I confess . . . =)

I'm thinking about getting my 4x5 out of my sisters attic . . . . . . . . . . . naaaaaa

I have gone thru maybe 5 or 6 keyboards in the past few years yet . . . the keys on that machine seem to be in perfect shape, they don't make em like that any more !!!

Amazing!
Nice Bokeh. Is that HDR?

Thank you. It is not HDR. :)

Haha, nice lightning and saturation :D

http://fav.me/d3k2nns

Every once in a while, you luck out a bit with a shot.

Great Shot !! I like the way you used the depth of field to separate the subject from the background . . . =)

Thanks, bees are inherently tough to get in a photo. In most respects I like this one better, but I have mixed feelings about the rather distracting flower in the foreground. It seems to work for me, my eye ends up right at the bee anyways, but I kind of wish I could have framed it without the flower.

I totally left the area assuming that the images would be unusable, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got back home and found that not only were the images usable, but tack sharp as well.

It is a little distracting but sometimes I cheat . . . =)

What used to take hours in the darkroom takes minutes in PS. Course this is a little too much enlargement. I usually try to frame several shots clearing any distractions out of the way before starting my session. Hehe, 4x5 was a very slow process though I found it helped with 35 mm and 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 as well. Slows you down so you can "see".

Edit: I just took a pod from elsewhere in the shot to cover the blurry flower.

Particularly relevant in this instance:

Image Stabilization Technology

Basically - sometimes you should turn it off. Especially if you have a tripod. Click on the text link in the link provided and read. (Since I can't hear I didn't watch the video so it may have said some things to the contrary or whatever.)

I don't want to sound like a shameless whore but here's a plug for me - I just won the Able Australia DeafBlind photography contest. :D

Able Australia DB winners

The first picture you see is mine. Unfortunately the person who writes the code for that site obviously doesn't understand native resolution so the picture's slightly squashed. *shrug* I also came second in every other category - you can't win more than one category since the prizes were all the same, pretty stoked with that. :D
As a bonus prize, I got large size prints of all three of the second place photos and for the major prize I won a Pentax Optio RZ10 and a Canon Selphy CP800 photo printer. Not too bad :D

Congratulations !! That is an awesome accomplishment. Great images.

You have a natural talent . . . =)

Edit: if you right click on the image and click view image it looks as it should.

Thanks! :) And ah, thanks about the right click view image thing. No one's going to be doing that though *shrug* But it's cool. The exhibition is now on its way to Canberra, Sydney and the Gold Coast. I went back yesterday and talked to the "curator" and was stunned to find that out.

I won last years 2010 North Coast Tafe Photography contest with this picture (attached) so yeah, really happy I'm slowly getting some REAL recognition. Only took me eight years. :)

EDIT: I feel rude. I'd like to say that the hedward's bee photograph is AMAZING. I know, I've attempted to photograph these little bastards quite a few times and only have a couple of good ones out of hundreds. They're HARD to do - very nice lens, good bokeh technique there. What camera make and what lens in particular do you have/use?

I love my Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I have a 50mm prime lens and a 24-105 but really do want to get a 200+ so I can do some real zoom photographs of butterflies, flowers and insects.
Green smiles was taken with, believe it or not, my first camera - a Sony 3.1MP, it was old, chunky as hell but took exquisite macro pictures. The next camera, an Olympus 1020u deeply disappointed me. Even though it was 10.1MP the Sony SHITS all over it. I.e. "They don't make them like they used to."

I hope you are pursuing a photography career of some sort. Eight years seems like a long time but you have a knowledgebase that put you in a unique position to produce fantastic images. Most won't put the effort into photography to "see" images, you obviously have. The reptile is the most colorful I've seen. Must be great to live in a country with so many beautiful colors everywhere? . . . =)

Wellllllll actually that reptile was in a zoo. :) Thus the artifically lit background (I try never to photoshop my images) but the Day Gecko REALLY does look like that. Such a cool little lizard.

