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Some great winter sunset photos I captured today


Phait

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Very good stuff... like being there. The first one is especially nicely framed. The second view I just saw walking in the woods on New Years Eve, but it was dark and through the branches was a night sky with a million bright stars as deeply into space as you could see.

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Thanks guys. Lee Knight -- precisely what inspired me to shoot in winter! I've taken a lot of the photos and made them black-and-white, and inverted them. Probably use a blended motif of b&w inverted + abstract watercolors composited in, or as they are, for my demo album design.

 

ggm1960 -- yeah not much snowfall from Nov thru now. Did have a white Christmas here though.

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There's more at the Flickr album:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73577099@N06/sets/72157628723579061/detail/


Nothing special or skilled, Canon A630 point n' shoot camera on manual, changed the aperture and f-stop, the bluer photos I switched to tungsten filter.


I'm quite happy with how they turned out though!


399513_142357959211832_100003128869544_1

406261_142357329211895_100003128869544_1

391038_142358172545144_100003128869544_1

Really very nice!

 

But, does that gorgeous sunset's horizon look just a bit off? I know how a shoreline can sometimes fool the eye (although it seems like it would take the complicity of a few clouds, too)... but the tilt-o-meter in my head is tingling just a bit.

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I'm definitely into it, but while I do sell my photography, I would do things like fix horizons or get it looking as good as I can even if I didn't. But I'm not most people. Maybe it's the same reason why I agonize over mixes as well or keep moving microphones around or that kind of thing...it's just because I want to. :D

 

I'm talking to some professional photographers who will spend hours processing a single photo in Photoshop. I met a couple in an art gallery last week, and the labor-intensiveness that they described was quite astonishing. Now, their photos look phenomenal. That's a whole 'nother level. I tend to do travel and I suppose what you would call more photojournalistic sorts of photography, so I usually don't spend that much time on it. Usually a few tweaks here and there, contrast, sharpen, occasionally add a "glow", maybe alter the hue or take out a telephone line if it really bothers me and that's about it.

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I think it's slightly off, which I didn't notice until you pointed it out. That's a fairly easy fix in Photoshop if one wants to do it. I've been fixing my horizons more often because a couple of my photography friends get in my case if I don't!!
:D

Off-level horizons have always bugged me when I saw them since I was a little kid. Perhaps it was a sign of my own artistic limitations... I wasn't much of a draftsman but give me the right tools and I could draw an horizon like nobody's business.

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Usually a few tweaks here and there, contrast, sharpen, occasionally add a "glow", maybe alter the hue or take out a telephone line if it really bothers me and that's about it.

Talk about demystifying. :D

 

I'll spend whatever time it takes getting an horizon right... usually that's not much, of course, a few clicks... but the coastline looking west from here really throws off my eye. I'll try to work off a building, but that doesn't always seem to go that well, either.

 

Getting this 'level' drove me nuts between the coastline, Palos Verdes across the bay, and lens distortion...

2004-01-03-twopeopleonshoreatsunset.jpg

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I'd just drag a guide down in Photoshop and check the horizon against it.

 

Here's what I've been doing with the photos for my music project... today or tomorrow I'll try some watercolors on paper and blend them in to get some weird abstract imagery but based in some kind of reality (nature/snow) :)

 

377567_159490864153359_146054382163674_1

 

384822_158398327595946_146054382163674_1

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Talk about demystifying.
:D

I'll spend whatever time it takes getting an horizon right... usually that's not much, of course, a few clicks... but the coastline looking west from here really throws off my eye. I'll try to work off a building, but that doesn't always seem to go that well, either.


Getting this 'level' drove me nuts between the coastline, Palos Verdes across the bay, and lens distortion...

2004-01-03-twopeopleonshoreatsunset.jpg

 

Epic clouds!! :thu:

 

The Photoshop method is clunky but not too bad. I usually level horizons in ViewNX, which is really easy.

 

If I use a tripod, which doesn't seem to occur much, I'll use the level that's on the ballhead and level things out in advance.

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Epic clouds!!
:thu:

The Photoshop method is clunky but not too bad. I usually level horizons in ViewNX, which is really easy.


If I use a tripod, which doesn't seem to occur much, I'll use the level that's on the ballhead and level things out in advance.

I'm very proud of those clouds. :D

 

There are straightening and perspective correction tools in the editor I use (the can't-get-no-respect Paint Shop Pro) that make adjusting level and even fixing trapezoidal distortion trivial.* Trivial, that is, as long as you can find the horizon in the first place. ;)

 

 

Speaking of being fussy, I have a self-trained, artist/graphic artist client who has busted my chops over a 'centered' image on a 1400 pixel screen that was 3 pixels off because of a last minute CSS change.

 

*Which came in handy with one artist client who supplied me with far-from-web-ready snapshot-type images of his complex 3 dimensional canvasses and constructions that had been sloppily shot from off-angles.

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Hey, I LIKE Paint Shop Pro.... Use Lightroom to store, catalog and edit the majority of my photos, but the ones that get seriously fixed (removing trees, being masked, changing focus) get PSP. I do some tweaking of photos, fairly large things that I can see. I've watched a few video tutorials on the NIK software and the Topaz software and doing that kind of tweaking is really an artform in itself. I'd do it, but it is beyond me.

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