John's 2010 52, Week 27 Art (July 10th)

At one point I was thinking I'd have to go back to last weeks shoot at the theatre... but they were posing albeit not for me.. anyway... An opportune shot later...

Mouse sneaking bird food.
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This is my shot for the week, unless something should present itself between now and Sunday, but I doubt that very much.

Taken through double glazing... nothing much to say about learning this week... other than I guess candid doesn't have to mean Human Candid.. he had no idea I was threre.
 
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Cheers guys... Is this any better ? a spot of dodge and blur on the edges using Aperture adjustment brushes.

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Chemistry - the star shot is amazing, but as you say it is not an obvious choice for the theme. On the other hand your triptych is brilliant - a very clever idea and I love the way you have put it together to look like a framed poster in a classroom. :clap:

Candid is just sooooo cute! It has come out astonishingly well considering that you took it through double glazing. You obviously clean your windows more often than I do :D. I think your edit has greatly improved the shadows and background.

:clap::clap:
 
Thanks very much Tracer. Never thought of the Triptych as something like that.. might have to try a few more ;)...

:D... you'll be surprised... the glass isn't particularly clean, but the dirt makes a very good anti reflection coating ;). You need to whack on the contrast to remove the effects of the glass...(which of course hardens the shadows :bang:) but get the objective as close as you can to the glass... with the 55-250, the window is about 1m inside the minimum focus distance. Thank you.
 
Love this one - a different take on the candid theme. Good to see something other than a people shot. Taking shots of mice isn't easy either - you did well to find one!
 
Thanks very much Dave and Sue.
 
Catch up been away from the computer most of week,your second chemistry shot works with the three photos and the candid image much better with your photoshop skills :clap:
 
justlooking said:
good idea for candid.
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Thank you

lizbeth said:
Great shot - mice are very cute as long as they don't venture into the house:eek:
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Cheers Liz... I think the cat might stop them... or maybe carry them in..

aztec said:
Catch up been away from the computer most of week,your second chemistry shot works with the three photos and the candid image much better with your photoshop skills :clap:
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Thanks very much Sean (y)

jennyb said:
That's a lovely shot, John. It's an interesting take on the candid theme. It does not have to be human.

I don't know if there is something wrong with my eyes but I cannot see any difference between the 2 photos.

Jenny
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Thanks very much Jenny.. I dodged the shadow area behind the mouse in the second one, just to reduce the harshness of it. It's not a major change though.
 
:clap: :clap: :clap: Somebody else who went for a candid animal !!!
We have a mouse that keeps robbing our bird feeder - climbs right up the pole and hangs off it, but I haven't been quick enough with the camera to catch him yet.

I really like this. The changes in the edit are subtle, but really work IMO and I would never have guessed that this was shot through glass.
Lovely and sharp, nice catchlight in his eye and those ears are sooooo cute :love:
 
I nearly went for a candid of a Swan, animals are popular this week. Love the sneaky shot he is a cute little bugger, although his position makes him look a bit er dead :puke:.

(y)
 
I really like the triptych for chemistry. Spot on theme (y)

Candid I like but have to agree with Scott on the apparent "deadness" of the subject. I think it must be the angle it's taken at.

Andy
 
SarahLee said:
:clap: :clap: :clap: Somebody else who went for a candid animal !!!
We have a mouse that keeps robbing our bird feeder - climbs right up the pole and hangs off it, but I haven't been quick enough with the camera to catch him yet.

I really like this. The changes in the edit are subtle, but really work IMO and I would never have guessed that this was shot through glass.
Lovely and sharp, nice catchlight in his eye and those ears are sooooo cute :love:
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That's a shame I have to admit I was luck that he hung around for this shot. Thanks very much Sarah. I've had plenty of practice with through double glazing shots over the past 18 months... virtually all the bird shots from the back garden have been shot that way :D...

foggy4ever said:
I nearly went for a candid of a Swan, animals are popular this week. Love the sneaky shot he is a cute little bugger, although his position makes him look a bit er dead :puke:.

