I love the third (this one), especially.

Jeremy

Both taken last year, but only processed recently:


Dawn Fog in the Hayden Valley on the Yellowstone River


Portrait of a Priest in Lalibela, Ethiopia

Good point. There's another thread, "Abstraction in Landscape Photography". Jonathan's blurred image would not be out of place there.

Jonathan,
Thanks for providing another fine example of the 'straw man' argument. But this time, you've been a bit creative and have extended the conept to "straw image' argument.

If you could buy cameras that took photos that much out of focus, I'm sure Ken would never have written that article. The fact is, you can't buy cameras that bad. They don't exist. The only way you can get a result like that is to blur it in Photoshop, deliberately misfocus or be a complete incompetent behing the camera; hence another fine example of the Straw Man argument. You're getting good at this .

I've got a postcard size print somewhere of one of the first shots I took with my first camera, the Kodak Brownie 127, around 1955. It's a close-up of a gladiolus and was entered by my father in the local camera club for criticism.

It's much, much sharper than your top image. Would you like to see it? I could dig out the negative and scan it, just so we can see what a sharp result the old Brownie was capable of .

On the contrary, I have just proved that sharpness does to some degree affect the artistic merits of an image. Sharpness may enhance or detract from the artistic merits of a given image, and it is not the most significant factor involved, but in no case is it irrelevant. You have to have some sharpness to have a meaningful image, even one as blurred as my example. If there is no sharpness at all, the image can only be a single solid colored shape.

Can we go back to showing our work ?

Thanks.

As I've already mentioned, nobody has ever marketed a camera that takes photos as blurred as your example. At least not in my lifetime, and I doubt even in the 19th century when the technology was in its infancy. Even an impressionistic painter would produce a sharper image than that.

I don't generally find images that are totally blurred interesting, although blurring to indicate movement can be interesting and blurring of distracting elements in the composition is a good technique.

All cameras are capable of producing sufficient sharpness to create a meaningful image.

I've found the B&W negative of one of my first photographic attempts with my Brownie box camera taken around the age of 12-14. I'm away from my Nikon 8000ED MF scanner at the moment (the film is larger than 35mm) so I'm unable to scan it, but the flower looks quite sharp and the background is suitably out of focus.

Please give it a rest Jonathan!!!
There are plenty of threads here full of techno-nonsense. You can continue your sharpness sermon in one of those.
Let's pay heed to the original purpose of this thread.

I think it's fair to point out that Ray is the one who went off-topic and brought a debate going on in another thread here. Now back to the original topic:

Canary Wharf, London



O2 Arena, London


Rouen Cathedral, France


I remember when...

From a recent trip to the Eastern Sierras.


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Not correct, Jonathan. We're both at fault, but it was you who started the off-topc discussion with the following remark.



Just for the record .

Please note that I was replying to another post. And you are the one who decided to make a big deal out of it. Just for the record. Now back to the images:



This is a building I worked in while stationed in Baumholder, Germany. It was built during World War II by the Germans, and shows it.

This is from La Gomera, in the Canary Islands:

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And this one is Navarra, Selva de Irati

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A few recent pics.









Cropped to protect the person












http://s232.photobucket.com/albums/ee47/FineArt_photo/

Two pictures from my last trip in Puerto Rico.

Two points of view of the same Island.

B&W :


HDR :

We should not forget to look up! This was taken on a walk that was interupted by hail, sleet and rain showers. The smallest branches are nice and sharp.

This looks great printed on Hanemhule Baryta paper.

I guess da copz wants the gangstas to know where they crib iz...

Reminds me of a small town in Ontario that has an 'Easy Street'. No photo of it though...

Mike.

Edina has a Lois Lane. (I think it is near Penny Lane.)

A quickie from today


Mike

From a corporate shoot yesterday in Eskilstuna .

Chesterman Beach at Tofino, Vancouver Island


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The view from Poon Hill, Ghorepani, Nepal, just after dawn. For those interested in the mountain names, from right to left you see:

Machupichre 6993M, Hiunchuli 6441M, Annapurna South 7219M (the tallest looking in the photo due to perspective), The Fang (Bara Shikhar) 7647M, then near to the left but not far left, is a group which I guess is Nilgiri North, Central and South, ranging in height from 6839 -7061M.

If anone wants to dispute these names, let me know.

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Not taken recently, but recently processed. 2 stitched 5D shots with Sigma 15-30 zoom at 30mm.

Nice. Is that the one you were playing with (read: testing stitching software with) a while ago?

Thanks! It's from the same batch, some of which I've shown before, but a different perspective and composition. I see these as problem images that don't quite work, but I think maybe I can get them to work with the right processing in PS.

If I'd known at the time that Autopano Pro would soon have been available in its current form, I would not have bothered stuffing around with my ultra-lightweight, ball-head tripod that is really not stable enough for the 5D with rather heavy and bulky Sigma 15-30 zoom, and definitely not suitable for panorama stitching purposes because of the ball-head.

It's the sort of place I'd like to revisit and do a better job, but it takes an awful lot of walking to get there .

Many excellent contributions so far. Here's my modest contributions:

Windsurfer

Country Road Cyclist

Golden Gate Bridge

and a Tulip

Interesting compositions, Tony. I particularly like the Coutry Road Cyclist because we have in fact two photos for the price of one, yet both photos would be diminished if they were separate. This is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

The Windsurfer is a good example of relevance to the recent discussion on Michael's DoF article. If you'd used a longer telephoto lens from a greater distance, the paragliders would have appeared bigger and fuzzier in the scene.

