Tag Archives: Flickr

SAN BORJA – HDR on Flickr

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SAN BORJA

SAN BORJA,
originally uploaded by werdugo.

This is a fantastic example of the good quality pictures HDR processing can produce – sadly, it is not a picture I took!

It captures a wide range of colours and light, making the picture stand out against the normal “digital” photography people have become used to.

The best bit is this picture does this without creating the strange, otherworldly impression that some HDR pictures have. While I am actually a fan of the hyper-real tone mapping effects on HDR pictures, they can be overused. For me, when a photo has lots of vegetation the HDR looks better if it is more natural.

If you have a flickr account, drop by this guy and tell him what you think of his pictures.

[tags]Flickr, HDR, Photos, Pictures, Photographs, Photography, High Dynamic Range, Photoshop, Photomatix, Picture Editing, Digital Photography, Photo Editing[/tags]

Pinhole Camera Photography

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chijmes01.jpg

chijmes01.jpg,
originally uploaded by Jeff @ 8Banner Cams.

My recent visits to flickr have uncovered another new (to me anyway) source of some fantastic photography.

This time is in the “Pinhole Photography” section and by the looks of things this is legitimately pinhole – rather than the poor by comparison ones I tried with the help of photoshop.

This photo was taken with a large format (4×5″) camera and a six second exposure. The quality and effect of the photo are amazing. One of the main advantages of pinhole cameras is the massive depth of field, and here it is shown to great effect.

One day, if I win the lottery for example, I may be tempted into actually buying a pinhole camera but until then, I think I will have to make do with photoshop. Either way, if I could produce pictures like this I would be proud.

[tags]Photoshop, Pictures, Flickr, Pinhole, Pinhole Cameras, Cameras, Photos, Photography, Digital Cameras, Photo editing, Pinhole Photography, Singapore[/tags]

Free Digital Calendars

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Ok, it might not be as good a bargain as it sounds but these really are free 🙂

Continuing my exploration around flickr, and thanks to Alun Salt, I came across “fd’s Flickr Toys” – one of which allows you to take your flickr images and convert them into calendars. Not being one to miss out on the chance to play with “gadgety” stuff like this, I had to give it a try. As a result, I now have three images you can download and use as desktop calendars (or if you are browsing this with a mobile device, you can use these as backgrounds – if you have a big phone…). All three images are saved as JPEG files and are 1280×1024 pixels in size.

Unlike most images here, these will not open in a lightbox but will open as the full image. If you want to use them, I suggest you go along the lines of a right click and “save target as” or “save link as” (or whatever your chosen browser does to save the target of a link rather than the thumbnail image).

October CalendarNovember CalendarDecember Calendar

And now I will return to finding more odd Flickr things 🙂

[tags]Photos, Flickr, fds Flickr Toys, Calendars, Free Gifts, Wallpaper, Digital Images, Technology, Fun, Fun Things[/tags]

lewes street

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lewes street

lewes street,
originally uploaded by djsosumi.

Again, continuing my wander through Flickr, I came across a thread which was discussing “your most popular HDR image.”

In this discussion people were posting HDR images which flickr had rated as their most “interesting” – this is something Flickr works out by how many page views a picture gets, how many comments and how many times it is tagged as a favourite by some one.

Oddly, some of the pictures are pretty tame – especially when compared to some of the fantastic HDR ones. This picture (oddly the first one in the thread) is probably the one “I” think is the best HDR picture but some of the others are amazing as well.

It seems that with HDR some subjects are more suited than others – brightly coloured cars produce some amazing effects as do boats and Gothic architecture, but fruit (apples) seems to end up pretty pedestrian. Oddly, I am not sold on the HDR elephants either, but I like pictures of elephants in general.

Anyway, now it is time to work on my HDRs and see what I can produce.

Meerkats Posing

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Meerkats Posing

Meerkats Posing,
originally uploaded by chi liu.

Blimey – there I was looking round Flickr for inspiration and I came across this picture of some Meerkats (Suricata Suricatta).

Needless to say, this photo managed to break every “cute meter” on the planet. As far as flickr animal pictures go, it certainly has drawn some interest with hundreds of people adding it as a favourite (quite rightly so) and zillions of people leaving comments.

