Crikey.
My brother got into photography a year or so ago & got himself a 400d.
Its really funny comparing our Flickr accounts. While mine is full of pics of kids pics, bike bits & silly nonsense, his has some pretty good stuff in.
What d’ya think STW photo-experts…CLICK[/url]

Some fantastic shots!

Not many people realise how much more creative you can be with a proper SLR (or other prosumer camera). Obvioulsy an understanding of how to compose a shot has nothing to do with the kit, but the results your bro has produced shows he has a creative streak and has gotten to grips with the additional flexibility of a proper camera.

Makes me want to shell out £500 on a DSL. If only I had the cash to flash!

Great shots there, wish I knew what I was doing with my camera

Wow, plenty of great shots in there. Very nice indeed. Just realised I’ve looked at a number of his photos before, and was very impressed the last time!

It’s funny though, whenever I look at photos on flickr, of that sort of standard, i notice they all have a very similar feel to them. Perhaps its just the photoshop/processign afterwards, and the “flickrites” use similar techniques/insipre one another, but they feel very Flickr-ish.

Not that it’s a problem for me but there is a LOT of photoshop going on there. A 400d won’t just take photos like that no matter who you are…

Yeah, they are all photoshop cheats! :lol:

Spongebob – so called “cheating” was going on long before photoshop was invented. It was called “darkroom”.

If you look back into history, there were multiple exposure pictures (sky and foreground) merged back in 1850’s!

Also pretty much every famous photographer has retouched their pictures, toning them in the printing room, bleaching negatives etc. Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon pop straight into my mind, hundreds other to follow…

I don’t see whats the fuss with people using photoshop. Good pictures come from ideas, execution, and post processing.

not entirely, sure he’s boosting saturation and contrast a little bit, plus adjusting levels but the compositions are spot on and he’s taking his pics in the very best light (lots of early mornings and late nights in there!). He’s also using a wide angle lens to very good effect, really good stuff :D

very heavy handed with the HDR and hue/saturation, seems to be the in-thing on flickr these days.

Better than the shots i get with my 400d :(

Still all mine are of sexy ladies with no clothes on so swings and roundabouts :lol:

That guy knows how to take a picture.

He has some good ones of Nairn as well! I thought I recognised the harbour wall.

The squirrel one is great, I liked them a lot.

very heavy handed with the HDR and hue/saturation

not sure it is HDR though, is it?

not sure it is HDR though, is it?

the hypersaturation and moody skies with halos around dark edges are the hallmarks of over zealous tone-mapping in photomatix or similar HDR programs.

not dabbled in HDR myself, I prefer to use ND filters and the like, so not sure hoe to spot ‘the signs’ :D Here’s one of mine for the heck of it:

hmmm… that’s a bit dark on here for some reason :(

Reckon I can turn my non SLR shots into ones like that, it’s not the camera its the person behind it and he seems to have a good eye and skills with the computer to make the most of them. Very nice.

the hypersaturation and moody skies with halos around dark edges are the hallmarks of over zealous tone-mapping in photomatix or similar HDR programs.

Snore….

I think they’re great. I’ve added him as a contact on flickr. Who cares if he’s doing any photoshopping or HDR or whatever-the-****. If I like the end result that’s all I care about.

Some of them are great but I really do hate HDR.

For the record – I never had a problem with the photoshopping, just pointing it out to those mistakenly blown away by what an SLR can “do”

Oh and not hating on SLRs either – I actually use one most of the time.

My sister’s boyfriend got into photography in a big way a couple of years ago. We’ve some great photos of our kids that he’s taken. Some of his others are online at http://www.afowler.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

well it’s obvious that a lot of those are HDR, but they’re good examples – not too over the top and heavy handed. it does create a nice effect, but perhaps gets a bit repetitive.

good stuff in his portfolio, though, without a doubt.