Perhaps I should have just zoomed in on his head and foregone the rest of the scene in pursuit of some idealized DOF; or I could have gone back to the parking lot and shot from above instead of at the water's edge and there would have been only green water in the background and no sky at all. Anyway, I have better Windsurfer and Kiteboarder shots and the distractions are just the way the chips fall sometimes, but since this was supposed to be a thread about "Recent Works" with a smaller format I thought the sequence was apt because it was recent and the first 3 frames occurred in 6/10 of a second -- if I had known it was going to be a continuation of a discussion I explicitly wrote I would have nothing more to contribute to, then I would not have replied here.

Here's a close-up of the peak on the far right in my previous panorama, Machupichre (Machupuchare, Machapuchare, whatever), taken with my 100-400 IS zoom at 200mm, a little after dawn.

This peak, 6993M, looks very difficult to climb. As far as I understand, it's one of the few unconquered mountains. At least, if someone has climbed it, they are not boasting about it. It's a scared mountain and according to Nepalese law, it's illegal to climb it.

I came across the following background information doing a Google search.



Here's my glimse of it from a height of 3,000M at Poon Hill.

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To get one back at you, on behalf of Tony,.... How are we supposed to interpret that one?!?

Regardless, an impressive image anyway. Now don't be telling me you took that with a point and shoot!

A good P&S like the Canon G9 would have been just fine in the circumstances, considering I had to get up at 4 am for a 2 hour hike up an 800 metre hill in the dark to catch the rising sun .

As it was, all the camera gear I was carrying slowed me down. I got to the summit a bit late. The sun was already rising. My lens kept misting over due to the cold air. Setting up my flimsy tripod which is not high enough and trying to find a firm footing for it caused me to miss a few good shots.

The G9 at f2.8 has about the same DoF as the 5D at f13 and a shutter speed at ISO 100 about the same as what I would get at ISO 1600 with the 5D at f13.

Autopano Pro can stitch and merge to HDR in the one process. If I'd been carrying a G9, the basic technical quality of the images might have suffered slightly, but the shots might have been more interesting.

Or maybe you should just get up earlier, or get a bit fitter...

There are lots of options. It's the result that counts.

Maybe this shot is more interesting; street photography with flash.

Canon 5D, 24-105 zoom at 45mm; ISO 100, F5.6 1/200th .

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A recent favourite of mine and unusually [for me] in a studio.
5D, processed in LR and sharpened in PS.
No Exif data to hand, but I think it was 50mm @ F2 with Elinchroms 100 ISO.

Now that's what I call a shallow DoF.

This guy looks extremely 'fed up', angry and disillusioned. Good shot!

But here, perhaps, is a nicer, more appealing shot, to soothe the soul.

Another street photo. Notice the Adam's Apple?

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I also needed a couple of smiling shots of some people from this shoot and his 'laughs' were very, very peculiar/bizarre/freaky. Just as well some others could do happy. Though this was my joint favourite shot.

I though the chap in the previous shot had big balls, that hadn't dropped! So to speak.

There were several chaps in the previous shot. Which one are you referring to?

No need to answer that .

Well, I hope these glimses of transvestites' boob jobs have not put anyone off this thread. We get a few nudes in the MFDB section, ya know!

Here's a recent reworking of a scene from Poon Hill showing what was considered once to be the highest mountain in the world, at the beginning of the 19th century. A whole generation of Westerners, including Americans, were under this delusion for about 30 years.

The mountain, Dhaulagiri, in the centre of the left half of the picture is actually the highest mountain in Nepal at 8,167M. Everest straggles Tibet and Nepal.

Mt Everest was first surveyed by the British (of course) in 1865. The local Nepalese name, Sagarmartha, actually means "Godess of the Sky", a slightly more alluring name than Everest, wouldn't you say?

The guy who surveyed the "Godess of the Sky", ex army officer Andrew Waugh who was Surveyor General of India at the time, with typical British modesty named the mountain after his predecessor, George Everest.

Dhaulaigiri, actually the 7th highest mountain in the world, simply means White Mountain, although there is some other Sanskrit derivation of 'mountain' that means 'girl'. Is there some sexual symbolism going on here? .

Generally, I find it difficult to portray the emotion of such scenes in a mere photograph. I keep reworking it in Photoshop, hoping some day I shall get closer to the experience.

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There were some nice pussies in that section too!



Here's one I took today of Loki

1/200th@f3.2 1600ISO, 70mm

And this is Ianto


1/320th@f3.2 1600ISO, 32mm


1/160th@f3.2 1600ISO, 50mm
Both new arrivals and I think we will delay replacing the carpets until they've calmed down a bit.

Street photo you say. What street do you live on, Pat Pong Avenue?

I didn't say I lived in this street. The last time I was in the vicinity of Pat Pong Rd I saw mums & dads with their toddlers ambling down the road, just looking and occasionally buying from the market stalls that basically fill the whole street and get in your way.

The above street shot you refer to was actually taken in Bangla Rd, Phuket. I don't live there either, but I guess I could if I wanted to .

Recent studio session with my friend Ethan:

Canon 1DMarkIII - 50mm macro



*steve

A couple more:


Light and Stone, Christ Church, Mainz


Late Afternoon Reflections, Yellowstone River

5d + 55mm 1.8 smc supertakumar


and a landscape in andalucia...on the right is a shepherd and his sheep. To see all the details, I´d have to post this way bigger than this. Oh well. Shot on a 5d with 24-70 f2.8 L

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Lichen, test shot really with the 1Ds3 and zf35. Stil thinking about the tonalities.

Recent snap. D200 Super Takumar 50mm 1.4