Member's picture

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Here's one from Jack Fisher:

Happiness by Jack Fisher

The picture of this couple is very well seen and taken and it lives up to its title perfectly. For me, it is a good example of a picture which isn't finished and can be made even better with a few minutes work.


You may not agree with all the steps I have taken. These include cropping, lightening the mid-tones using curves, cloning out the keys in the guy's right hand, sharpening and adding a border. I was working quickly and lightened the sky along with the skin tones. I could have left the sky as it was in the original, or even darkened it some more.

Click images to view an enlargement.

Don't you think the pic is a perfect summary of the relationship between men and women? He's lost in the bliss of the moment and she's very happy too, but has still has her eyes open and fixed on the future.

Sign seen in Swaziland

From Allan. The sign should have said "Road will now go up and down like a roller coaster and wreck your car if you're not very careful".

Pothole crazy

Pat Kernick reckons that this is the last sign you'd want to see after a long journey.

Have you ever had your assorter charged?

Signs like this are easy to find, particularly in smaller towns. It is probably because of the increasing number of foreign traders opening shops and putting up DIY signs, but then you would think that the locals would help them right. Perhaps the locals don't spell too good either!

November 2006 outing

This is just a reminder about our outing to Bramleigh Manor on Sunday, 26 November 2006. Some have already paid Cathy but you are reminded that the charge is R50, for those who have not paid. We are due there at 9am for coffee and muffins and we will have a nice brunch later in the morning. We will be meeting at 5:50am in the car park of the Hillcrest Sports Club (leaving 6am) to combine cars and travel up together. There will be a lot to photograph at the venue and along the way. Directions at the bottom of this message.

As you see, we've got a challenge underway where members have been asked to contribute pictures of signs. Send in a picture of a sign, or anything else, for us to put up here. And there's another thing, puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze make comments on the pictures or stories you see; its not much fun at all being an online community of one.

Bramleigh Manor Directions - Scenic route

Turn left onto the R103 at about Howick.
Pass Rawdons on the left
Pass Bierfassl
Into Nottingham Road
Turn left onto Loteni / Sani Pass Road
17Km
Left onto D544
4Km
Left to Bramleigh Manor

(Ordinary Route: You can also stick on the N3 and take the Nottingham Road/Mount West turnoff, turn right into Nottingham Road and left at the Lotenti, Sani pass turn-off, as above).

Trees by John Teece

Congratulations Natalie

Natalie Knibbs has come third in a photo competition run by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife's Rhino Club. Well done that girl, and keep up the good work!! View the competition results here.

Another Sign

A tattered sign, dramatic sky and some fill-in flash.

Wonders never cease

Here's a sign.

By John Teece

Professional lighting

I have found a very interesting site on getting better results with flash. The Strobist site is actually a blog (using the same service as we do) and you can read it here. One of the readers of Strobist is X-Pose, and you can read his tutorial on building a diffuser panel here and view samples of his work here. He describes how he achieved each of his pictures, which makes it especially interesting.

Important note: Looking at other people's pictures is one of the best ways to improve your visual literacy and, thus, your photography. You're highly unlikely to become a good writer if you don't read, and the same applies to photography and looking at pictures. Why is, do you think, that experienced photographers still buy photo magazines and books?

X-Pose mentions the Canon ST-E2 infrared transmitter, which is what we Canon users have to buy in order to be able to move our dedicated camera-top flashes off-camera, but still allow the camera to control the output of the flash. Users of Nikon cameras are luckier because most of their camera bodies have wireless flash control built-in.

MEMBER CHALLENGE

Send in your pictures of signs to me at the usual e-mail address.

Sign of the times by Allan Jackson

PS Elements 5.0 review

Last week I wrote a short review of Photoshop Elements 5.0 for my column in the Sunday Tribune. You can read it on my computer blog here. I'm often amazed at just how good Elements is, even in comparison to the full Photoshop package.

Interesting article

Check out the Digital Life page in the UK's Online Telegraph. It has usually got an interesting beginners' article on digital photography, digital questions and answers and crits on a couple of readers' pictures.

Member's pictures

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Cecil Hodgson sent in some pics from the recent outing to the Butterfly Farm and I have chosen two to put up here.

I'm not knowledgeable about birds so I don't what kind this one is. Nonetheless it is a good picture of the little fellow. The picture is well composed, sharp, and the background in nicely out of focus so it doesn't intrude. The colour is very good even though uploading it to the blog has degraded it a bit; the colours in Cecil's original are more vibrant than they appear here. The only improvement I could suggest would be to clone away the nearly-in-focus stem on the right or, which might be even better, crop it off along with a bit of sky at the top.

This butterfly picture [I hope it is a butterfly and not a moth] has all the strengths of the bird one above, in that it has good colour, the subject is sharp, and it has an unobtrusive background. For me, the failing in the picture is the banana in the foreground, which is overly dominant in the frame and which and draws my eye every time. I think that the picture could be improved by cropping off most of the banana; a square crop would work quite well with this picture.

Food which distracts from the subject, is quite a common problem with wildlife pictures and I've seen it, for example, in insect pictures and in ones taken at vulture restaurants. I'd recommend that, when coming across an animal posing nicely [and that includes humans], you take the shot immediately because you might lose the opportunity if you faff about. Then, if you've got time, you can have a bash at improving the picture by re-framing it or changing your viewpoint.

Click any picture to view an enlargement.