(y)
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Thanks Scott... I can well imagine, I've not started tha several hours worth of going through them all yet ;)... I guess the stretched out along the ground look ?... I've got another one of him, sat on his haunches looking around, but he'd turned his head a bit, and the light was on the back of his head, eye in shadow...

daddy day care said:
I really like the triptych for chemistry. Spot on theme (y)

Candid I like but have to agree with Scott on the apparent "deadness" of the subject. I think it must be the angle it's taken at.

Andy
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Thanks Andy... I think it must be... getting lower would probably have helped, but I don't have a window at the right height (hmm... I wonder if I can sneak that in if we have a kitchen redesign :D), and had I not been indoors I wouldn't have had a subject...
 
Love it, my type of shot, can't say I mind the shadow but it would have been better if it had not had been there but - hey, good effort.(y)
 
Now that's a sneaky take on the 'candid' theme! Good work managing to avoid human contact. ;)
 
Love it, love it, love it.

Excellent shot, nice and crisp, good light and an interesting subject.
 
Briony said:
Love it, my type of shot, can't say I mind the shadow but it would have been better if it had not had been there but - hey, good effort.(y)
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Thanks Nicky.. I agree on the shadow... but the light and layout dictated.. this is under the bird feeder, the shadow is the feeder pole.

jeangenie said:
Hehehe - it's certainly candid. That little chap would have been off like lightening if you'd try to catch him out of doors. :D

The edit's subtle but works, and I can imagine the frustration with the shot on his haunches. A lovely take on the theme, John. (y)

Jean
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Thanks very much Jean... I tried to sort out the sat up shot, but it didn't work... in some ways it's a much nicer shot, but I preferred the eye to be in the light.

68lbs said:
Now that's a sneaky take on the 'candid' theme! Good work managing to avoid human contact. ;)
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Cheers Lee.. that was the plan :LOL:

RobC said:
Love it, love it, love it.

Excellent shot, nice and crisp, good light and an interesting subject.
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Thanks very much Rob (y)
 
Hi John,

Catchup time for me, it's beena busy couple of weeks. Well done for Chemistry. I really like the tryptich idea.

And I also really like the mouse. +1 on the shadow. It does give the feeling that something is creeping up on it.

Ian.
 
Thanks very much Ian (y)
 
Thanks Michelle
 
I wasn't inspired by the theme, but there are also so many different interpretations. My first thought was to get some "produce" from out of the fridge and shoot that... in the end I went in real close, but it didn't really work...

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I did consider, not really shoe horning something in from Jan... it's not really shoe horn or crowbar material, after all I produced this from start to finish...

93 frame mosaic (a pano of sorts), 350 frames at 35 fps per pane in the mosaic, stacked in registax 5, mosaiced in iMerge and pp'ed in gimp and Aperture.

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but thought I ought to actually get a new shot for the week...

In the end, it came to me on the way home from work yesterday when I had to produce this

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Sometimes an idea can strike at any time... I'm not quite sure why the RTN turned out to be slightly OOF (I think the breeze must have caught it and of course I didn't notice :bang::bang:), I also learnt how I can apply a default set of adjustments to my images when I load them into Aperture.
 
Nice shot, good alternate take on the theme! Love the sharpness of the ticket, (RTN aside as you mentioned), and great blur of the background.

Nice vibrant shot, well done! (y)
 
Great moon shot - so detailed. The Return Ticket is a nice take on the theme making a change from food - nice composition and colours spot on.
 
93 frame mosaic (a pano of sorts), 350 frames at 35 fps per pane in the mosaic, stacked in registax 5, mosaiced in iMerge and pp'ed in gimp and Aperture.
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I have no idea what this means. English?

I like the moon shot. Really really good detail in there. What lens did you use?

The card is well composed, nicely lit and I like the background. Certainly on-theme!

Ian.
 
Quite a few great shots! I prefer the first shot, allthough I have to say that I'm not really sure what I'm looking at.

But the one that you decided on in the end is a pretty good one, very original take on the theme.

I agree with Ian though on the very technical sentence, no idea what it means ;)
 
MadFrankie said:
Nice shot, good alternate take on the theme! Love the sharpness of the ticket, (RTN aside as you mentioned), and great blur of the background.

Nice vibrant shot, well done! (y)
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Thanks Gary

lizbeth said:
Great moon shot - so detailed. The Return Ticket is a nice take on the theme making a change from food - nice composition and colours spot on.
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Thanks Lis

Harlequin565 said:
I have no idea what this means. English?

