jeangenie's 52 for 2009 - Week 26 Night

I think the B&W works really well and I prefer #2 (without the border though)

jeangenie said:
3 I'm getting neurotic about getting it right in camera.
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That's a good neurosis to have IMO :D

As for the UP shot, I think you've done well with a difficult subject, the lines draw me to the bush in the middle though. Try converting this to B&W, it would be interesting to see the result :thumbs:
 
Another great shot Jean :clap::clap::clap:

Lots of interest in it and a great sky too. And I can clearly identify with Lesson 1 :D

But there should be a 1b: something will always turn up if you keep your eyes open ;)
 
Poverty take 2 is good, it suits the mono conversion perfectly.:clap:

I like UP aswell, I like the cone it suggests that an upwards movement is imminent, not sure it would work so well (in terms of the theme) without it.

It is quite a busy picture, but there is a lot for the viewer to think about:thumbs:.
 
well, Jean, the mono of the shed is great! I like the Up shot (even though my long haired general said it looked a bit rude...) and can't help thinking it would have been crying out for a mono shot in there somewhere too with that old flakey metal. Not that I'm biased you understand!
 
Shorty said:
Ooh I like this shot The colours in it are great, and I love the fact my eyes keep darting around looking at all the extra stuff in the picture, yet are still[without me going cross-eyed ] keeping me focused on the crane
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I'm never sure at what point 'lots of interest in it' becomes 'too busy', so thank you very much for the comment. :)


jgs001 said:
Very good Jean. Good textures in the metal, the shadow on the fence continues the line of the boom. Well composed
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Thank you kindly John. I hadn't noticed the shadow on the fence in relation to the boom. :bonk:

Spartacus said:
First of all your Poverty second version is spot on for me...

It looks more like a older shot and works better for me...:thumbs:

This weeks Up...I do like the whole idea and it works on many levels, but I keep wanting to move that damn cone

That's another nice sky you got again...seems you get all the sunshine where you live...:razz:

Another excellent shot from you again...;)
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You're very kind - I'm glad you like the mono shed.

Sorry about the cone - I did consider just a close up of the hook and cone, tbh. Moving it would probably have got me arrested. :lol:

I try to share the sunshine around - this was taken in Martok, Somerset. :)

Toothie said:
looks to me liek its baout to move the cone UP in the air. I agree that it does look a little soft but cant help you as to why ( I often have the same issue).
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Thanks Ruth. On the question of softness - I'm trying to find out whether the slight lack of detail is due to an old film lens I'm using (28-105mm, f3.5-4.5D) or something I'm doing/not doing with the D700. Even though this shot was handheld, in those conditions I think it should have been pin sharp. :thinking:

I'm going to test it at 50mm against my son's niftyfifty and see how it compares. If I get any answers, I'll let you know. :)
 
SimonTALM said:
I think the B&W works really well and I prefer #2 (without the border though)



That's a good neurosis to have IMO :D

As for the UP shot, I think you've done well with a difficult subject, the lines draw me to the bush in the middle though. Try converting this to B&W, it would be interesting to see the result :thumbs:
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Thanks Simon - glad you like #2. imho borders are a bit like dogs licking their wotsits - they do because they can. I can't resist playing with them - the borders, I mean. Perhaps I'll grow up one day. :lol:

I'll try a B&W conversion - I'm slumming on PS7 on Mr JG's computer and I think the only option is Desaturate. I'll have a play. All part of the learning process. :)

maddog.mark said:
Poverty take 2 is good, it suits the mono conversion perfectly.:clap:

I like UP aswell, I like the cone it suggests that an upwards movement is imminent, not sure it would work so well (in terms of the theme) without it.

It is quite a busy picture, but there is a lot for the viewer to think about:thumbs:.
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Thank you kindly, Mark, as I commented to someone else, 'plenty to see' can easily become 'too busy' - probably a bit of a tightrope. :)

dizzy said:
well, Jean, the mono of the shed is great! I like the Up shot (even though my long haired general said it looked a bit rude...) and can't help thinking it would have been crying out for a mono shot in there somewhere too with that old flakey metal. Not that I'm biased you understand!
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Hi Dizzy - I can't believe you thought about a mono conversion for this shot. :lol: (x10, but Admin won't let me type that many!). I'll give it a whirl.

