GaryPlumbridge's Photo52, part 17, Tropical added

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garyplumbridge

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Hi everyone,

Photo52 is such a fantastic idea, I hope I can keep up the motivation for a year.

Here's my first entry on a theme of Accommodation:


Bumf:
It's about the accommodation that apple seeds receive, and how from an apple-seed's perspective the whole universe is just apple so this photo contains nothing but apples too.

I'd never tried to manipulate the bokeh in this way before and I'm very pleased with the result but I'm not entirely sure if the theme came through strong enough. Additionally, the green-white of the brightly lit apple is a bit overpowering.

Here's some pictures of how this was taken/

Obviously, C&C are welcome and appreciated!
 
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That's brilliant Gary. I've been meaning to try this for a while, but I don't think that my lenses are fast enough for it.

If you hadn't shown how you did it, I bet most people would have thought that this was photoshopped - I guess it shows that there were creative techniques around before photoshop!
 
Thanks very much Tim! It might be fun to experiment to see how well this works with less bright lenses. The gobos I made had no effect on my f3.5 kit lens, so I think I just need to make them smaller.

If the lights in the background are very close to point-sources then the bokeh shapes are extremely well defined. (I'll post an example but I'm at work right now). In a test shot the apple was so clearly defined that you could clearly see each scalpel line I made to cut it out. It could be quite fun to exploit/experiment with really detailed gobos.

It was a lot more fun than photoshopping but took somewhat longer. Although, on the plus, I got to play with the christmas lights again which is always a treat. They're so brilliant and colourful in real life.
 
Hi again everyone,

Here's my week two submission on a theme of 'new':

2 - New by ConicalFlask, on Flickr

Bumf:
In my opinion this theme was a little too abstract and lazy(please don't kill me), so I have chosen to take a photo with a slightly lazy interpretation of `new life'. The new life in question is a tiny seedling (~~3mm).

I'm quite pleased with the effect, but it required quite a lot of work to remove severe chromatic aberration.

It's also fun to turn off your brain and pretend it's a 2-metre tropical plant after a severe storm has destroyed all the other trees in a jungle.

Obviously, C&C are welcome and appreciated!
 
well done you produced 2 shots and great theme ideas at that :thumbs: the shots are really good ;) like the background on the first well done ...oh and welcome to TP :wave:
 
Great colors there,good take on the theme :-)& I love the though it's a tropical plant ...lol
 
I really like it Gary - the green really pops out of its surroundings.
Have you got a macro lens that you used?
And what does chromatic aberration look like?! I've heard the term, but wouldn't know what it looks like!

[that's some fairly rough compost, what are you growing?)
 
I like this. The fresh green new vegitation contrasting with last years rotting vegitation works really well.
 
The colours are great in week 2 - very nice.
Not sure I like the apple's floating in week 1. Just my opinion though :)
 
garyplumbridge said:
Hi everyone,

Photo52 is such a fantastic idea, I hope I can keep up the motivation for a year.

Here's my first entry on a theme of Accommodation:


Bumf:
It's about the accommodation that apple seeds receive, and how from an apple-seed's perspective the whole universe is just apple so this photo contains nothing but apples too.

I'd never tried to manipulate the bokeh in this way before and I'm very pleased with the result but I'm not entirely sure if the theme came through strong enough. Additionally, the green-white of the brightly lit apple is a bit overpowering.

Here's some pictures of how this was taken/

Obviously, C&C are welcome and appreciated!
Click to expand...


I really love this idea and a great pic...:thumbs:
 
Week 2 is an excellent image. The contrast of the green against the background is very striking. Good detail in the shadows. I like the idea that it's a giant tropical plant:)

I'd say that you need a bit more DOF as some parts, including the plant are slightly out of focus.

Great shot though.
 
Thanks for all the comments!

@Tim: I used a cheap (less than £10) singlet close-up filter attached to the front of my standard kit zoom lens (14-45mm) for this photo. I can't afford a better doublet filter or (ideally) a macro lens. The Leica macro for my camera is £600 :S.

I've made a couple of 100% crops to show the chromatic aberration from the camera and then after fixing:



This close-up filter is pretty much the poster child for chromatic aberration. I hope these make it clear what goes wrong!

@PatrickO: Thanks for the comments, I'd also like the whole plant to be in focus but can't do it with my kit without compromising the positioning of the plant. Only the very central area of the close-up filter stays sharp unfortunately.
I've prepared a higher DOF version at f16 rather than f5.6:

2 - New (more DOF) by ConicalFlask, on Flickr

The version I took at f22 wasn't very sharp at all, I think the camera might have moved during the 2" exposure.
 
Cheers Gary those crops (especially the second one) show it very well. How do you go about removing it?
 
In aperture (and presumably in lightroom, or photoshop, or pretty much any photo software), there's a chromatic aberration fixing tool. It's a couple of sliders you can adjust until it's all gone. Because my close-up filter is just that bad the aberration isn't uniform over the whole picture so I have to fix it for one corner, then paint in another fix for another area and so on until it's sorted. Not many photos get that level of attention though :)
(and the official m4/3 lenses exhibit no CA at all)

I'm wondering about 'style'... It's less difficult than 'new' but I'm still pretty spoiled for choice :)
 
Here's my week three submission on a theme of 'style':

3 - Style by ConicalFlask, on Flickr


Bumf:
For the third installment of Photo 52, on a theme of 'Style' the photo this week is about styles of locomotion, both walking and flying as silhouettes.

