Are You Serious Jo

They are great :D Melbourne has some awesome places.

Hmmm, will take a bit of coordination, since I'm not sure I can clone myself in the next week :laugh:

It's going to be one of the next two Saturdays coming up I guess, I've got stuff on both Saturdays, crap.

Ok, tell me when we are there where I'll be allowed to go, I don't know which area is which for trials, just been for training. I tried being discrete in the big paddock on one training session but the sheep found me :laugh:

I'll be there both days and hopefully can get some good shots for people. I've got the rottie pics sent off and I'll probably just bring the USB stick with me dova :laugh:

Probably just the wrong angle on the headband, it's hard to tell what it is and maybe too shallow a depth of field, too much is really OOF so can't see what the surroundings are. I'm stitching together some I took this morning, but I think I stuffed up a bit and didn't get overlap on a bit on one set. I seem to have lost my ability to line things up correctly I also went to the stop between 1.7 and 2.8 and it seems to really have reduced my OOF areas, even though it is still wide open. Going to be a long wait for stitching and I suspect I'll be heading back there to reshoot, again.

Crap sparky, I forgot to send those pics to you, will do that as soon as I get down to use the wifi again. Depending on what day it is I might come out but I am not sure my AF can handle it.

Very nice kitty shot CP

Are dogs run together?

Some wildlife photographers spend weeks in a hide and consider themselves lucky if they get one great shot. The good thing about digital is you can shoot for practise and it is free. When I started pre digital it ended up costing me a bomb, especially when I went to slide, which ended up costing near $50 a roll all up. I'd shoot whole rolls of film though to practise and that wasn't cheap. So now it's like being in heaven, free shooting and you can see and edit not long after. Except for issues with colour management that is, it is not my favourite thing

There's lot more to get stuck into my next obsession will be tilt shift :laugh: I think it really helps with your usual style of photography to do things you wouldn't normally do, plus I get annoyed if I think I can't do something so it drives me to keep going till I can.

I'll be there Dova, am still working on your photos, got them down to just over 100 so a bit of editing and my computer is bloody slow :laugh: Some nice ones though so it should be worth the wait.

Good job with your first time with full manual. You'll learn a lot from doing it. I love the lizard, you can still crop and have something nice, I really like that all the elements have the same hue almost.

If you saw the number of old shoddy prints I just threw away lolli you'd be patting yourself on the back. You did a good job and I hope learning lots I'm so glad everyone is posting lots because we can all learn things and have fun at the same time. I literally could talk photography all day long every day so as long so buckle up :laugh:

I think the edits are better with the path and the fence, not sure about the crop with you. I think the path needs a thing on it rather than just the path to show something solid in focus to contrast with the OOF areas. when I do a Hungry Jacks run I think I'll go back through the flickr examples and save some outstanding ones to get a handle on what really works. I just went outside but ended up putting on the tele and shooting lambs in golden light :laugh: I want a foggy morning again to get the mossy rock I was trying out. I could do a drive around tomorrow in the hills and find something else.

Oooh, there's more :D Ok, shot of the headstones needs a bit more of the area either side of the headstones I think, then it would great, it is good! Same with the fence, just a bit more extra real estate needed. By the end of this we should have this thing nailed, you are almost there I've woken up a bit now so I might wander around a bit and see if setting WB to manual clears up my exposure issue.

Lolli, you have to watch shadows when you are shooting during the day. If you can't get around it you can use a bit of fill flash, it fixes the shadow issue and evens out the light.

Yeah, I think kitty needs whiskers and ears fully in, you can get away with partial faces but only in some shots. Jr, had someone confirm they saw what I did on my pc with colour so you might be seeing what I am, I did bump her colour up a bit when I did the levels. The other portraits she had her eyes closed as it was windy, but I like her looking back in this one. Thanks snook, I've never taken shots in the fog before but my Dog is it great for portraits, the colours are amazing.

I'm tired after a couple of big days so didn't get back there, am planning on doing some more tomorrow. With the above pics, I think the first has the best feel because you can see enough of the scene in the background that is out of focus, the second is a bit sharp around the building. The third would be better I think if the model was closer giving the opportunity for more behind her OOF. The wall of trees cut it off a bit. Good job on stitching and getting all the scene in. What F stop did you have and how many pictures in each?

I did mean to say that I really liked those macros, sorry, was caught up in Jo world yesterday. Particularly the snail :D

I'm going to tweak the same picture with three different progressive editing and put them in the same canvas to see if I can get some idea of how much more I have to boost things. Very frustrating when you get things right on one screen then realise it's not accurate, I've only calibrated by eye so far with the monitor, but I'm getting the calibration tool sooner than I planned I think.

She actually does have pretty red hair so it shouldn't be brownish like I'm seeing on the laptop. I'm getting a new monitor next week so probably not much point stressing till then. I might do some test prints with the heifer as she is a good thing as there is such a difference. Why is colour management so hard Second one is her mum who should be brown, but her mum is a bit too dark as well. Take my word for it, the colours really pop in my world :laugh:

There is a huge difference in colour between my desktop and what I can see on flickr on my laptop, UGH, this crap drives me mad, they need the colour to be effective :mad :mad :mad It think I need to fix this issue, I've changed monitors. Can someone tell me if the highland heifer looks like she has really red hair?

Focus looks ok on my screen and I just had a thought, you need to get a wind machine for your dogs for shoots, it would be awesome!

The little bit that I could see was pretty cool so that helped me cope with the drama drama drama :laugh: I just uploaded some portraits in the back to basics thread so it hasn't been a total loss of a day!