Facebook :)

Perhaps I am too old for this social networking stuff. Perhaps I have enough in my life without needing to electronically massage my ego. Perhaps I just do not have any friends. Whinging aside, perhaps I should just embrace a modern trend and just let it flow.

Whatever.

I joined Facebook last night.

Let us see where this takes us.

A bit of a stir?

I posted this cameraphone photo on my Flickr the other day. It is causing a bit of a stir. Apparently, the ECDC, according to Elyonline in an April 2006 article "Absolutely Quackers - ECDC To Suffocate Ducks", is quietly culling the pretty little things. Someone commented as such on my photo and now all the duck lovers are talking.

I love informed debate.

Why - I do not understand it!

One of my pictures (see left) is getting more views than any of my others. Why? I personally do not think it is a good picture. I used spot metering and it has blown out the background quite a lot. Such an effect is impossible to correct in photoshop - or indeed any other photo manipulation suite. I wonder if people are intrigued when they see the thumbnail and think they are going to see a real eagle instead of a sculpture? perhaps that is it. Can someone explain?

My first ever Flickr favourite

Flickr member, panzer73, has chosen one of my photos (see photo left) as her favourite. This is my first ever favourite and I am so proud. The photo was inspired by the Flickr group vanishing point and was taken with my new cameraphone. It was slightly difficult to take as I wanted to get close to the rail to maximise the perspective. I stood on the crossing and knelt down. I needed to keep the phone, erm, camera, both perfectly vertical and at a right angle to the rail. It was difficult to do this as I couldn't see the screen properly at that angle although I did get the shot on the first attempt. Perhaps it would have been easier to lie down. It is rather a busy line and I did not want to struggle to get up and get, er, squashed.

Thank you so much, panzer73. Check out her photos here and her blog here.

Vanishing point

I joined the flickr site and sent some of my photos. See my photos here. Flickr have different groups. I liked the photos in the vanishing point group. It inspired me. So I went out today and took this photo with the K800i camera phone. I stood on the Little Thetford crossing looking towards Ely on the Cambridge to Ely line. I took a few pictures with various settings. Do let me know what you think

Green Park

Green Park
Originally uploaded by grytr.

I posted this picture on Flickr today. Lets see what the photographic community think.

Posted by John 18/9/06 01:15 am
The Flickr community, well at least the critque group, have commented. See below.

godplayer says:

I think pictures of snow are some of the hardest in terms of exposure. The snow is usually quite bright and overwhelms the light meter which thinks that it is should expose it as if it was grey. As a result the darker objects are severly underexposed and devoid of details. Looking at your picture this does not appear to be the case. There seems to be enough detail in the trees and this is probably because the snow was still falling and the snow was not as bright as it would have been in bright sun light. However, there does not seem to be enough detail or tecture in the snow.
The snow in the foreground, especially at the bottom left side of the picture is a bit overexposed and really pulls my eye toward it and this is quite a distraction as the viewer is lead away from the red umbrella which, from reading your note, is supposed to be the center of interest or at least a major point of focus. I suggest removing this area either through cropping or burning it in.
This brings me to the umbrella as an object of interest. I think it is too small to be really a focal point, it sort of gets lost in the picture espcially with all the big trees with the snow on the branches I find myself wanting to follow them and where they lead me is away from the umbrella. If you want this to be a focal ponit, I think that you need to get closer by cropping tighter and also bringing the red more into prominence by further sturation or brightness adjustment.
I would also suggest a little bit adjusment to increase contrast just a bit. I understand that the snow was falling and probably everything looked flat and grey but a bit of contrast boost would be good IMHO.
Having said all of this I do believe that you managed to capture well what appears to be a grey and gloomy day.

Country Garden Gate

So, I spotted this country garden gate this afternoon. I liked the look of the moss on the top. Out comes the handy camera phone and presto. I was disappointed when I got it home. The exif data revealed that the shot was taken at 1/30 sec - a bit slow and sure enough, it was a little blurred. So, a few minutes with Photoshop CS and we have the photo below.

So what did I do? I first constructed a mask for the gate itself. Then added three layers. A levels, saturation and sharpening layer. So, a tweek of levels, a +15 saturation and a sharpening. I then inverted the mask and created a de-saturation layer with the inverted mask and desaturated -30. Its up to you to judge if it has produced a result.

I use a layer sharpening technique which involves making a copy of the layer to be sharpened, apply filter-other-high_pass, radius=6, set blend mode to hard-light. The benefit of this technique over filter methods - such as USM - is that it can be switched on or off as desired allowing you to see its affect.

Lets have a beer

The light is fading. Time for a beer. One last photo. The camera phones anti shake feature comes in handy. I can see it is not perfectly sharp but its not too bad.

Ely Cathedral

Still trying the phone out. Not brilliant I know. Still, at least the spot metering function does work. This photo is as it came out of the phone. I do realise I can straighten the verticals in photoshop.