The photo has a more intense black and white style than I'd normally go for, but I think the theme will allow for this.

Also, for fun, notice the 'no pedestrians' signs on the route the walker is using...

Obviously, C&C are welcome and appreciated!
 
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Thanks for the comments soggydiverdan! I appreciate it.

I agree mostly about the poor take on 'style'. None of the photos I've taken this week really fit the description (although some were far nicer than this!)

I hope you don't mind me saying that I'm not too bothered about the cones though, they're really part of the quite waste-landy scene. (although maybe in black and white it's not easy to tell just how hostile the terrain looks.)
 
Yo Gazza, I like the 'feel' or 'style' of your week 3, the B&W conversion is really nice, and the silhouettes have come out well.
Another slightly 'out-the-box' take on the theme as normal!
 
Very nice pic. Not worried about the theme if you're not.

Really nice capture of the geese (or whatever they are). Good composition and positioning of horizon
 
Thanks again to everyone for the comments.

I also like way the geese are going the opposite direction. Given the 'no pedestrian' signs it's like the geese know something that guy doesn't.

It was tricky to get the silhouettes striking enough while keeping the contrast between the man and the wasteland in the foreground. The geese suffered a bit and some are lighter grey than I'd have liked. :)
 
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It's also impressive how you managed to get a whole flock of geese in the shot - I bet that opportunity doesn't come up too often, it must have been some quick thinking!
 
Thanks Tim. I happened to be snapping at the flock and noticed this one of the set afterward. Like so many of my endeavours this was primarily luck.
 
So, week four already!

Here it is, 'Open':

4 - Open by ConicalFlask, on Flickr

Superfluous words:
An 'open shutter' (long exposure :)) of two tomato puree cans, one sealed and one open. The frame is exposed five times with a diffuse flash to create a composite image.

The image contrasts the promise of closed, tempting puree with the disappointing truth of open, smooshy puree.

I'm not really thrilled with the outcome, due to the poor image quality and difficulty of precise can placement in the dark.

The poor image quality is primarily caused by the texture of the black surface I was using (a suit jacket), and a little to the high noise of my camera's sensor over a 102" exposure.

The lens was a Canon FD 50mm F1.4 at F22, but this picture certainly doesn't show the lens off.

All C&C gratefully received.
 
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interesting take on the subjects - amazing how people think of these odd ideas :D

Being interested more into nature / landscapes I would struggle to keep up with such a project..

Well done, keep it up..
 
I really like the concept of your open picture. Great idea to show the contrast of the closed can and the open. I'm not sure if this would workout may be even better with three cans, closed, partly open and then completely open. Prob a ring pull can would be easier tho!

Great idea!
 
Really like the rich red colour and the concept behind the image, only thing I am not too keen on is the "calorie bar" at the bottom, not sure how you could get round it, but just takes my eye away from the open can somehow.

Simon.
 
Thanks again for the comments.

@laura-elliot: Three cans would be far simpler and would probably make a better quality image but I wanted the cans to overlap (to show off the multiple-exposure) but wansn't too sure about how close-up the framing would have to be to get three cans overlapping.

I tried to take a picture of the cans getting successively more open but I messed up the flash positioning so you can't really see the progress.

@simsling: yeah. That calorie bar isn't ideal. Here's a crop to remove them but the picture is now too close for my taste:

4 - Open - 1:2 crop by ConicalFlask, on Flickr
 
Tough times, teething troubles with my new camera! (so hard in more ways than theme)

Here's my fifth entry on a theme of 'Hard':

5 - Hard by ConicalFlask, on Flickr

Extra words:
Hundreds of tiny beads bouncing off a very hard metal surface.

I thought that things bouncing would illustrate the hardness of the substrate, however it turned out to be a real challenge to take a convincing single photo of lots of objects bouncing.

These beads were so incredibly bouncy, they were only dropped from a height of 5cm or so and I still managed to spill enough to make the carpet crunchy.

As always criticism and comments are fully welcome.
 
Hi Gary

like your thinking for the theme & can imagine how hard it was to the beads in focus at just the right time , so well done for getting the shot :thumbs:

The only thing that detracts from the shot (for me) is the light reflecting on the righthand-side but lighting is something I struggle with as well & on a shiny surface it's even harder to get it sorted
 
Nice one Gary, I really like the range of colours on the surface, and the way that as you look around you keep seeing different beads in focus that you hadn't previously noticed.

What's this about a new camera?!
 
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it.

@blondie606: I had a couple of shots without the reflections but they felt a little bit lifeless in comparison. I'll post one when I'm back at my computer. I do agree that the yellow highlights are too strong though but I had to process this photo from jpg and some of the highlight detail has been lost in the reflection.

@Tim: thanks! I like focused-bead hunting too. These things bounced like crazy. (even at 1/1000 there are still some moving so fast they are a complete blur.
I decided to upgrade my camera body to a GH2.(I've been missing video recording, and I got an exceptional deal). It's so damn good! The speed of everything is mind blowing, but apple's RAW support is so broken. The photos all come out too dark and green to fix so it's jpg processing for a while :( (losing about 3 stops of dynamic range at iso160)
 
good shot gary :thumbs: some of your ideas have been inspiring well done and I look forward to your next theme :thumbs:
 
So, here's week six:

6 - Clutter by ConicalFlask, on Flickr

Unnecessary words:
Here's the sixth photo for Photo52 on a theme of 'Clutter'.
This is a section of my workbench lit by glowsticks.

C&C encouraged. :love:
 
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