Photo opportunities

Verena sent in this exhaustive list of photo opportunities around KZN in November:

Fish Eagle Coast Mile Swim
11/11/2006
Venue: Richards Bay
Contact: Casper Kriel 0828966011
casper.kriel@mondibp.com

Whale Watching
November 2006
Venue: St Lucia
Contact: 035-5901259
advantage@zululink.co.za

Nature Trails

18 and 19^th November : Canoe Trails on Umgeni River. Phone Ross 031 201 1303

11^th November : Bat watch at Umdloti – Phone Juan 082 830 6334

Walks and Runs

24^th November : Coca Cola Fun Run (Wildlife) – Amphitheatre Chris 083 452 3465

Cricket

22^nd November : SA vs India
30^th November : Dolphins vs Warriors

Canoeing

8, 15, 22, 29^th November : Landrover Dice Series at Shongweni 033 347 5320

Radio Boat Club

Every Saturday at Blue Lagoon : Steve 031 564 9878 or Sheldon 031 262 1506

Horse

11, 12^th November Novice Team Champs – Shongweni
18, 19^th November Shongweni Showing Shows – Shongweni

Motor Racing

12^th November : Senior Motorcross at Springfield
19^th November : Karting at iDube Raceway Phone Gay 031 266 5640

Surfing

25, 26^th November : Rip Curl Gromsearch Finals – Durban

Swimming

12^th November : Masters Grand Prix – Kings Park Pool. 031 312 7272
25^th November : Synchronised swimming KZN Primary Schools – Anne 083 236 7555
26^th November : Capital K 1000m swim – Midmar – 033 3428492

Steam Train

26^th November : Inchanga Choo Choo 082 353 6003

Guided Tours

26^th November – Botanic Gardens. 031 309 1170
26^th November – CROW 031 462 1127
26^th November – Annual Toy Run from Pavilion – Joy 083 285 0815 (Bring toys)

Christmas Parties – Public

29^th November – Uncle Jumbo’s – Richard 083 775 8166

Water Skiing

19^th November : Tournament – The Farm, Camperdown. Linda Quinn 031 207 3377

Every Saturday

10 – 12h00 : Jazz on Wilsons Wharf – phone to take photo’s 031 305 1677

For sale

Melissa is selling a Nikon D200 kit including a Nikon D200 body, Extreme3 Sandisk 1gb card, 70-300mm nikkor telephoto lens, nikkor afs18-70mm ed dx lens, mulitgrip battery pack ,sb 600 speedflash, camera bag, plus 2 nikon batteries. Terms will be cash and she is open to genuine offers.

There is also a studio flash kit available. It includes 2 Hensel Contra studio flash untits, 2 stands, 2 umbrellas, 1 softbox, a remote flash trigger and other accessories for R10,000. There is also a black paper roll backdrop for R600, a very large black fabric backdrop for R200, and a very large white fabric backdrop for R200.

Drop me a line on my usual e-mail if you want to make an offer on any item.

Photoshop Tip # 1

At the club the other night I demonstrated a cunning technique for selectively darkening or lightening areas in a picture. Called painting with light (PWL), it is similar in effect to the dodge and burn technique used in traditional dark rooms.

Photoshop users can download and install an action from ActionCentral which will automate the creation of the two extra layers required for PWL. Click here and, once you arrive at the site, scroll down until you get to Chip Springer’s PWL action. Download it and go here to find out how to install it in Photoshop.

Users of other image manipulation programs can also use the technique but you have to create the layers yourself. The steps are as follows:

• Open the image you want to work on.
• Create an empty layer above the background layer, name it Paint Light, fill it with black and set its layer blend mode to Color Dodge. Your Layer Palette should now look something like this:

• Create another empty layer, name it Paint Shadow, fill it with white and set its layer blend mode to Color Burn. Your Layer Palette should look something like this:

• You can now lighten areas in your picture by painting white onto the Paint Light layer using a large soft brush.
• Conversely, you can darken areas in your picture by painting black onto the Paint Shadow layer using a large soft brush.
• Turn down the opacity of the brush to 5-10% and build up the effect gradually, to get the best results.

Member's pictures

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Chantell Joubert sent some pictures in and Harry Lock commented on them.

Of the two cyling pictures you sent in, I prefer the one of the single cyclist. You have gotten in close enough to get the facial expression and good detail in his outfit.

You will see, in the example below, that I have cropped it a little closer. I feel that if the whole of the front wheel had been in the picture it would have been fine, but since the bottom of the wheel is missing, one may as well crop it, as the viewer will still know that he is on a bicycle.

You will notice that I have also cleaned up the background a little - one of the advantages of the digital era. But it is also something of a disadvantage as we expect every picture to be perfect!

The guy on the ski is a good photograph, as you have his face in focus and captured the action well. You pressed the shutter at the right time on his stroke. Again, I have played with the cropping, the vertical pic shows the waves behind him giving the impression of him being chased. This sense of excitement is lost in the horizontal crop.In both instances, I lightened his face.

Click on any picture to view an enlargement.

Reminder - Meeting

** A reminder about the talk on the newly reissued book Barrier of Spears at Hillcrest Library this Friday evening. Full details further down in the blog.

** Remember also the meeting next week on Tuesday, 7 September. We are going to have a short talk about flash from John and a little bit of Photoshop from myself. We'll then have the usual showing of members' pictures.

Joy by Allan Jackson