[normhead]

Inspired by a couple of quotes from the last week.

I own a photography gallery and lab. The photographers with the best/most competent showing in the galleries never talk about their cameras or lenses, only about their images and their projects.

Read more at: My Canon to Pentax experience: Why I love Pentax, but might still leave. - Page 2 - PentaxForums.com

I'm proud to be an Ambassador for Pentax, and rarely check in on the Forum, as there's too much whining and not enough sharing of locations, tips, and usable insights. That's my take.

Read more at: Pentax K-1 Mark II DSLR camera detailed specifications leaked - Page 18 - PentaxForums.com

1. Rules...

1. Feel free to share any tips, your mindset going into a project, image related to the project and your thoughts on them.
2. This is about what your current photographic focus is, and any things you might think are your original "takes" on the subject.
3. No whining. You made your bed, sleep in it.
4. It doesn't matter what you are shooting with.
5. No trashing gear or any part of it. People pay good money in the systems they select. Bad mouthing their choice is rude and disrespectful. In some forums it will earn you a lifetime ban. It doesn't matter what camera you choose to bad mouth, somebody here owns one.

Of particular note are good shooting locations, places you go back to over and over, and samples of the photos you get there. This should be the everything but gear thread. Composition, shooting modes, strategies for getting "the shot", post processing, is all fair game. But, no gear talk or speculation on camera companies or product. This is for what you are doing or would like to do, with what you own.

Hopefully, a thread about shooting pictures, not gear.

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Last edited by normhead; 02-18-2018 at 07:32 AM.

[mattt]

My kids are too old to be cute, the cat and I dont see eye to eye, my dog passed away, and my wife told me where she'd stick the camera if I made pictures of her... so I am currently grasping some of the nuances of shooting birds. - catch light, - no food in mouth, - interesting composition, and the most challenging learning behaviour. Credit where credit is due.. its a challenging proposition, and a good way to while away the mornings while SWMBO is tuned into Olympics...

[normhead]

Thank god for birds, "If you feed us we will come."
I find watching bird behaviour pretty interesting. It definitely makes the time photographing them more enjoyable. My biggest tip for birds would be, take something to sit on, you might be there a while. That also can be true for other wildlife.

[UncleVanya]

Pulling up a chair and settling in. I don't have any current projects and I'm interested in hearing yours.

[jacamar]

Good idea for a thread Norm. It would be good if shooting locations could be organized by State, country or whatever to help make them searchable for future visitors.
No food in mouth? I suppose a sunflower seed in a chickadee's beak might betray the illusion of a bird wandering wild and free, but often food can make a shot a bit more interesting (examples previously posted).

[ChatMechant]

I'm just starting a project with a friend where one of us shoots a roll and sends it to the other who then re-shoots over it for a mystery double exposure. It's been a fun way to go out and take photos, wondering, what are they going to shoot over this? Often it's just weird but sometimes it turns out really neat.

[normhead]

Good idea for a thread Norm. It would be good if shooting locations could be organized by State, country or whatever to help make them searchable for future visitors.

I'm not sure how we would set that up... any mods around? It certainly would be better to do it before we get a lot of posts.

---------- Post added 02-18-18 at 11:27 AM ----------

I'm just starting a project with a friend where one of us shoots a roll and sends it to the other who then re-shoots over it for a mystery double exposure. It's been a fun way to go out and take photos, wondering, what are they going to shoot over this? Often it's just weird but sometimes it turns out really neat.

That's probably the most bizarre photo project I've ever heard of. But back in my film days, some of my favourite images were double exposed rolls. But I always did it by accident.

[jatrax]

My current project is catching up on my image backlog. Life has interfered and I found that I was somewhat behind. I usually pull a few frames from every outing or shoot to work with but the last few years the bulk seem to have just gotten submerged in the new.

So I am now going through my backlog: culling, processing, sorting to purpose, keywording and sending to agencies those that meet the grade.

I just finished last night our September 2013 Yellowstone trip. The initial group from that trip was in excess of 10,000 frames. When I finished last night I had 1,429 left. Of those 449 were uploaded to agencies for sale, 5 were added to my print portfolio and the rest are family pictures or seconds that I felt I wanted to keep. I still have about 100 images of various elk that I kept but in all honestly they were none of them really all that good and they might eventually go as well.

