gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

LOL

Several more PICTURES, Rich...PICTURES!

GameOverCJ

Did some light bashing today with my stampede. Camera is a Nikon D40 with Nikon DX 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G II ED and Nikon DX 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G ED lenses.

I used the Nikon DX 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G ED lense for this shoot with a UV filter and the lense sun hood on.

Action shots were on the "sports" setting all other shots on auto.
I need to learn how to use the programmable stuff more so I can get better shots. No real RC action around here to take pics of.


I was driving and shooting on all of them.

richg99

Nice shots, though many looked "posed". I'd guess that driving and shooting by yourself would mandate "posed" most of the time.

I you want to try another setting...put your camera on -A- (aperture) setting. That way, YOU choose the f-stop ...chosen by evaluation of your lighting conditions..and the camera will choose the fastest shutter speed it can use. That is good for stop-action shots.

If you want to give a feeling of motion, then you will need someone to drive the car and you can "pan" long with it, shooting in any setting. regards, Rich

Juice

I like how the car gets progressively dirtier and dirtier. This one is my favourite...

Juice

This is the exhaust stroke of a 4-stroke engine...

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

That's a NEAT shot, Juice!

OzyDave

That really is a neat photo. I don't know how you got a shallow depth of field but still got motion blur on the prop. Do you know the exposure and shutter speed used? I love how the photo tells a story.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

First, I have to agree with you...I love photos that tell a story. That one's got just enough "arm" in it to suggest activity, but not so much 'person" to take away from the motor...and the blur/smoke are JUST right to tell us the motor is purring along. Really a nifty shot.

As for the shallow DoF w/ blur, consider this:

if that engine's idling, it's probably turning what...1000-1200 RPM? Let's call it 1200 for nice easy math. So, 20 rev every second (1200/60), or 1/20th rps. Looks like we got about 10 degrees of prop arc there, so 1/36th of a rev. 1/720th of a second as an estimate. Closest standard shutter speed to that is 800.

With a 1/800th shutter speed, an f 2.8 is not unusual on a cloudy day, especially with a low ISO, which that appears to be due to the lack of grain. It would also give us a pretty shallow DoF...so...I'm gonna guess:


f 2.8, 1/800th of a second, iso 200.

OzyDave

Thanks GB. Good detective work
Love your signature by the way.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Thanks.

Juice

I'm impressed gb.

The photo info says: f/2.8, 1/800, ISO 100.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Heh...just a little math...well, that and having shot a photo or two in my life.

OzyDave

Juice, I checked out some of your gallery. Some very nice planes there.

Juice

When you carry around a big camera with a big lens, you can never avoid the requests to take the "me and my airplane" pictures. The question is, how do you make them more interesting than just a plain old "me and my airplane" picture? What do you guys do?

This is "Evan and his airplane". I used the rule of thirds here. I also positioned him so that there are no benches, fences and people in the background. It was a sunny cloudless day, and I couldn't avoid the harsh shadows and I didn't know the white surface was so washed out.


This is "Dave and his airplane". Again, rule of thirds and clean background.


This is "Rod and his helicopter". He wanted to show off his freshly painted shiny canopy. So I posed him so that I get his reflection off of it.


These are "Max's helicopters". Nothing fancy. I was just practicing my composition with this one.


This is my combat plane. Again, working on composition.

richg99

Only thing that I can add is....when I get a "burnout" for whatever reason....I put the shot into Picasa..and add "warmify". I am sure that every other photo editor has something similar.

"Warmify" isn't going to make a great shot out of a burn out..but it does seem to give a more usable result. Hope it is OK with your to "doctor" your shot up for illustration.... regards, Rich

Juice

Thanks for the tip Rich. This is my attempt to fix the shadows...

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Ohhhhhhh man...now you're gonna get me started. Hope you wanted a long reply. *heh*

Ok, first of all, you're absolutely right. become known as the "camera guy" at your field, for whatever reason, and you will get "me and my airplane" picture requests. You have, imo, two choices:

1) Shoot "me and my airplane" and be done with it. There's certainly some merit here. After all, the guy's really probably only looking for "me and my airplane". There's probably about .01% chance he's going to show this to anyone and start critiquing the photo, ya know? Bottom line...snapshots have their place.

2) Do a lot of things "wrong".

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the rules of thumb...such as the "rule of thirds" you mention in the first picture below. They are long standing guidelines for a REASON.

