About the Pictures

[Paul S]

Someone suggested that the winners post a description of their pictures. I think that's a great idea, so I'll start. I encourage the other winners to add their descriptions here.

Mine was taken at the Vermillion Lakes in Banff National Park, looking toward Mount Rundle (on the left) and Tunnel Mountain (the little bump in the middle). This was a dawn shot. I had been there for many sunsets, but this was my first dawn there, and I got lucky with some good light and good clouds.

I took many pictures that morning, from many different angles--some standing at full height, others lying on the snow with the tripod legs fully splayed out. There was another photographer there that morning, and I never saw him move his tripod--that's not my style!

In this shot, I wanted to include both the dawn light and the snow crystals on the ice. That meant getting fairly low and shooting vertical. It also meant that I had to trim part of Mount Rundle, which I didn't really want to do, but I couldn't get all of it, plus the light, plus the snow crystals all in the same shot.

This was taken with a Canon 30D and Canon 17-40L. This is actually three exposures (at the meter reading, and +/- 2 stops) combined in an HDR process using Photomatix Pro. In Photomatix, I used both different Tone-Mapping methods, and blended the two in Photoshop. This allowed me to get the benefits of both. (There was no layer mask used in this blend; just a reduced opactiy of the upper layer.) In capturing the frames, I used a remote release and the camera's AEB feature, so I could capture all three expsoures without touching the camera--which could lead to alignment issues.

This is the full frame, without any cropping.

Edit: One more thing. The white balance. In this shot, I chose to use a "Click" white balance, to make the snow neutral. With other shots I took that morning, I used different white balances, and got very different results. In this the sky colour is more orange, and in the others it was more pink/purple. I should propbably try processing this one that way for comparison. Is one "better" than the other? I don't think so. Does one represent reality better? Again, I don't think so. People view things very differently. The snow is white, there's no denying that. Maybe it should be reflecting some glow from the sky, but maybe that wouldn't **look** real to some people. I like both types of shots I processed from that morning, and I don't think one version is better than the other--they're just different.

-Paul

[fade2black]

Good idea on this thread.

I took mine on the shores of Lake Erie right before New Year's. It was a rather warm day and the temp started dropping rapidly causing the fog to roll in off the lake. I live about 1/4 mile from the lake and saw it coming, grabbed my gear and headed to one of my favorite spots. I shot all my pics that day on full manual with the 18-70 kit lens mounted on a tripod and used an IR remote.

Here is the EXIF

I always shoot in RAW
1/100s
f/8
manual mode
ISO 200
55mm focal length
Auto WB
In camera image processing set to landscape

I did very little in photoshop other than a slight color adjustment and cropping it to 8x10.

-Paul (the other one :))

[MiriamJ]

Good idea.

Mine was the puppies.

They were about 3 weeks old. I was photographing them for my sister-in-law. I spent 2 days shooting them. This was probably the best of the bunch.

I used a D70 with a 50mm F1.8 AIS early SLR manual lens on a tripod, (Cheap and tack sharp lens, BTW), ISO 400, 1/125, and I'm pretty sure f/8. I used UniWB for a preset white balance to insure my histogram was accurate. It's for Nikon SLR's and can be downloaded at: http://www.pochtar.com/Uni.zip I strictly used the histogram to base my settings.

I used 2 halogen shop lamps diffused through a translucent shower curtain hung on a pvc pipe frame. A white colored board was used to bounce light onto the other side of the puppies.

The RAW photo was converted in RAWshooter to TIF and opened in Photoshop. I carefully monitored the histogram throughout editing to make sure I didn't blow the highlights on the puppies fur. I did a lot of selective editing to clean up the cloth they were standing on.

Sharpening was done using BigRed450's (Jeff), technique that I found at this thread: http://www.pixel-shooter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1503

[JMeddings]

Ok OK, mine was the northern lights image.... I just love shooting these and there are several examples of these scattered around my web site (http://www.pbase.com/meddings)

I've worked over a few years to shoot these and have found a few things that work. First, these things move. A lot. Quickly. So if you want to really get them in then you need a fast, wide lens. This one was shot with the Canon 24 mm f/1.4. I try to get a few second exposure which usually means shooting at ISO 800 or more.