Your LHG is a girl after my own heart. (More lol's)
 
Bruja said:
Another great shot Jean :clap::clap::clap:



Lots of interest in it and a great sky too. And I can clearly identify with Lesson 1 :D

But there should be a 1b: something will always turn up if you keep your eyes open ;)
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Thanks very muchly Jill.

Sorry I'm a bit disorangised about responding to people's comments - I'm still without my computer and camping out on Mr JG's and my son's Mac.:(

I can't take any credit for the sky - it was just there! It really was a glorious spring day.

Totally agree with you on a need for 1b - and it's something you always practice, I've noticed. :)

Jean



Jean
 
I like your UP shot too Jean, I agree with Toothie and when I first looked at this I thought 'how clever to get a shot of a crane lifting up a cone' doh :bonk:

I too have had issues re focus this week, I resize before uploading, but it still seems sharp on my laptop yet soft on here!!! hey ho!

well done for another fab colourful shot (sorry dizzy) :D :D
 
Hyster said:
Looking at your image, I have visions of myself, like a muppet, flat on my back trying to find some strange angle.
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Thats exactly what I though - about myself though obviously :D

Fits the theme well and I completely sympathise with the over-confidence thing but at the end of the day you were right... because you got your shot :thumbs:
 
adrury said:
I like your UP shot too Jean, I agree with Toothie and when I first looked at this I thought 'how clever to get a shot of a crane lifting up a cone' doh :bonk:

I too have had issues re focus this week, I resize before uploading, but it still seems sharp on my laptop yet soft on here!!! hey ho!

well done for another fab colourful shot (sorry dizzy) :D :D
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Thanks for the kind comments, Angela, and I'm glad you like life in technicolour. :D

I think my problem with sharpness (or lack of it!) is in the taking of the photo, because it doesn't look quite sharp at 100% magnification in PS. I'm no expert but if yours looks sharp on your laptop, there's not much wrong. :) Do you sharpen it ('unsharp mask' in PS) when you resize it for the web? If you don't it might be worth a try. :)

Daysleeper40 said:
Fits the theme well and I completely sympathise with the over-confidence thing but at the end of the day you were right... because you got your shot :thumbs:
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Right - or just downright lucky. :lol:

Jean
 
Always good reading and always good viewing Jean :)

Love the shed for poverty and the sepia one wins for me :) Maybe its looks 'older' and therefore more akin to 'the bad old days' and poverty (I'm rambing - jet lag!)

And your up is good :thumbs: a good spot - although it looks like its days of being up are over - poor thing :D
 
Week 14 Letter

As soon as I saw this week's theme, I knew what I was going to do. That's a first for me, I think.

A few days ago I was tidying up the darkest corner of my desk drawer (very rare event) and found a stash of old letters. The story behind them is one of friendship over many, many years.

It all started in the mid 1950s (yep - I'm that old :lol:) when we started to learn French at school. After a while we were told we had to have a French penfriend and in due course I received a letter from a French girl. I was a little bit disappointed because she didn't live in Paris, and she wasn't a boy (this was a girls' school - boys were very, very interesting!) But she wrote me a very nice letter, introducing herself and telling me about her family. I wrote back (we were allowed a lesson in which to do this!), and she replied, and so did I, and ........ well, we just kept on writing.

We would write the easy stuff in the foreign language and the more interesting stuff in our own language - and we would even corrrect each other's howlers. :D

Eventually we met up - I went to stay with her in Provence. She later visited me in England and eventually she came back to England as an au pair. Our friendship continued, she was my bridesmaid, we went on holidays together and still we kept writing.

Our lives have been very different, and I'm ashamed to say that we communicate solely in English now - and by email. :D She has lived in Canada for many years and English is the common language for her and her husband. My French just gets rustier and rustier, while her English is fluent and idiomatic!

So here is my Week 14 - Letter (I've cheated slightly and included several letters)

DSC_2082LR.jpg




This is a set up I've used several times and I got a shot I was reasonably happy with in 16 clicks. :eek:


Lessons learned:

1 Inanimate objects continue to be unco-operative, and trying to arrange pieces of paper artisically is beyond my capabilities.

