Photo by: daplums.

Wow. The colors and the saturation in this sunset is just eye-catching. It’s definitely what caught my eye. I was looking through the recent uploads, and within one or two pages of pictures this screamed out to me, “Cool.” Sunsets are a tough thing to photograph on auto, cause the camera doesn’t always know how to meter the sky and pick the right exposure to get those nice, saturated colors. So when you come across a decent photograph of a sunset, you know you’ve come across someone who has some idea about what they’re doing…

Photo by Ben D.

So I was getting tired of reloading pages of the “Recent Uploads” to find something good, so I took a shortcut and looked at the interesting photos from the last 7 days on Flickr. That’s always a surefire way to find something that makes you go, “Hmm…”

This picture is from a Botanical Gardens in Huntsville, AL. The composition is nice, with the one lily up close to the photo and the rest at a distance. You get a little distortion thanks to the wide angle lens (shot at 20mm), and the small aperture helps hold the whole distance of the scene in focus (f/16).

But what really drew me to the picture was the saturation of the colors. The deep blue of the water and the green of the lily pad is wonderful. Even seems a bit surreal.

Photo by caleb.pierce.

Today’s picture comes out of the latest pics. I stumbled on a baseball set that I really liked, but the photographer disabled downloading so I couldn’t link directly to the picture. So we get the runner up instead. Still, this is a nice scene. The composition is pretty good, with the buildings right along the top third line in the picture. It’s also nice how the rocky cliffs recede into the distance and converge in the horizon.

Photo by: Hullboy2.

So I looked through the recent uploads to Flickr today, and it took a while to find something nice. On the first page, I saw a cool landscape picture, but I thought I’d look for something else… and then I waded through pages of mediocre junk before I saw piece. I love the composition, with the tree in the foreground and the little hill/peak in the back right. I think it would have been a better picture if it was taken a few minutes earlier in the sunset, so the sky was a little bit more colorful… but hey. You can’t control everything. If you could just re-wind the sun by 15 minutes any time you wanted to, we’d all have an easier time taking pictures outside.

Photo by: frantonial.

I tried something new today. Instead of looking through popular tags or the recent “Interesting” photos on Flickr, I just checked out the feed of recent uploads. According to Flickr, there were some 5,000 photos uploaded in the last minute. I hit reload a few times and skimmed through a few dozen pics. There was some junk, some random product photos, some party snapshots, and a few interesting shots. But this puppy was too cute to pass up…

I guess it’s a new version of dogs playing poker. I spent a few minutes looking through frantonial’s photostream, too, and saw the rest of this shoot. In the picture above, I was a bit disappointed by the lighting – I think the foreground and the table/chips are a bit under-exposed. But I’m thinking that’s cause the puppy was moving about, defying the un-moving nature of the lighting set up. The dog is just adorable, and I think this pic is my favorite from the shoot…

When you’re reading about sports photography, you’ll probably come across the term fast glass or a fast lens. What does this mean?

A fast lens is a lens with a large maximum aperture – in other words, a really low f/value. The term is somewhat relative, and anything from a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L to a Canon 50mm f/1.2L would be considered fast… although that f/1.2 is probably about as fast as you’ll get.

This often means really expensive, too, although you can find some more economical lenses under $1,000.

So Why Are These Lenses “Fast”?

Two related settings affect an image’s exposure – aperture and shutter speed. As the aperture gets larger, more light comes in. To compensate for this and keep the exposure the same, you can increase the shutter speed. A “faster” lens has a larger maximum opening, allowing you to use a quicker maximum shutter speed.

This is especially important with regards to indoor sporting events. You need a high shutter speed to freeze the action, but you’re often constrained by crappy lighting conditions. Professional venues will have decent lights, but high school gyms are going to make you pull your hair out. With a not-so-fast lens that maxes out at f/5.6, like the run of the mill Canon 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 zoom lens I originally got with my first dSLR, you’re either going to have to jack up the ISO or settle for blurry photos.

A zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 is much better suited for indoor or night sports photography. Simply put, the glass is “faster.” And this is, unfortunately, one area where the quality and expense of your gear makes a big difference.

Photo by: jajjen.

Nice pic. The bird is in crisp focus. No blur (other than the bokeh background). One of the comments mentions some panning, but I’m not sure I see it. This was clearly shot in some pretty harsh sun, and there was likely a very quick shutter speed – freezing the bird in motion and eliminating any possibility for panning. Too bad the sun is just not quite in the perfect position, and the bird’s head is in a shadow…

Photo by: Nurmanman.

Beautiful picture from the English countryside (Cumbria, to be precise). I really like the composition. The distant mountains kind of hang out in the back, separated from the foreground by the trees. The saturation in the foreground is also really nice. This reminds me of my own travels through England and Scotland… and makes me want to go back.

An eerie black and white image of an abandoned looking building.

Picture by izthistaken.

I found this picture while browsing through the “portraits” tag on Flickr. Not what I expected at all to be lumped in with portraits.

But cool nonetheless. The building is very rustic looking, nice subject. Looks kinda like the house is lit from the front, judging by how bright the exposure of the sky behind the house and the fact that the house is well exposed too. The edges kind of throw you off, though. Could be the light falling off, but looks more like vignetting applied in post processing.

Photo by vramak.

I wanted to look through some sports pictures today. Although this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I started flicking through Flickr, it is too cool. Like a lot of people commented, the timing here is perfect. I like the color. Only thing that seems a bit odd is the pose. If the player is jumping like that, I’d assume he’s trying to do some kind of bicycle kick – which means that his foot should be coming up under the ball. Instead it looks like he’s kind of drop kicking the ball kung fu style…