[SI] My comments on backlit.

No one's done the big grilling, and so I thought I'd give it a go.
All, of course, IMHO.

Skip, nicely done. I like the gradation of light too and from the
horizon. Others have commented on the sparkles, and I think that
maybe they're right. A little too harsh in places. My initial
thought also was that the model was just a little too close to centre,
but that bothers me less now. How did you get the exposure right? I
like the silhouette.

Tom, this one's funny (funny peculiar, that is). Like an MC Escher
print, I keep thinking the top of the light is tilted the other way to
the pole. Dunno why. I like the moonlit lighting effect, but this
shot leaves me wanting more. (Is it moonlit or not?) Still, I could
see it as a book cover, so it can't be bad, can it?

Guy. Is this backlit? The colours are gorgeous, but nothing grabs me
as a subject. Perhaps if you pulled back a bit, and had more of a
dark background framing that bright green? Maybe not possible
physically, of course.

Martin, this is straight off a postcard! Pity you lost the horizon.
Pity I've never shot a sunset this well, too!

Rich, this is really nice. Too centred, and therefore, to me, too
clinical a study of a peice that is supposed to be a little more warm
and homely. Exposure would have been difficult, but did you bracket?
I was just thinking that the stand was a little lost about a third of
the way up. This of course could be my monitor. (Same for Martin's
shot, too, for that matter).

Brian, I like this one a little more than Tom's, I guess because it's
evocative of an earlier world. Original composition, too, I thought.
Perhaps later or earlier in the day you coule have got a less acute
angle and more of the structure, but I don't know if that would
necessarily have been a better shot...

Doug, your shot is beautiful. Really took me by surprise. I love the
cloud detail in the bottom left, and the flair at the face of the
statue doesn't detract at all. Instead, it looks as if the statue is
looking up into the face of God, full of hope - quite poignant when
you think of that and then look at the left leg, as I did. Thanks.

Ken, once again a great B&W from you. Is this overexposed a tad?
Classic landscape, though. That tree's a beauty, all out on it's own
and lightning blasted. One of my favourites of this bunch.

If Al can get a bug into his shot, he's happy. A nice macro. Be
nicer still if you could have got the rest of it's body in, I guess,
and the tree intrudes a little, compositionally. Not a lot of
compositional choice with this kind of subject - especially with the
demands of the mandate. Nice one.

Quercus, this shot is another that didn't grab me at first, but grew
on me with a bit more looking. Still, it seems to lack a real
subject. That branch at the top of the frame should have been made
more of, I think. I like the light coming through the green, though.

Steely, you certainly got the "decisive moment" for that wave! Quite
nicely, and a difficult subject to get detail of without flaring out
the sun and reflections. Well done.

Alan, you've won me with this. One of the five major foodgroups:
Vitamin Beer Well executed. You came close to losing the very top
of the neck in the background, but just got it. Could be straight out
of a magazine ad. Makes me thirsty looking at it - we're having one
of the first warm evenings of spring as I sit writing this! I guess
that front reflector also helped highlight the beads of moisture on
the front of the bottle.

Vic, this is well exposed - giving just the silhouette - but too
closely cropped, I think. Also, the model's head would give more
interest if we got moer of a profile. Still, I tried a shot similar
to this and totally cocked it up. More on that later!

Steve. Oh yeah, that's mine. So what can I say? I took about 8
shots (two attempts silhouetting my wife's head - total failures, two
attempts of silhouetting a satellite dish in the morning - got up too
late, and then overexposed them, one attempt similarly of a local
church steeple, same result), and then took 4 shots of my living room
window sill to use up the film and give me some "insurance" shots.
Just as well. But you can see the results of haste - I should have
removed some of the objects ( esp. the round horn thing behind the
white glass tealight, the candle holder with the matchbox and maybe
the other one next to it), and moved the blind string on the left out
of the shot. I would have liked to have got more light through the
bottle on the far right, and probably it would have worked better if
I'd actually got the sill straight along the bottom of the frame.
Heh. Biggest comment on my own shot - can you tell I'm a Leo? I'm
not altogether upset with the result, however.

