it stands now you have some areas with just the slightest hint of detail and personally I'd just bring em down to absolute black.

THANK YOU! I appreciate your input!
And if you could,,, help me to understand,,, if I crop the trees out at the top,,, I'd be real close to not showing the top of the waterfall. And I'd think with the waterfall being my main feature, I'd want to show the complete falls, top to bottom. Being rather close to the falls,,, it's impossible to show any more of the trees. I'm not arguing your point,,, just trying to understand.
As for the white and snow, took this before I knew about HDR, but will keep that in mind for the future.
Again,,, THANKS!!!