I like the moon shot. Really really good detail in there. What lens did you use?

The card is well composed, nicely lit and I like the background. Certainly on-theme!

Ian.
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Cheers Ian, I was hoping the background would sort of look tracklike... never can tell in the blur through the viewfinder.

As for the moon... well... I was using a 1300mm Skymax 102 telescope, with a 2x barlow (think Teleconverter for astronomy) with a camera with a vga size sensor (crop factor 8.5x). This gives a very small square of surface in each video captured at 35fps... about this big in fact ;)

Copernicus-1.jpg


I captured 93 sections of this size, in avi's at 35 fps (350 frames in each video)... Then I combined all 350 frames into a single image and sharpened it. Then combined all 93 sections of this size into the image in a form of pano, iMerge is done manually, but you get good results. A bit of sharpening, contrast boosting etc and job done. It took about 1.5 hours to capture the 93 sections, totally about 50Gb worth of avi's, a further 8 to 10 hours to stack, mosaic and PP for the end result.
 
I thought candid was well spotted and well captured. Looks nice and sharp and I'd never have guessed it was taken through glass.
The only thing I wasn't so keen on is that it's all a bit busy, what with the grass texture, the earth texture and the texture of the little beastie's fur.

Using the ticket for the produce theme was very cunning and original, I thought.
The focus wasn't an issue with me. In fact a bit more of it out of focus wouldn't have gone amiss because then it would look as if you really were presenting it.
Regardless, I like it.
 
jennyb said:
Hi John,

The first shot, whatever it is, has a bit of a problem with DOF.

The second is absolutely brilliant, but a bit of a shoehorn/crowbar.

The third is spot on theme and an interesting interpretation. Nice and sharp. Good DOF.

Well done.

Jenny
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Thanks Jenny... the DOF on 1 is partly why I didn't use it... It's in the nature of macro, that is Broccoli shot at f22...

Well only if you don't accept the produce, but hey... it's ok, it's not my submission ;)

robp said:
I thought candid was well spotted and well captured. Looks nice and sharp and I'd never have guessed it was taken through glass.
The only thing I wasn't so keen on is that it's all a bit busy, what with the grass texture, the earth texture and the texture of the little beastie's fur.

Using the ticket for the produce theme was very cunning and original, I thought.
The focus wasn't an issue with me. In fact a bit more of it out of focus wouldn't have gone amiss because then it would look as if you really were presenting it.
Regardless, I like it.
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Thanks Rob... Agreed about the textures... not sure what could be done given it's wildlife and so on...

I've got a few more with less DOF etc... hows this ??

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Yep, get your point regarding wildlife photography - we just have to poke up with what Mother Nature gives us.

I like the extra unfocussed bit on your ticket. It looks so much more like it's being presented now.
 
The moon shot is fantastic!

A clever idea to use the ticket. I like the second version better, not so much for the narrower DOF, I think, but because the different direction of the parallel lines in the background give a much better sense of movement.

(y)
 
I think your first Produce shot is - errrr - interesting, John. :thinking: But I ended up struggling, too. ;)

The second one definitely fits the theme! What's this if it's not a production:

jgs001 said:
As for the moon... well... I was using a 1300mm Skymax 102 telescope, with a 2x barlow (think Teleconverter for astronomy) with a camera with a vga size sensor (crop factor 8.5x). This gives a very small square of surface in each video captured at 35fps... about this big in fact ;)

Copernicus-1.jpg


I captured 93 sections of this size, in avi's at 35 fps (350 frames in each video)... Then I combined all 350 frames into a single image and sharpened it. Then combined all 93 sections of this size into the image in a form of pano, iMerge is done manually, but you get good results. A bit of sharpening, contrast boosting etc and job done. It took about 1.5 hours to capture the 93 sections, totally about 50Gb worth of avi's, a further 8 to 10 hours to stack, mosaic and PP for the end result.
Click to expand...

... and a mjor production at that. The end result is stunning. For me, it also meets Produce in another way: I think the moon looks like a melon, so it's definitely Produce. :D

The ticket is a clever interpretation of the theme, and nicely produced. ;)

Jean
 
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