Graham, this is nice. The greens are all there, and that dark section
to the left helps to highlight the glow through the pale leaf. Those
highlighted branches in the background detract a little, but not
enough to make this anything but what it is: a Nice Shot (tm).

More bugs! Jim, my arachnaphobic wife hates this shot. I love it,
but can't look at it for too long lest she walk in behind me!
Magic detail in there, too, I can even see the hairs on her legs.
Nice for the bokeh lovers out there, too. What's the light source?
Is it a sunset through leaves, or artificial light (I suspect the
latter). The web makes a great conversion on the subject. Another
standout for me from this bunch.

Bob, I like this. Nicely composed with the steps leading off the
shot, and his pole running parallel with them, but crossing the
railing. He's certainly got a load, there. I'm yet to get a good
candid people shot like this, despite many tries. Perhaps I need a
rangefinder?

Bowser, I'm not sure about this. I know we had the mandate and all,
but maybe moving around to the left and getting more of their face
would have made a better shot? Or maybe just going for less detail
and more silhouette? I do like the composition, though - all the
lines and angles. Actually, thinking about it, if you gave it less
exposure it might not work - they'd be a blob amongst those strong
lines. Told you I wasn't sure.

Christian, this is lovely. I wonder if it would have worked better
with the horizon farther down the frame, though - especially as you've
lost any detail down the bottom half of the frame? Makes me want a
holiday in the country.

Simon, what I want to know is, what bloody God do you pray to to get a
cloud formation like that, just when you're looking for a nice tree to
silhouette!?!
Magnificent. I don't even care it's archived. Thanks for sharing.

Bruce, I really liked this, compositionally, and I really liked the
blue light, and the way it plays in the glass. Great!

Joseph, you get twenty points for a shot well done, lose twenty for an
archive, and lose another twenty because of all the shots I've taken
at marinas, none of them are anywhere near as good as this. I think I
need a wider lens [sigh] and a whole lot more talent. That boat
moving through the sunlight is the finishing touch, isn't it?

Bret, how you got this shot at all is beyond me. Pity about the blur
on the lower beak, but that's a nitpick, really. It'd be nice if it
were not so dark on the lower left, and it'd be nice if weren't
archived, but good shot.

All in all, another impressive bunch of photos. I'd like again to
thank Al for the great mandate - I was more challenged and made more
mistakes trying to nail this one than any of the others that I've
participated in (heh, all three of 'em!).

Cheers,
Steve

"st3ph3nm" wrote in message
om...
No one's done the big grilling, and so I thought I'd give it a go.
All, of course, IMHO.

Skip, nicely done. I like the gradation of light too and from the
horizon. Others have commented on the sparkles, and I think that
maybe they're right. A little too harsh in places. My initial
thought also was that the model was just a little too close to centre,
but that bothers me less now. How did you get the exposure right? I
like the silhouette.


Cheers,
Steve

I, too am usually not a fan of the centered shot, but with this one, it
seemed to work.
As to how I got the exposure right, I had taken an earlier one that came out
pretty good by bracketing with my D30:
http://www.shutterspeedway.com/cgi-b...es&pict ure=3
and found that the base exposure, when using evaluative metering, worked
pretty well. So I figured it would work with my 1n, shot about 6 frames,
all within about 1/3 stop of each other, and got it.

--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

"st3ph3nm" wrote in message
om...
No one's done the big grilling, and so I thought I'd give it a go.
All, of course, IMHO.

More bugs! Jim, my arachnaphobic wife hates this shot. I love it,
but can't look at it for too long lest she walk in behind me!
Magic detail in there, too, I can even see the hairs on her legs.
Nice for the bokeh lovers out there, too. What's the light source?
Is it a sunset through leaves, or artificial light (I suspect the
latter). The web makes a great conversion on the subject. Another
standout for me from this bunch.

Make me an offer, I'll send you a print. This was taken at sunset, the
nasty bokeh is from branches of the tree line obscuring the sun. The spider
was recycling its web, it had collapsed the web, was busy picking out the
nasty bits and eating the silk.