The issue, however, is that....well...they're long standing guidelines. EVERYONE (or at least, everyone who desires to shoot beyond snapshot quality photos) knows them, and tries to obey them. So EVEN if you take a QUALITY photo of "me and my airplane"...it'll be just like EVERY OTHER QUALITY PHOTO of "me and my airplane".

So break a few rules.

Pilots are usually posed behind one wing or another specifically to accommodate the rule of thirds. Why not put them somewhere else? For that matter, why not put something in the background?



Ok, I know...I'm dealing with a professional model there....so it's a little easier to command what I want out of her. But drop that for a minute, and treat that photo like a collection of inanimate objects and a piece of meat. (Sorry, but the reality is...that's what models are, in a photographic sense)

Notice...SHE'S bisecting the photo, not the airplane. The airplane also crosses into 2 vertical thirds, and is way too "low" to be "correct".

Put that shot in a blank, empty patch of grass, and the model dominates the scene, no question. It becomes a picture of "a pretty girl with an airplane". NOT what I was after.

So why does the airplane jump out? Simple...I broke another rule. Look at the background. There's a bunch of dark vertical things (you might know them as trees), right? Guess what...the model is a dark vertical thing too!

She suddenly becomes nothing more than another part of the overall scene. We're at a park, with a pretty girl, taking airplane pictures now. And holy cow, that's a BIG airplane! Possibly because it covers 2 vertical thirds of the picture, DESPITE being shot at an angle.

So let's see...I've got lots of background clutter, a distracting building, I've placed the DESIRED subject too low, and off to one side, and shot it at a bad angle, meanwhile CENTERING the very thing i don't WANT you to focus on.

But it works.

The lesson here is this...

When you read about rules, think about WHY they're "rules".

As an example, you point out the "clean background" in several of your shots. Nothing wrong with a clean background, and it's a very common "rule". But...why?

Well...the simple answer is that things in the background can distract us from the subject of a photograph. They also tend to weasel their way into JUST the right angles to make things look REALLY silly. Take this one for example:



Either that airplane's got a REALLY poorly finished (and incredibly long) tail section, or someone didn't finish processing the lumber before starting the build. Your eyes will almost never catch things like that while you're shooting, because our brains KNOW the tree's 20' back, and just discount it. Very realistically, it simply DOESN'T EXIST in the photo while we're standing there pushing the button.

But by golly, put that in 2 dimensions, and show it to a set of eyes that's never been to that park, and that's one BAD picture. That background so effectively blows that scene up, you not only notice the airplane ONLY because it looks funny, but you almost don't even notice the model either! It's quite close to a "picture of a tree with some stuff in the way".

So...ok...a background can distract us. But hey...aren't there times you WANT a bit of distraction? Or at least some context?? Sure...my 1st shot above is an example. I don't WANT you focusing on the model. I want you to SEE her....and I'd like her to be pleasing to the eye (a task she fulfills nicely, I think)...but she's NOT the point of the photo.

And here's the whole thrust of all of this. Understand WHY you want to break a rule at times. In my case, i had a real dilemma. How do you put a model THAT attractive in a picture, and NOT have her dominate it???

Your only option is to hide her...right in plane site. So...we break the background rule. if that's a portrait of that model, it's horrible...she's lost amongst the background elements. But it's not...it's a picture of the airplane...which JUMPS out at you, PRECISELY because it's so unusually positioned (as compared to "rules of photography")...an viola, we get what we want. An airplane with a pretty girl next to it.

Having said that...I hope you'll allow me to offer some critique below. Please understand...I'm not picking on you, I'm just offering some critical thoughts. I promise you...I'm MUCH harder on my own stuff than I'll EVER be on someone else's....and I ABSOLUTELY would welcome you returning the favor to my own work, if you're so inclined.

First the background. You're right...it's clean...no fences, benches, or people...which pretty much means this coulda been shot in any front yard in suburbia. It's a model airplane! It's SUPPOSED to be at an airfield...so why not include some context in the background? Some random person standing there would, indeed, be a pointless distraction...but what about someone at a flightline with a radio around their nexk, looking up at an airplane? Or what about a starting bench? Maybe a runway? For that matter, even another airplane, or some field boxes. ANYTHING that says "model airplane field" gives us some context. It stops being "Evan and his airplane", and becomes "Evan out flying his airplane."...."Evan having fun at the field."