Just to throw in an opinion…the guy clearly has a lot of talent for seeing and composing excellent pictures. An SLR can help in the creative process and achieving a particular shot but you really don’t need an SLR to make great pictures. (<– clicky)

jon

No but it does open up creative avenues that can’t really be explored on compacts. In particular extreme wide angle lenses.

I can’t personally see much in the way of HDR. There’s a couple of blended exposures (sky and ground) or use of ND grad filters. There’s also plenty of long exposures (one of my fave pastimes) And you can clearly see the progression in their photostream over the past year. Great work and they should be very proud.

there are loads of HDR images?
does this look like a ‘normal’ photograph?

that’s not HDR, it’s tone mapped or blended exposure. The highlighting around the trees suggests blending to me.

edit: he may actually just be using the lighting compensation controls in Photoshop, they makes pictures turn out like that.

There are not loads of images. I reckon 5 or 6 HDR in the entire photostream.

*this* is HDR

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daza_t/3423409101/

The funny thing is that I dont understand why people dont like HDR (when it’s done right) and claim its repetitive/not proper photos. Proper photos are limited by the camera, HDR images are effectively closer to what your eyes see, we’re just used to photos that lose information from a scene by badly reproducing it. Sure super-saturated images can get a bit garish but thats not a required part of HDR. If I look at a mountain scene I see the skies in detail and a I see the dark regions in detail – my eyes dont blow-out on the skies and lose the detail in the shadows without SERIOUS extremes of light – surely reproducing that is better than not?

This HDR was done matching the image on my laptop to what I could see, obviously it comes out slightly differently at home on the CRT there but not enough to really notice without concentration:

This is an HDR and tonemapped image but I tried to limit so it doesn’t have too much of that “HDR look”

This is why people hate HDR images (random sample from the flickr HDR pool)… it’s just an exmaple of bumping all settings to max in Photomatix and kinda burns the eyes. :)

personally, CK, i think it’s an interesting effect and can be very effective. i take your point about it replicating more accurately what you see but i personally find that that’s almost what i don’t like about it, in that it looks artificially different from normal photography, where the use and management of light and dark and exposure etc. has to be dealt with to create a good shot. i think my feeling is that very overt postprocessing can detract from the quality of an image, rather than enhance it – in some examples.

wish I knew what you lot are talking about

How does one go about learning?

Just get p-shop and play or would something like the open uni course be any good?

Where and how did you you guys gain such knowledge?

Where and how did you you guys gain such knowledge?

tinternet and lots of messing about…

Photography seems very like MTBing, with discussions becoming arguments. Surprised noone’s argued that his photos would be better with a Nikon yet.

How does one go about learning?

It’s all out there on the internet.

Loads of free photoshop tutorials, Flickr for inspiration, talkphotography forum for friendly advice, and of course never underestimate good old trial and error.

tfb – see where you’re coming from but to me images are to reproduce closely not only the look but the feeling of the thing you’re looking at too. In order to get all of the feeling AND appearance I think it requires the full dynamic range and sometimes over-saturation enhances the visual field and somehow evokes more of a feeling of the place.

For interests sake I tried HDRing a nice sunset, to get the detail of the mountain range that was in the picture too, it didn’t work – it lost the feeling, so the raw shot was better IMO (blatent own foto plug):

But ultimately its personal taste, everyone sees colours and tones slightly differently so everyone is going to find things more or less acceptable depending on the colours and tones used!

The main problem I find with HDR is getting the correct exposures to blend nicely, slightly too much off the top can screw up an image and create nasty patches of oddness, I’m currently working on a script for my camera (CHDK) to automatically assess the dynamic range needed and grab the required number of shots at the required exposures.

Photography seems very like MTBing, with discussions becoming arguments. Surprised noone’s argued that his photos would be better with a Nikon yet.

That’s because surely everyone knows that Canon’s are better?

ck – quite old now (’04 I think I took this) :D

Thanks all.
I’ve heard him mention HDR, not sure what it is.
Wonder if I should use it next time I sell a seatpost on STW.!!! :D

psychle…beautiful photo mate.