The 75-300 IS strikes again! I'm thinking hard about the 100-400 IS; does
anyone, but Dallas, have an opinion on it?

Jim Kramer

st3ph3nm choreographed a chorus line of high-kicking electrons to spell
out:

Simon, what I want to know is, what bloody God do you pray to to get a
cloud formation like that, just when you're looking for a nice tree to
silhouette!?!
Magnificent. I don't even care it's archived. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the comments. As far as the shot goes, that particular one was
luck... I was making a slow circuit of a lake as the sun started to go down
and happened to cross that tree at the right time.

--
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(st3ph3nm) wrote:

Guy. Is this backlit? The colours are gorgeous, but nothing
grabs me as a subject. Perhaps if you pulled back a bit, and had
more of a dark background framing that bright green? Maybe not
possible physically, of course.

Definitely backlit and looking directly into the sun. Otherwise the
greens would be much darker and you wouldn't have the green halos from
the backlit moss on the trees. There was probably a slight haze over
the sun to diffuse it slightly. Lighting was variable that day: mostly
overcast with the sun peeking through now and then.

You're right, though, about composition. I mainly liked the colors and
light.

Guy

st3ph3nm wrote:
Martin, this is straight off a postcard! Pity you lost the horizon.

Thanks Steve. Do you mind to explain what you mean with "lost the horizon"?

Martin

st3ph3nm wrote:

Alan, you've won me with this. One of the five major foodgroups:
Vitamin Beer Well executed. You came close to losing the very top
of the neck in the background, but just got it. Could be straight out
of a magazine ad. Makes me thirsty looking at it - we're having one
of the first warm evenings of spring as I sit writing this! I guess
that front reflector also helped highlight the beads of moisture on
the front of the bottle.

Thanks, you got the micronutrients story. However I don't consider it a good
shot. This was just a test prior to shooting it on slide film (which I never
did). The bottle is fine, but I did in fact not have a reflector placed to make
the label appear right. The composition is boring. The back lighting is right
on and quite easy to do... so a near technical success and a boring result.

--
-- rec.photo.equipment.35mm user resource:
-- http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch.--

Bob, I like this. Nicely composed with the steps leading off the
shot, and his pole running parallel with them, but crossing the
railing. He's certainly got a load, there. I'm yet to get a good
candid people shot like this, despite many tries. Perhaps I need a
rangefinder?

Steve
I shot this by accident. I was just trying for the backlit stairs. But by
the time my steel trap reflexes came into play, some guy had made it down
the stairs. I didn't know it till I took the roll out of the can. I find
candids much easier with a TLR They don't think you're taking a shot, and
zone focusing is much easier, plus you can crop out 3/4s of the shot and
still have the same neg area as with a 35. Thanx for the comments.
Bob Hickey

"st3ph3nm" wrote in message
om...
Graham, this is nice. The greens are all there, and that dark section
to the left helps to highlight the glow through the pale leaf. Those
highlighted branches in the background detract a little, but not
enough to make this anything but what it is: a Nice Shot (tm).
Thanks. This wasn't my main attempt for this mandate. The weekend the
mandate was announced we had our local "carnival of flowers". I had to work
the saturday so the missus had one of my cameras with some kodak max 100 for
the parade. The other camera had slide film in it that I was planning to use
for their fireworks display (turned out it was a flop but that's another
story). Once the mandate was announced, my plan was to go to the local
cemetery on the sunday at sunset with B&W film to get some backlit
tombstones. To do this of course I had to finish the roll of colour film, so
I headed up to the park and took a few cliched macro flower shots, and this
one of the young mulberry fruit. Once I got everything processed I thought
the mulberry shot was far better than any of the tombstone shots I was
planning to use.

Martin Djernæs wrote in message ...
st3ph3nm wrote:
Martin, this is straight off a postcard! Pity you lost the horizon.

Thanks Steve. Do you mind to explain what you mean with "lost the horizon"?

Martin

It may be my monitor, but the way the clouds and darkness at the
bottom of the photo merge with the sky, you don't get a really clearly
defined horizon line, which would really finish off the shot for me.
It's a small nitpick, really, though.

Cheers,
Steve