No knife content - interesting images

[Buddy Thomason]

This page will take a while to load, so be patient. Here's one of those lovely Colorado mountain streams - this one falling down through a long ago breached earthen dam higher up. It's a series of 4 shots at various shutter speeds linked together as an 'animation.'



Here's a panorama in black and white as my camera pans out from the side and bottom of the alluvial fan (flood plane) I'm standing in, looking at Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park across the valley.



My new Canon 90mm TSE-90 'tilt/shift' lens continues to impress . It made a sharp series of shots of the stream, in focus from the foreground (very close to the camera) to way further back - all in good focus. Even at f22 - because the scene is very close to the camera - the actual depth of field is insufficient to have the background in focus at the same time as the foreground without tilting the plane of focus away from the camera. And, after taking the time to level my tripod, the lens captured three landscape shots with no horizontal distortion at all, making for an easy to stitch together panorama. In the end, because of moving clouds changing the exposure between shots I elected to desaturate the whole thing rather than struggle trying the match all the colors in photoshop.

The"tilt/shift' thing is not new technology. In fact it's been around since the beginning with those big box view cameras with a bellows that was flexible, then medium format cameras where the box itself tilts and shifts and finally SLRs using a specialty lens with moving parts. It's a kick to use and opens up lots of possibilities.

[Andries Olivier]

Great effect on the first pic ! It was worth waiting for. Second pic is allmost to good to be true.

Wish I could do that.

[MCarter]

Great effect on the animation. What program did you use to create the .gif?

[Gene Chapman]

Neat, makes me want to go out and buy a 6 pack of Coors.

[rhrocker]

By golly Buddy I think you could even come down here and make Texas look good with that thing

I've always loved the look of cascading water with the action set like that for the "blur". I'm a tea totaler, but like Gene I'm ready to drink up a keg of Coors after seeing that.
The picture of "Deer Mountian" is just surreal. Takes me back further than 1949, when I first set foot in a delivery room crib. Really great effects Buddy! Thanks for taking the time to show them here.

[Buddy Thomason]

Glad you guys enjoyed these. I use Easy GIF Animator to do these GIFs, suggested to me by Rik Palm. You can find it easily on the net.

Re the panorama, I did add a bit of sepia tone after totally desaturating the whole image - to give it a bit of ole timey look. This is obviously a very small version of what is actually a very large panorama - something like 57+ inches long by 13+ inches tall. I'd guess it covers about 140 degrees and Sheep Mountain is a good 2 miles away.

Regarding the exposure on that pano, I had to work hard to retain detail in the shadows and dark places and still get all the detail of the clouds and bright surfaces of the rocks. So I actually took three exposures of each of three camera positions and used Photoshop CS2's HDR function (high dynamic range) to blend them and capture the full range of detail, then I stitched the 3 HDR images together manually (no specific program used although there are some good ones out there (even in PSCS2) for automatically stitching panos.

[Buddy Thomason]

Nobody asked, but that wouldn't stop me from posting more pictures from my outing up in the mountains this past week. Every photographer must feel compelled to do flower shots from time to time.


Although not a great image, this one shows that the Elk are looking very fit as they approach the rut in just a few more weeks.

[Rik Palm]

Very Nice Buddy!
Your really kickin it up a notch big time!
I'm glad you posted them! I bought a program to do quicktime VR's and have been dying to do some panaramonics!


Rik

BTW: I've been using the B&W spark from Silveroxide and love it.



PS. I've had my heart broken yesterday day, I'm very sad, I had to put our cat to sleep yesterday and have a tough time of it.

[rhrocker]

PS. I've had my heart broken yesterday day, I'm very sad, I had to put our cat to sleep yesterday and have a tough time of it.[/QUOTE]

Oh Man, I don't know Ric, I couldn't do it. We have 3 inside types, and since after 25 years of marriage we never had children, I guess these little guys are the next best thing. They're sort of "little people" to us I guess. I'm dreading the day I have to make that sort of decision, doubt if I can. They always say not to go out and get another real soon. Well, I don't believe that. If and when it happens to us, we'll go to the local animal shelter and pick out one that just, has that look.

[rhrocker]

Buddy, great shots again. Completely blurring out the entire background in the flower shot has a lot of eye appeal to me. Were you using that special twisted gismo for that shot? Ah, the Elk. When we lived in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, there were area's where these lads roamed by the hundreds, just like up near Red River, New Mexico. Yep, that bad boy is just starting to anticipate an adventurous and bountiful rut season! Lucky thing! (well, not that I'm into Elk that way you see).