2 Just because you know what you're going to do, you shouldn't leave it until Saturday when the house is a tip and you've got tons to do before visitors on Sunday. :bonk:

3 With hindsight, I should have moved the 'Votre amie' more to the left - it's too central. :bang:

4 I feel I haven't worked hard enough on this one - 16 clicks and very little pp. What a lightweight. :$

C&C, as always very welcome.

Jean
 
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The story is very touching and i wish i could say the same about any pen pals i have had in the past.

I think you have arranged the letters very well and i like the DoF :thumbs:
 
Great story and great image Jean - Even though I've never had a penpal I sometimes yearn for good old fashioned letter writing to come back into our lives :)

The image plus the words are, as ever, top notch :D
 
Agreed an interesting story as always and the picture is very well thought out. :thumbs:
Don't worry that you found this week easy....... I'm sure next week will provide the necessary challenge.;)
 
Salut Maman! C'est un vraiment bon coup, j'aime la profondeur de champ et de l'arrangement des lettres, bien faites!

Voir-vous demain! x ;)

P.S This post is mostly due to Lou's French speaking abilities and some random web-translation service! :D
 
irw1 said:
Salut Maman! C'est un vraiment bon coup, j'aime la profondeur de champ et de l'arrangement des lettres, bien faites!

Voir-vous demain! x ;)

P.S This post is mostly due to Lou's French speaking abilities and some random web-translation service! :D
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Yep! what they say!!:lol: :lol: :lol:

Nice story Jean, and as always it is backed up with a great shot!! :clap: :clap:
 
maddog.mark said:
Agreed an interesting story as always and the picture is very well thought out.
Don't worry that you found this week easy....... I'm sure next week will provide the necessary challenge.;)
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Thanks Mark. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't climb out of the box in any way at all - especially after seeing some of the other interpretations. :(

irw1 said:
Salut Maman! C'est un vraiment bon coup, j'aime la profondeur de champ et de l'arrangement des lettres, bien faites!

Voir-vous demain! x ;)


P.S This post is mostly due to Lou's French speaking abilities and some random web-translation service! :D
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Thanks Ian - 'La profondeur de champ' sounds a bit too literal to be true - but great effort - and what do I know! A demain. :)

adrury said:
Yep! what they say!!

Nice story Jean, and as always it is backed up with a great shot!! :clap: :clap:
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Thanks Angela. I'm waiting in trepidation for the coming week's theme - it's sure to be the stuff of nightmares. :)

Jean
 
Sorry for commenting on this twice Jean but I said it was "fine" and that kind of eats at me, its way more than fine, its excellent. I think I was engrossed in you story behind the image and presumed that is what lent it weight, It stands up very well on its own.

Its taken a couple of looks but its a great image, would not look out of place in a magazine.

Class swot this week me thinks.
 
Hyster said:
Sorry for commenting on this twice Jean but I said it was "fine" and that kind of eats at me, its way more than fine, its excellent. I think I was engrossed in you story behind the image and presumed that is what lent it weight, It stands up very well on its own.

Its taken a couple of looks but its a great image, would not look out of place in a magazine.

Class swot this week me thinks.
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Awww, thanks, Hyster. You're very kind. :$ :)

It's the first time I've been called the class swot, though - I was always one of the 'could do better if she tried' brigade. :lol:

Jean
 
Great back story, and superb shot Jean. I really like it, the Votre Amie is fine just where it is. As for being too easy... Nah.. getting them right is never easy, sometimes the idea strikes and it feels easy.

Well done :clap:
 
Now that was so very well done....:clap:

You have captured this theme beautifully this week...:thumbs:

and has always a lovely story behind it...:love:

Well done Miss Class Swot...:lol:
 
jgs001 said:
As for being too easy... Nah.. getting them right is never easy, sometimes the idea strikes and it feels easy.

Well done :clap:
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Thanks for the kind comments, John. Week 15 strikes with a vengence - I'm struggling big time. :eek:

Spartacus said:
Now that was so very well done....:clap:

You have captured this theme beautifully this week...:thumbs:

and has always a lovely story behind it...:love:

Well done Miss Class Swot...:lol:
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Aww - thank you kindly. (blushes bright red!)

