Photo by: Laurent.GL.

Found this image in the “Night” tag on Flickr. Cool shot. I love the reflection of the buildings coming off the water. If you’re thinking of taking night pictures like this, then there’s one thing you need to understand: it’s all available light, so it’s all long exposures. In this case, the image was taken with a 2 second exposure. I wouldn’t hand hold that if I were you, so a tripod is definitely necessary. This leaves the shutter open long enough for the distant lights of the city to burn into the image. There’s also a relatively small aperture (f/8.0) which gives you a decent depth of field; that’s pretty normal for landscape/architectural work.

Photo by: Simon Ellingworth.

I wasn’t sure what to look for today, so I went to the popular tags and I picked “red.” Didn’t know what to expect. There was a smorgasbord of images – including flowers, cars, and people – but this first really caught my eye. Like I mentioned before, fire is just so cool to watch and fun to photograph. This image does a great job of capturing it. The flames up top have a feeling of fluidness to them, and the glowing embers in the bottom of the frame give the picture some substance. Technically sound, and nice composition.

Photo by: AlanGinsberg.

Found this one browsing through the “Canon” tag on Flickr. There was an odd number of car pictures in the tag, don’t know what that was about. But I thought this was a nifty portrait. The ambient is stopped down far enough that the sky is well exposed, although that leaves the trees in the background really underexposed. There’s clearly some lighting in the foreground, at least a light off to camera right providing a key. I would guess there’s some kind of fill coming from off camera left, cause the lighting is fairly even across the image… kind of curious to see the set up. I like how the light is really bright and warm, though; kind of makes it look like the sun is beating down through a hole in the clouds or something.

Photo by: philroeder.

Found this one in the recent interesting pictures on Flickr. When I saw the thumbnail, I thought wow, that’s a cool image. Nice composition. Looking down a hallway and such. Then I clicked through, and read the description and it got even cooler. The picture was apparently taken in the ’50′s by an Air Force lieutenant and his son scanned it (and other pictures) to post to flickr. A cool image, and a cool story. Click through and check out the photostream if you’ve got time.

Photo by: Kmeron.

Found this shot in the “Concert” tag on Flickr. At first glance, I really liked it. I think it could have been cropped a little tighter (cut off a bit on the top) for better composition, but otherwise nice. The black and white conversion is cool. But it also highlights a problem with photographing in low-light conditions (like a concert) – blur and image size. If you look at this image in a small size (like the thumbnail in the sidebar or the medium size in this post), it looks pretty crisp. If you click through and look at the large or full size image, it gets really blurry.

In this case, it was shot at 1/160, which is relatively quick. But, it was also shot at 180mm focal length. What probably happened here is some camera shake (and the guitarist’s hand might have been moving quick enough to cause some motion blur there). When you’re looking at the LCD screen on your camera, it’s easy to take a quick glance and assume that a picture is crisp and/or in focus. Then, you get home, fire up Lightroom, and that 1:1 preview makes you cringe. Eugh. Not a lot you can do here. I’m not sure how good the D700 is at high ISO levels, but jacking that up (from 1250) to get another stop out of the shutter speed might have helped…

Still a nice pic, though. As long as you’re not printing it, you can still be happy with a shot like this. I have, however, had similar shots that looked good at first and then looked not so good once they hit the printer.

Photo by: Brock McFadzean.

This is a cool action shot. Although I’ve worked a lot of sports, I haven’t had the opportunity to photograph much dance. I guess wrestling might the closest…  The thing to be grateful for here? Light! When you’re inside, you’re not always so lucky. It looks like the floor is lit on a couple sides by bright lights. There at least the one bright spotlight (in the background of the picture), and it looks like there’s another one behind the camera (creating the light shadow behind the dancer). An action shot needs a lot of light to be sharp, and in this case it looks like these spots do the trick. It’s also nice how the crowd around the dance floor is faintly visible, but not really lit. Bouncing a light off the ceiling to light the room might have lit them, as well as the dancer, killing the separation.

Photo by: Asde.

Found this in the recent uploads on Flickr. I’ve got a firepit in my backyard (which I think I need to go spend some time by soon), and fire’s a fickle thing. It’s captivating to just sit and watch as the flames flicker about. That’s why I picked out this picture. It’s a little tricky to do it right. If you jack up the shutter speed too high, there’s no movement in the flame. If you drop it down too much, it gets too blurry or the background gets burned in and the fire drops out as the subject of the picture. This picture is a good compromise – a bit of motion blur to emphasize the transient nation of fire, but a completely blacked out ambient that focuses the picture on the fire iteslf.

Photo by: youngna.

I spent a while looking through the Recent Interesting pictures on Flickr today. Found a few that I liked, but couldn’t re-post them here. I purposely steered clear of nature photos like sunsets and such, cause I think I’ve been attracted to them too much lately. There isn’t a lot special about this picture technically speaking… but it’s just so cool. I don’t know how you could see a wall like that and not want to take a picture of it. Or is that normal elsewhere in the world…?

Photo by: mark452.

This picture of a sunset in Australia came out of the recent interesting pictures on Flickr. I don’t know why I’m drawn to all these sunset pictures when I browse through the stream… but a nice sunset just grabs your attention. This one is awesome. The colors are great, and the clouds create some interest in the sky. The silhouettes of the trees in the foreground seem kind of eerie. The reflections of the clouds coming off the water make the place seem like a swamp, or a bog. Altogether, it’s one awesome visual effect.

Photo by: D.R.A.C.C.A.R.D.s.

Found this snapshot in the recent uploads section of Flickr. In some ways, not a lot going on to attract attention – it’s basic available light, shot with a point and shoot. But I really like the composition. The wooden beams in the background create some nice visual interest, and the skewed angle at which the picture is taken adds to this. Compare it to some other pictures in the photostream, with a head-on approach and much more simple composition, and you’ll notice the difference. Good example of some fundamentals that are sometimes more important than gear and other techniques.