Photo by: j.tree.

I was browsing through the recent uploads on Flickr, and I came across a picture from a Weezer concert (not this one). I followed through to it, looked through the photostream, and saw this pic. It really caught my eye. The lighting in the venue must have been good… the picture is crisp, the ISO wasn’t too high (i.e. there isn’t too much noise). It also catches a nice bit of action here. Shooting concerts can be a nightmare when you don’t know what the lighting is going to be like… and clearly it was crazy lighting (see all the blue around), but it was also bright enough to allow for some nice pictures.

Photo by: ufufnmitsue.

Spotted this pic in the recent uploads on Flickr. Nice scenic pic of the ocean and the seaside. The sky is well exposed (see the blueish tint to it), and the clouds add some visual appeal. But it looks like this little cove is in a shadow or something – the foreground is really shadowed, while the background is much brighter. Notice the rocks in the mid left that appear to be brighter (no shadow?). The picture is nice compositionally, but a little exposure adjustment in Photoshop/Lightroom to darken the background and lighten the foreground would help it out I think…

Photo by: richseow.

Found this pic in the recent uploads of Flickr. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but when I saw a little thumbnail of a sports pic I thought I’d check it out and see if it was any good. Turned out to be a decent shot of a rugby game in Singapore. There’s a quick enough shutter speed (1/1250th of a second) that there’s no motion blur at all. However, the image seems to be a little bit under-exposed. The turf is fine – nice and saturated – but the players are a little dark. This is exacerbated by the fact that they’re shadowed from the sun (note the faint shadow pointing emanating from #9′s foot). Mightta been a good candidate for an exposure compensation adjustment or just a little tweaking in Lightroom.

Photo by: Marco Nedermeijer.

I found this cool shot of seashells in the recent uploads section of Flickr. It was shot with a f/1.8 50mm lens wide open, giving it really shallow depth of field. The small group of seashells in the middle is in focus, but the picture very quickly drops out of focus as you move away from that center point. In this case, I think the depth of field is just a titch too shallow, and the image might be better served if the other parts are more in focus. After taking a second look, it’s also possible that the outer parts of the image were blurred after the fact in Photoshop. If so, then I think it was a little over-zealous…

But a cool image nonetheless, and a good illustration of selectively focusing on one subject and one subject only.

Photo by: Sangudo.

Last night, I got some new lighting equipment and I wanted to test it out. Since my wife rarely humors me, that left… the cats. The trouble with cats is that they don’t sit still and let you take their pictures, making it really hard to light them. So this morning I thought I’d look through the “Cats” tag on Flickr and pay homage to the patient photographer who caught a cat in a calm moment. In this case, the kitty is sitting in a bag, and it looks like the light is coming in from a kitchen window to camera right. The other problem with cats is that they like to get into tiny places that block out the light – like my kitten who wanted to jump in a box last night instead of chilling on the floor.

And, for the heck of it, here’s a picture I took of my kitten Finn last night while playing around with the new stuff.

This was lit with a single light, camera left about 45 degrees. I triggered it wirelessly with the Opteka radio triggers that I wrote about yesterday. I shot a Vivitar 285HV through the new Honl traveller8 softbox (which just came in the mail yesterday). At this point, Finn finally decided to cooperate and sit still on the pillow long enough for me to focus the camera…

Photo by Bo No Bo.

Summer is awesome. But, one of the good things about fall is that football season arrives. Over the years, I’ve lost interest in most other sports, but college football is fun to watch, and high school football is even more fun when you get to roam the sidelines and take pictures of the action. That’s why I dove into the “Football” tag and looked for something good. This might not be the sexiest action pic, but it’s got all the good basics. Tight focus on the subject (the quarterback) and a quick shutter to eliminate the blur. I wonder where the QB is going to throw that ball…

On a side note, it was interesting to see the ratio of soccer pics to American football pics in the “Football” tag. I wonder if that’ll change come the fall/winter…

Photo by: ayeyister.

I stuck with yesterday’s theme and kept sifting through the “Portrait” tag for something interesting. There’s a color version of the same picture in ayeyister’s photostream, but I initially saw this black and white one and I thought it was nifty. It’s a self portrait, and the hair and facial expression are priceless. I’ve seen a couple of my students when their hair was like this, and no way in hell were they gonna let me take their picture. So kudos for that bit of bravery.

It looks like the picture is lit from camera right. You can see the shadow falling across her nose on the upper left part of her face, and there’s also a catch light in the bottom right part of her eye. I’d guess a window, as the light wraps around kind of softly. But it could also be a lamp I suppose. Curious now…

Photo by: Hyuni.

I was browsing through the “Portrait” tag on Flickr, hoping to find some nice strobist work that showed off a skillful use of light. Then I saw this picture, and I was really drawn by the pose. Stopping the action of the model flicking her hair is pretty cool, but at first glance I thought this was just a natural light shot… cause it’s got a nice muted look to the lighting.

Then, I looked a little closer and saw the flash on the light stand in the background, rather out of focus. Hmm… My guess is there’s a light to camera right (you can see a bright spot on the back of her left sleeve, as well as a shadow behind the railing). There’s also a light coming down from the left a bit – notice how the collar of the shirt is highlighted, but the rest of it drops into a gentle shadow (maybe that’s the sun coming down through the trees?). One way or the other, it’s a nice, gentle lighting scheme that fits the scene well.

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.