On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Andrew, Golden Gate Sunset.
fallsroad, Sunburst.
Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.
Click on the photos for a link to the photographer’s website. To see all photo threads, click on ‘photo blogging’ at the bottom of the post.
If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.
General Winfield Stuck
Wow. Two eye popper photos. Some very good photographers read BJ.
Congrats Fallsroad and Andrew ***.
The sky on the first one is breathtaking!!
R-Jud
Note to self: must visit San Francisco sometime.
John Cole
That Golden Gate photo looks fake the colors are so bright.
Allan
Clicking around in Andrew’s Flickr galleries I found one called “Most Interesting” that is really magnificent and offers a great overview of his work. View them as a slideshow to get the full impact. I’m blown away.
Keith G
@John Cole: I agree, but is that Rustoleum (primer) Red?
cleek
@John Cole:
it’s called High Dynamic Range imaging.
more here
it’s a neat trick where you take multiple exposures of the same scene, at different shutter speeds, then combine them so that you get a wider range of tones than you could get out of a single image.
dmsilev
@John Cole: If you click on the picture and go to the Flickr page, you’ll see that it’s part of an HDR (High Dynamic Range) group. HDR is a technique for combining multiple pictures of the same scene when there’s too much brightness variation for a single shot to capture everything. Depending on how it’s done, the process can result in some amazing and intense colors. It can give a very different look from a conventional single-exposure picture.
-dms
JeremyH
Ugh. I hate HDRI images – can spot them a mile off. Ugly gimmick du jour.
cleek
here’s the only HDR i’ve done that i’m OK with: HDR Pepper.
Royston Vasey
HDR is a wonderful thing, John!
Bubblegum Tate
That Golden Gate on is fantastic– it reminds me of the many times I’ve returned to the Bay after leaving town, gotten a visual like that laid out in front of me, and thought, “Fuck, the Bay is incredible.”
Bubblegum Tate
on = one
FYWP
Tim F.
@General Winfield Stuck: FYI, I had forgotten to ask Andrew about using his full name before posting so I shortened it to ‘Andrew.’
SiubhanDuinne
As always, these are extraordinary photos. I’m in awe of the talent around here.
A colleague just pointed me to a really interesting site showing 3D Mandelbrot Sets. They look like intricate crocheted lace, or undersea caves, or fairy broccoli — organic and beautiful. Have a look:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html#renders
Origuy
I was very close to where the first picture was probably taken on Friday. Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands, running around the WWII batteries and the Nike site. I took a few shots with a similar angle. Not HDR, though.
Anne Laurie
@John Cole:
I never understood the appeal of stucco until I visited San Francisco. In the Northeast or the upper Midwest, a stucco’d building always looked unfinished… but in the pellucid SF atmosphere, the same finish seemed refreshingly light & airy. Kind of like people running errands dressed in tank tops and shorts.
Michael D.
@cleek:
Maybe I am misunderstanding then.
How did you get a cat to sit still for multiple exposures at different shutter speeds?
I mean, I can understand if it was tunch, who probably can’t move – but Pepper looks normal size.
Joshua Norton
Cool pic of the GG bridge. I live waaaay in the background – up on Twin Peaks just under the Sutro Tower. The views from my deck are to die for. So are the rents, unfortunately.
Joshua Norton
Actually, a lot of the original stucco was due to a bout of fireproofing after the 1906 earthquake. People ripped the gingerbread off their Victorians and slapped on stucco and fireproof siding and they were just plain fugleee.
Fortunately, the gays started restoring them to their original condition in the Castro and the yuppies started following suit in the Haight and Noe Valley, so there’s a lot of them now back in their painted lady glory. And selling for millions.
Joe D
@Michael D.:
You can also produce HDR images from a single RAW file. Take one photo in the RAW format, then use an image editing program like Photoshop to generate an HDR composite. It’s more complicated on the processing end but simpler on the clicking end.
cleek
@Michael D.:
most SLR’s (certainly all the Nikons i’ve ever owned) have a feature called “auto-bracketing” which will take a number of shots (one right after the other, as fast as it can go) of varying shutter speeds. you tell it how many shots and how much to vary the shutter speed between each. so, find the base shutter speed you want, and the auto-bracketing does the three shots: one a bit slower, one at the base speed, and one a bit faster. clickclickclick.
combine that with a really fast shutter speed and “ISO” setting (which is why that shot is a little grainy), and you can get those three shots off in less than a half second. just hold the button and hope she doesn’t move.
licensed to kill time
That GG bridge photo makes me dizzy and the other one looks like god peeking at us. Beautiful photos, once again.
Fallsroad
I’m the guy who shot the second photo. Thanks for the kind comments.
For those interested, it was taken with my old camera, a Canon Powershot A-85 while leaning out of a car window as my wife was making a turn onto Highway 37 in Tuttle, Oklahoma. There was minimal post processing.
There were some big storms in the area that day, and pics taken as we drove home caught some of the amazing clouds lit by the late day sun.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fallsroad/archives/date-taken/2005/03/24/
It was a lucky shot, which characterizes pretty much most of my shots that people find “good.”
General Winfield Stuck
@Tim F.:
That’s cool:)
SiubhanDuinne
@Michael D.:
LOL. Poor Tunch. Everybody picks on him.
asiangrrlMN
Brilliant photos, literally. And, Cole? Where is the picture of Tunchie in his Bengals gear? Snicker.
asiangrrlMN
And yes, I know it’s Tim F posting these amazing photos. Just wanted to get on Cole’s ass to keep up his end of the bet.
Paul
Fallsroad is right. Being in the right place, the right time, the right conditions is a key to the potential to have a great shot.
I sent Tim a couple of links to some of my own work. Hopefully, if he finds favor with them, you’ll get to see a couple of my own efforts.
(I was tempted, asiangrrlMN to do one of my standard Gooseberry Falls shots as one of my submissions, but I decided to go further afield for the most part)
carpeicthus
This is me (I’m a professional photographer): http://www.flickr.com/photos/carpeicthus/
You might be interested in some of my stuff from the Al Smith dinner, the last time Obama and McCain met before the election. I was the ONLY independent photographer allowed near the candidates the entire night.