Of course, we don't want ANY of those things to be too close, or too sharply focused...but with a moderate Depth of Field, they become recognizable CONTEXT, but not distractions.

As for the shadows and glare, 2 suggestions:

1) Buy a good handheld flash...and use it. You'll be STUNNED, even on a bright cloudless day, how much of that a fill flash will get rid of.

2) Always always ALWAYS travel with a white bed sheet, or at least a piece of posterboard. Snag someone for 5 minutes to play 'professional cloud", and have them stand just out of the shot, between your subject and the sun. The sheet will do a very nice job of diffusing bright light, and a piece of posterboard can provide a handy bit of shade just where you need it most.

Dave's GOT to lose those shades. *heh* They're a HUGE distraction...so much so, I noticed them before I even realized Dave's plane was broke.

Other than that, i really dig the composition on this one.

A REALLY neat idea. If you get a chance, shoot it again...three times. Make one of the following 2 changes in each of the first two, then both in the third.

1) More (or possibly less) Rod. I presume that blue thing at the right edge is his...Arm? Hat? Elbow? Uncomfortable sitting position? Some part of him, anyway. In either case, either give us enough Rod to know what part of him that is, or take him far enough out that there's not a vague blue fuzzy thing in the shot.

2) Turn the helicopter. Just a few degrees is fine. It looks awfully 2-dimensional here, and barely suggests "helicopter". Turn it just enough to give it a bit of length and definition.

Again...i TOTALLY dig the idea of showing off the canopy by getting Rod's reflection in there...that's damn creative, don't know that i would have thought of it.

Watch the reflection of yourself in the canopy.

I LOVE this shot. This is, whether you intended to do it or not, EXACTLY what I was talking about above. There's so much "garbage" in there, this picture SHOULD be ruined. Bench, field box, blew the rule of thirds right out of the water...

Heck, you didn't even put the distractions far enough away to be blurred. You went ABOVE AND BEYOND to screw this one up. *lol*

BUT IT WORKS!

That picture SCREAMS "Man did we have a BLAST today!!" That airplane has a PERSONALITY. It's tired, worn out, hurt, and sore...just like WE are after a hard day of playing. But...despite all that, it's CLEARLY eager for you to fix it so it can go RIGHT BACK OUT next weekend, and do it all again!

One last comment on this one, since it sells one more point I often like to make.

Don't underestimate the power of a VERY minor detail.

Want to know what I mean?

Take your finger and cover the eyeball on the airplane.

Congratulations on you picture of a pile of junk.

Juice

This, Gordon, is exactly the kind of criticism that I like to hear. I'm only starting in photography and I appreciate everything you have to say.

Regarding the picture of my crashed combat plane...

Most of my good pictures are not really intentional. This one is one of those unintentionally good shots. Some days I take hundreds of pictures and only a few turn out good enough to show. I rarely take a picture and say, "That's the money shot". And if I do say that, when I get home most times I find out it's not as good as I thought.

I agree that the photo works. I could not put it in the words you use. All I know is that I like the picture. So, I can tell that you like to break the rules if there is a good enough reason to break them. In this picture, what if I did some post processing to un-break a couple rules...

(before post processing)


(after post-processing)

- Cropped to put the eye on the lower-right third intersection.
- Blurred out the cranes in the sky.

What do you think now? Better or worse?

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

The trick is not to let that change even when you've been shooting a while.

I've been shooting for about 7-8 years now, and my mentor (who's been shooting for 30+) STILL wants me to criticize his work, and I still ask him to criticize mine. Granted...i have to look a LOT harder than he does! *lol*

None of that is unusual...nor does it go away. The percentages of good:bad will go up over time, but even the best in the world throw away more than they keep. Andy Julia (Caution to those who might not know who he is : Any search for his work will turn up some fairly erotic stuff. He's never, that I know of, ever shot any full or even partial nudity, but you probably don't want to explain some of his work to your kids) once said that he throws away 6-8 shots for every one he keeps. This is a guy who makes tens of thousands of dollars for a set.

Personally, I toss stuff at about 10-12 to 1 on a good day. Of course, the ones I keep aren't anywhere near the kind of stuff a true pro can turn out. On the occasions I'm being paid for my work (not often, and not much *lol*), my ratio is up around 30 or 40:1.

Now, I WILL say that as time goes by, you'll get better at knowing when you "got it"....when THE SHOT you wanted happens. Of course, this is largely true of situations where you'll have multiple opportunities to get "the shot".