I tend to gravitate towards bright colours and contrasts. Right now, however, I'm flat out working on doing a lot of film and editing for the Victorian College for the Deaf where I am currently employed. Also just got a grant for $20k to set up a project I have been thinking of for years. That's peanuts considering the scale of the project but it's an amazing first step - trying to aim for five figures for the next grant. It involves the web and film - if it actually does take off in the scale it should, I'll post about it here but for now.... You know how it is.

The downside: too drained and tired to do much photography. I'm legally blind so I cannot drive and thus I find it difficult to just "fuck off" for a weekend and get into the bush and stuff like that. But I'm determined to get to Melbourne zoo when the weather starts warming up and want to go camping somewhere far away next holidays for a surf session and of course, photography.

This is pretty much the last true photo I've worked on - been getting pretty passionate about photostitching lately - this one must be about 20 images done together with Photoshop's inbuilt stitcher which is pretty much the most superior stitch program I've used so far. Note to remember: the 5D Mk II takes 21.1MP pictues, so imagine that x 15ish!!! The original picture stitch is HUUUUUUUUGE.
The reason it is called "Pure Luck" is I went to silent camp for Auslan students a few weekends ago and when I arrived, the sun was setting and this amazing view was presented to me. I went nuts and ran back, grabbed my camera and took several series of panoramic shots to stitch together in different places - this is my favorite since it shows just how many colours there were on display. I have barely touched it up, it really is pretty much an accurate as is.

No worries, this is one of those rare occasions where spending a fortune on lenses is a reasonable solution. The body itself is nothing special at this point, I use an EOS-10D, a phenomenal camera in its time, but I've had mine for 8 years on July 3rd. The key in that regards is that I've been using it for so long that I see what the camera sees, to the point of colors being skewed to match.

The lens though is probably what made this work. I invested a while back in the excellent Canon 70-200mm F2.8L IS, IIRC I had the IS off as I was working from a tripod as a support.

The results were pretty impressive to me, the focus was right on, and I could probably crop in a lot more than what Stuff did and still have something workable, I'm just a real stickler for doing no manipulations of any sort, apart from occasional gentle cropping.

BTW, nice shot, I can totally see why they liked it.
I tend to shy away from doing anything beyond basic conversion of the raw image and slight cropping. It's me being particular, but it's what's led my technique improvement over the years.

It's not that there's anything wrong with using such techniques, it's just that I tend to like the realism that comes from images more or less straight out of the camera and the pride that I can feel when I have to say that no I didn't photoshop the image.

But, ultimately, it's just how I see the image, I've been using this body for so many years ago that my perceptions of color and space have changed to match it, I don't think I could do any better than what it gives me, even if I wanted to.

Location zoo? That's not an issue, it the image that counts and that is a good one. Congrats on the grant, hope it gives you the support you need to get your project off the ground. Sounds like you have great plans and the persistence to follow through.

I used to have some like minded friends, 3 or 4, that also enjoyed 4 x 5 photography along with some small / medium format shots as well. We would load up and go spend the day photographing "something" one of us had discovered. We learned a lot and got some great shots. Maybe you could join up with a local photography club?

Nice image. I have never tried the stitcher but my sister uses it a lot. I actually use PS 7.01 which works "faster" for me, I have CS3 and access to CS 5 but (ruling out RAW) I prefer PS 7. . . =)

I understand about the in-camera preference. I guess my large format work gave me too much control, jacking the lens plane / film plane so badly it looked like the camera was broke, selecting the right film / film developer for the desired effect, picking just the right contrast / surface paper, dodging and burning under the enlarger, selecting the toner . . . all just a normal process.

PS became my darkroom along with small format cameras so I guess it just seems natural to do some PS work where I think it needs it. I mostly take snapshots these days so not much is lost . . . =P

Still, I respect and admire the purist approach . . . =)