For this shot I also tried a trick I've used in other circumstances. While the shutter was opened I shone a flashlight on the rocks in the water so that they had some substance to them rather than being simply black blobs.

Anyhow, every September I spend time in northern Alberta shooting the northern lights. Y'all are welcome to come on up!

[Rudi]

Anyhow, every September I spend time in northern Alberta shooting the northern lights. Y'all are welcome to come on up!

I just might take you up on that offer one day, Jon! I would LOVE to see aurora that bright in my lifetime! :)

OK, mine is the photo of the lightning. When I took that one, everything kinda just came together for me. :) The trick with storm photography is patience and persistence. When chasing storms, you spend a lot of time with the camera on a tripod, shutter open, hoping for lighting to strike. Of course, usually you can see which way the storm's heading, so you (usually :D) have the camera pointed in the right direction. Still, there are a LOT of black frames! :)

There are also times when it's best to give up. A couple of years back, there was a great storm all around me, and I'm sitting in the car with my then girlfriend, and she says: "Well, aren't you getting out there to take some pics?" I could see the headlines the next day: "Man struck by lighting while trying to photograph the storm!" Still, I wondered how much a 10D with a 16-35L, melted and fused to a Manfrotto tripod by lightning, would fetch on eBay. :D Let's just say that I stayed in the car until later when I still managed to get some good lightning shots, and do it safely!

I have been chasing storms for a few years before I got that image. I got some very good lightning shots before, but nothing like that one. And it was almost as if the lightning posed for me! This was taken with a 10D and 16-35L, at 16mm in portrait orientation (this is a crop, but only the bottom and a slight bit off the top). The lightning struck perfectly, so that the anvil storm cloud, the whole of the lightning, everything was perfectly in the frame (no crop off the sides). Let me tell you - this does not happen often! I have plenty of photos where the lightning is off to the side and out of the frame, stuff like that. :)

And although the lightning looks large and very close, the most awe-inspiring thing about that image (at least to me) is this: We never heard the thunder from that strike! Even though it looks close, this lightning must have been somewhere over Sydney, well over 80km away!!! Two things come to mind: 1) How LARGE is that lightning bolt, and 2) How high is that anvil cloud??? shocked; (Well, three, actually! 3) I wonder whose TV and computer just got fried by that one! :D ). The power and scale of this is really staggering!

[Keith]

Great idea.......

Hummingbirds- I already started a thread here to let people know how I photograph them, sad things is I only get an opportunity to do this once a year :disgust:

http://www.pixel-shooter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129


Sunset over water- tripod was key with remote release. I used a Grad ND filter 4 times otherwise the sky would be blown out. The only thing I would recommend and what helped me was shoot a ton. There is that magic 60-90second window on those sunsets, and even with my tons of pics, they all look a little different in that short time span, very cool! I luv going close to water for those relflections. The 8x10 crop here doesnt work but for contest thats what we needed, I did a couple panos that look way better :)


Lake Morraine- Banff Alberta- nothing special here, again use of split ND, no polarizer, tripod, remote. We got lucky when things cleared up, when we first showed up it was socked in, couldnt even see the mountains. LOL This shot was 4 vertical shots stiched together, what made this shot was the stiching software. Highly recommend PTGui , best software I have had the opportunity to use. I do allot of handholding and still does a fantastic job in putting it together. For those people that dont want to be techies, software does it all for you :D

[E.B. West]

Mine was taken at Crabtree Falls, Virginia. It's part of the National Forest System and is about 50 miles from Waynesboro, Va.

I took it with the Canon 300D with a Tamron 18-200 (18mm) at f22 for 2 secs.

Thanks everyone, I think this is the first time one of my shots has even been in the running.