Having said all of that, however, I think nearly every photographer on the planet still gets snuck up on. Sometimes that PERFECT shot just shows up out of nowhere, just once. All you can do is hope you have your camera, and rely on instincts to get everything right.



Mike Modano's 503rd goal, making him the highest scoring US born hockey player in NHL history.

*shrug*

Ok, sure, as a season ticket holder I was in the building for all of Nashville's games...but sheesh. Modano could have scored that goal in any one of a number of games...or he coulda been in traffic when he scored it...or he coulda gotten some deflection you never saw...or heck, even something as simple as he coulda scored at the other end of the rink the next period!

That shot's not talent, skill, planning or anything else. It's pure, dumb, luck.

This didn't, of course, stop me from having him sign a copy, and framing it up with a piece of the net.



I guess the point here (besides the chance for me to show off a couple of hockey things *heh*) is that what you're describing isn't anything to be 'ashamed" of or anything like that. The ratio of keepers to throwaways will go up over time...and no matter HOW long you do this, or HOW good you get, you'll still find that much of your best stuff is sheer accident.

The trick, I think, is to do 2 things:

1) Learn from the happy accidents. You've got one with the crashed plane....so perhaps you've learned something about framing, or maybe something about tiny details, or whatever. So long as you learn.

2) Be hyper-critical of your own stuff. Do NOT (and it's INCREDIBLY hard to do, I know) fall in love with a shot because of what's in it. Don't be so thrilled that you 'got the airplane as it went by" or "got the winning basket" or whatever that you overlook obvious flaws in the shot....and they WILL have some, they ALL do...even Andy Julia's *heh*

Be objective, and be critical of your stuff. This isn't to say you can't love a picture because it's a picture of one of your favorite things...it just means recognize it for what it is, and learn from it.

For me, personally, I like removing the crane. That was one of the few true distractions in the photo, imo.

(I won't go on a photoshop rant here...some other time *heh*)

As for the crop...eh...frankly couldn't care less. I'm not saying it's "worse" that way...just that, for ME, it didn't do anything. In both cases, the eye makes the shot what it is...but since it's not really a "picture of an eye", it doesn't need to be in some "key location", imo. It's almost kinda fun to realize how important the eye is after overlooking it for a few minutes.

Like I say...that's not to say it was a bad idea. Heck, maybe you like the picture better that way. "I just know I like it" is, quite frankly, a PERFECTLY good reason for liking a picture. Just that, for me, the picture isn't any different either way.

And you're right...I DO like breaking the rules...sometimes even when there's no REASON to. Like I said above..."because I like it" is good enough.

Vic Nyce

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Juice

Photos of pilots with their airborne aircraft...

Juice

Here are some other photos I shot with my brand new Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS.

Saying that I splurged on this lens is an understatement. My justification is that the "investment" on this lens is smarter than if I "spent" the same money on a giant scale warbird.

I was able to test it out at an indoor session the day after I bought it.

MinnFlyer

My Feedback: (4)

Hey guys, Please upload your photos directly to RCU.

Don't attach images from Photobucket or some other outside source as the pictures cause the thread to really slow down. Plus, it makes them more difficult to see

Thanks!

Tango Juliet

Gordon, you've got some great advice, thanks for sharing it. Unfortunately some of the images you've commented on are no longer visible. From your descriptions, Juice has a real eye for the artistic (something I lack, but I'm trying to develope it ). In the very first post of this thread, one of my favorite shots, is the helicopter being held by it's rotorhead. I feel the composition is spot on. Are you by chance going to Joe Nall next month?

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Aww shucks. Glad you liked it. I promise, it's worth precisely what you've paid for it.

Indeed...hence Mike's advice earlier, I suspect.

It's all, imo at least, quite subjective. I suppose there are those out there who will say that "art" can be somehow "defined"...but I sure as heck won't.

For me, it gets back to something I've said a few times...if the picture tells me a story, or makes me wonder what must have happened next (or before!)...then it's done its job. Does that make it "artistic"? heck if I know. *lol*

And that's why I love this hobby (photography, I mean)...that picture does pretty much squat for me.

Again....I don't think that makes it a poor picture. Indeed, it is well composed and shot as far as all the "rules" go. It just doesn't "speak" to me.

Of course, it's at LEAST 50/50 that I'm simply not listening. *heh*

I'm not. My airplaney travel budget for the year is tied up with a trip to Detroit for RBAR in June. *heh*