The port by night

[ving (David)]

in gale force winds cheryl and i hit Wollongong 2 nights ago... tripods and shutter timers didnt help. still i managed a dozen or so sharp images. these are 2 from port kembla near the steel works. we are going back down in a few night time (or whenever its not blowing us into the water!)

[Lumen Miner (Mitchell)]

Interesting shots!! The first is great, the second is a corker too. Nice work!

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Good shots David. I just got the results of my recently entered comp images in the local photography club and the judge criticised one of my night images of Sydney harbour by saying that I should have taken it earlier when there was some Blue still left in the sky. Looks like you did this. Was that by luck, or did you do that by choice? I ended up getting an acceptance for this particular image, although this judge was very tough and hard to be honest - the previous 2 months judges were a lot softer and I personally think I'd have gotten a merit from either of them. My view is that the night shot or twilight shot is a personal preferance thing, and shouldn't affect judging of images based on technical merits. Since I didn't want to appear to be a sore loser, I didn't challenge him on the judging night (at least on that image).

At least I got a merit on my macro image, although it really deserved an honour imho (I did challenge him on this though, probably didn't go down too well, but since I've probably shot more macro than the entire club combined, I feel that I'm quite entitled to challenge, especially when the judge admitted that he didn't really know much about that type of genre).

There, I feel better for getting that off my chest lol!!!

Dave

[ving (David)]

lol dave. personally i agree with the person who said to go out earlier to get more blue... but it does depend on what you are trying to capture. it you go out late enough and the sky is dark enough you can get stars too which is an added bonus. the good thing about going earlier tho is that you dont need to expose for as long i guess.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Well, it was overcast (and in fact rained) on that night. It was my first attempt at night time shots too. I only had my Canon D60, so noise wasn't really great, but it was a better choice for this type of shot than the 1D I had at the time. It was my last week in Sydney, so I didn't have much choice in going back etc and re-trying the shot(s). The shot that I submitted can be seen here on my website:

http://www.macro-images.com/images/L.../CRW_1758.html

If you're not running a balanced monitor, you'll lose details under the bridge. That's not my fault If I had the chance again, I'd try his suggestion. I didn't really agree with his judging preferences I guess. Neither did my work colleagues either for that matter. *shrugs*

As to the macro shot, the reason why I didn't get an honour (top grade) was apparently cos the DOF wasn't enough. Well, I'm sorry judge, but it's impossible to get more than around 5mm of DOF with a 1:1 setting on a macro lens. Physics just doesn't allow it. Yes, I could have taken the shot at a lower magnification and cropped, but you lose resolution and sharpness of detail with that method. Yes, I could have used something like CombineZM to stack a mix of images, but again, I do not prefer that and in fact think of it as cheating. So, I got penalised for his lack of knowledge on shooting macro lol. No fair!

Dave

[ving (David)]

idont know dave... i dont think that shot would benefit from any extra blue in the sky...

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

*shrugs* neither do I. That's one of the things about competitions that I dislike - judges are human, and therefore have some element of pre conceived ideas about what they're judging, and some element of personal preferences always seems to enter the fray. ah well, my first monthly competition. The "oohs and aahs" from the members in the room told me that I must have done something right ;-)

Dave