---------- Post added 02-18-18 at 08:44 AM ----------

It also just occurred to me that if I spent more time processing pictures and less time hanging out on this forum maybe I would not be so far behind......................

[normhead]

It also just occurred to me that if I spent more time processing pictures and less time hanging out on this forum maybe I would not be so far behind......................

If I think about all the things I could have accomplished if not hanging out on the forum, it's just mind boggling.
That should be a tip... "Set a half hour timer when you start on the forum, and leave when it goes off."

The above picture actually reminds me of being at Yellowstone, I've sen so many Yellowstone pictures that don't.

[catfishjohn]

A portable camo ground blind. Set up well in advance with seating and tripod inside. Plan for in frame background and sun angle in advance of placing the blind. A hunting blind from a sporting goods store fills the need nicely. The route into and out of the blind should be planned for minimum impact on wildlife.

[jatrax]

The above picture actually reminds me of being at Yellowstone, I've sen so many Yellowstone pictures that don't.

Thank you. It is quite hard to capture what it feels like to be there. The scale of things is so vast that images either show snippets with no frame of reference or too much that simply shows nothing.

[honey bo bo]

The "everything but gear talk" thread. What's your project, what's your take on it?

My Projects are 2 fold - Grand Babies & Wild Life . I'll back up to 7 years ago when the Wheels fell off Health Wise and changed my Life from an extreme Outdoorsman to a self pitying Indoorsman. I worried constantly about every pain that I felt; the the End was near. Then about 3 or 4 years ago I said thats not me thats never been me! I loaded up almost all my gear to take to our summer cottage to get back into a hobby that I loved. That night a punk broke into my Truck & stole everything. The Insurance Bought me the very latest replacement Gear to the Tune of $9200.00 . That takes care of my gear for the rest of my life and I am not waiting for the next costly releases ; but I still would like to find the Thief and take him out to a thankyou dinner (Anything he wants off the Kiddy Menue).
At the same time we were blessed with Grand babies coming out the Wazzoo from 0 to 4 and I realized that I didn't have to go deep into the Boreal Forest to capture Wildlife anymore. Thunder Bay is loaded with Wildlife every where in the City Limits. Over 500 reportable accidents a year between Deer & Vehicles. Moose , Bears Cougars ,Wolves, Lynx, Raccoons, Fox , Beaver, Muskrat etc. roam the city's pavement & Green Space. I have even seen a Wolf trying to bring down a big Doe in the CNR railway yard. No picture but almost a head on while I was Gawking at the scene on my way to Swiss Chalet. Something I had never seen in all my travels in the Boreal. There are over 80 Bald Eagles permanently stationed at the City dump (even when its -40C). Makes a better picture when they are flying or when they are in the surrounding trees. Most of my shooting is restricted to my back deck or the Windows of my Truck but the opportunities are endless and the projects are growing. And I am starting to dabble in another Project "Abstracts" I'll always have my Basics - Landscapes & Low Light I love these kind of threads and will always post examples of my pictorial essays and the Pixal Peepers & Technocrats be Damned .

[Dartmoor Dave]

I'm lucky enough to live with the bleakly beautiful Dartmoor landscape right on my doorstep, and my photographic project is still what it has always been: to try to capture that landscape the way it really looks, rather than in a way that conforms to contemporary clichés of what a "landscape photograph" should look like.

It's the aspect of modern photography that I struggle most to understand: why do people come to this amazing place and then photograph it in a way that has no resemblance to the reality of it? Why can I type "Dartmoor" into Flickr on any given morning and find photos of a blazing red sunset from the evening before, when I was out on the moor myself and know that it was actually just the pale pink that we usually get? How do people always manage to make even the grass look the wrong flippin' colour?

People don't seem to come here and think, "How can I capture this moment in this place the way it is?" Instead they always seem to be thinking: "How can I distort this scene to make it look the way the internet tells me a landscape photo should look?"

The photographers whose work I admire are almost never the ones using the latest greatest gear. The ones I admire are the ones who show me their own world truthfully in the way in the way that they see it themselves.

[jumbleview]

After long interval I decided to return to the film. Here is one of recent images (shot with Pentax MX/m50(1.7) Bergger Pancro 400, scanned by Pentax K-01 (35mm limited) and processed by Exposure X2)

[robgski]

I actually use a timer when I am on the internet, it isagood way to remind myself that I am often wasting time otherwise.

Since I am currently working long hours in a situation with limited photography ops, I have been planning projects in my head.