Oddly, for the zealots who write photography magazines, this picture has drawn so much praise despite it being reasonably “pedestrian” as far as technical skill goes. Just goes to show that all the rules in the world don’t count when you can take a fantastic photograph.

This certainly is a fantastic photograph.

[tags]Photos, flickr, meerkats, pictures, photographs, Digital Photos, Suricata Suricatta, Photography, Digital Photography, Animals, Cute[/tags]

Norber Boulder

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Norber Boulder

Norber Boulder,
originally uploaded by Ian G7KXV.

This is a stunning photograph taken in the Yorkshire dales by Ian G7KXV. This really appeals to me as a photo and I love the way the clouds work around the sun and the boulders. Apparently (according to flickr) this was taken with a Nikon D80 DSLR and it has gone a long way to influencing my choice of camera 🙂

Anyway, the main purpose for this post is to whine about flickr. Today I finally cracked and tried to upgrade to a pro account. I dutifully entered all my details as required and pressed “next.” Flickr realised I had made the mistake of selecting “Master Card” when I mean “Visa” and asked me to re-enter the card number. When I did, I was presented with a pop up page telling me that those card details were “already known” to flickr (or Yahoo, not sure which) and could I use a different card.

What madness. What does “already known” mean?

Given the furore about e-Commerce, and the emphasis placed on it by organisations such as flickr (which, surely, would cease to exist without it), why is it so bloody difficult to buy anything?

I need a holiday

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Disney Castle at Night

Disney Castle at Night,
originally uploaded by WarAxe.

I look at pictures like this (found on flickr) and it just reminds me how much I need to get away on holiday. The picture is gorgeous and pretty much captures all the Magic Kingdom castle in all it’s glory. If you have never been it is well worth a visit. Seriously. If you have kids, all the better — at least then you get less strange looks…

It has been over two years since I had an overseas holiday, and all I have had in that time is five day breaks to various parts of the UK! At least the breaks have let me take loads of photos of various castles and the like, but I am sure you can agree, it really is not the same.

I am toying with going to Florida for my holidays around the end of September / start of October. Does any one have any local knowledge which could be useful?

Would it be better for me to arrange things like car hire in the UK before I go (and go flights only) or are Fly-Drives discounted enough to make that worth while?

[tags]Disney, Holiday, Vacation, Castles, Florida, Photos, Photographs, Flickr, Disneyworld, Walt Disney, Magic Kingdom, Fly-Drive[/tags]

More on the Moon

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After admitting my failure with a point and shoot (although the camera is more than good enough for my every day use), I found a blog which shows some of the benefits of having proper equipment.

There you can see a much better quality picture (the joys of tripods) and links to three more images on Flickr – all of which are excellent.

If I had the money I’d buy a Cannon with all the tools 🙂 (If you feel bad about my poverty feel free to Paypal me!)

. . . then why are there still humans?

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...then why are there still humans?
…then why are there still humans?,
originally uploaded by Alun Salt.

Another great Creationist trading card from Alun Salt. At the start of the year I made a post about some of his other trading cards and this seems to be one of the newer ones.

These are funny and really well put together – it would almost be worth printing them out and trying to get WoTC to make a game out of it!

Pink Flower

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StourheadFlower

StourheadFlower,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Today, I added a new plugin to the blog which is designed to change the way Flickr posts are blogged.

In the past, as soon as I pressed on “post entry” the post was available on the blog, and I had to quickly do any editing required – things like adding tags / categories or tidying up the oddness of Flickr.

Hopefully, the installation of The Flickr Blog This to Draft plugin will change things and now I can make sure it is exactly as I want it before it publishes. If you can see this with Technorati Tags (and in the Photos category) then it worked.

Normal Anti-Religion service will resume soon!

Wonders of Photoshop

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Statue of Neptune at StourheadFrom the wonders of Photoshop is this slightly enhanced statue at Stourhead. Basically all I have done is a box blur on the background, a slight enhancement of the white levels of the statue and increased saturation and contrast.

Personally, I think it looks quite nice and I look forward to the day when the crazy monotheistic religions are overhauled and we all get back to worshipping the likes of Neptune (or Poseidon if you are feeling particularly classical today).

We should get back to a time when Gods were proper Gods, not the wet blankets we have today. More thunderstorms! Anyway, all joking aside, I would have liked to have shown the original for comparison but in a fit of foolishness, I saved the changed file JPG over the original. Doh.