I'm getting worried about this 'Miss Class Swot' bit, though. It could ruin my street cred for ever. :lol: :rules:

Jean
 
Great image Jean. Like the dof. I really enjoyed reading the story behind the image too :thumbs:
 
Really nice shot, Jean. I love the way the focal point is on Votre amie. I was mildly impressed that I remembered what that meant too ;-)

I hope that knowing what you're going to do straight away isn't going to turn in to a trend. That would leave me terribly vexed!!
 
Before you read this - please see my comment to Dizzy above!

The stirring of those little grey cells has been a murky, cruel and painful process.

The process involved:

'duo' - what the hell can you do with that! (apologies to the person who suggested it :)). Two .... what? .... people/dogs/cars/books/flowers/fingers (mmmm - getting dangerous - don't go there :naughty: ) So let's see that's 1, 2, 3,4,5,6 things I've though of - no inspiration.

Check dictionary for ideas (not near computer). 'Duo' IS NOT LISTED AS A PROPER WORD (in my Oxford Dictionary) W H A T !!!

Recover from shock.

Well what begins with 'duo'. Not a lot. Ahhh - 'duodecimal' (I do like new words):

it means: 'of twelve or twelfths, proceeding by twelves' So that's it then - twelve of .... well, thhhiiiinnnngs...:shrug: Lots of stuff to count. Ahhh - counting. People who count for a living are 'bean counters' (Apologies to any accountants, etc on TP)


Hope you're still with me ...

So here is my perception of 'Bean Counting in Twelves' or 'Duodecimal Bean Counting for Beginners' :D

DSC_2429LR.jpg


And for those of you who thought I was the class swot last week, I reclaim my rightful position as class dunce because this was my first effort:

DSC_2408LR1.jpg



D'oh :bang:

Lessons learned:

1 I can't count (obviously!)

2 Beans don't line up neatly - they skitter and slide all over the place.

3 Beans vary in size so even if you could get them to line up it would still look odd.

4 If you're scraping the very dregs of the barrel in Week 15, what's Week 52 going to be like. Am I in danger of getting banned for indecent scraping of barrel? :eek: (All those new Mods :rules:)

5 Photographically, I struggled with composition - too much empty space, not enough interest, etc.

6 Earlier problems with variable light source (ie the sun) haven't gone away.

Please feel free to criticise - and thanks for looking. :)

Jean

Most of the beans have now found their way into little pots of compost in the greenhouse. :-)
 
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Firstly I would like to say that I love the concept! I'm off to the zoo tommorrow and plan to get a simple duo pic from there so not thinking complicated at all!!!

I also like the idea of the shot with the beans (which have a great colour and texture) and the writing which shows how the beans have been sorted into columns of four which add to 24 in total. (nice handwriting too by the way)

My only slight niggle, and it is slight is the focus. Without the two photgraphs, I wouldn't have got the writing, and I would have liked to have seen all of the beans in focus.

That said both pictures meet the theme, are interesting, and have me exploring whats going on. So im my humble opinion that means they work.

:clap: :clap: :clap:
 
I love the thinking behind and how you came to get such a great link to what was, I found, a rather hard subject t actually get a shot for.

Well done :clap: :clap: !!

I love love the simplicity of the shot, the neatness and the difference in colouring/compared to DOF of the beans :thumbs:
I keep going back to look at this shot, is ace :D


EDIT: I can't count either, and it took me ages to figure why the first attempt was wrong :lol:
 
I like it Jean, I can't count obviously, and I can't see what's wrong either :thinking:
 
I love the thought process that got you this shot Jean.... thanks for sharing. :clap:

The picture itself is very well executed, I really like the dof and the colours of the beans are superb. :thumbs:

Took me a while to spot the deliberate mistake....got it in the end.:bonk:

Mark:thumbs:
 
Its a good take on what I think is a really difficult theme this week - if not THE most difficult so far!

Nicely set up and shot, good light and clarity :)

And it took me a while to see it even though the mistake is in plain view :D
 
Dark Star said:
Its a good take on what I think is a really difficult theme this week - if not THE most difficult so far!

Nicely set up and shot, good light and clarity :)
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I agree, well done Jean:clap:
 
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