Tavern's Member Picture Gallery.

Oh, not good... my friend is having similar problems. I always feel torn because their flittiness brightens the place up, but they can do some serious damage. Her roses are also being munched on by a crack squad of aphids after giving them a good fertilising, but she resolutely refuses to use pesticides. It's about time to get out the soap, oil and water spray. Talking of which, I'm banking on the weather being nice tomorrow. Lady Dixon Park in Belfast has an annual rose show. I'm hoping to get a few nice pics. I made it there late last year and the blooms had suffered a bit of damage due to excessive wind and rain. Fingers crossed.

 

Well, since kitties seem popular at the moment, here's one of my Binx.


No wonky eyes here, but she is diabetic and needs shots twice a day. Surprisingly, I never had to chase or tackle her to administer them; half the time if I was late in giving her the shot she would come and remind me. She would tense up and kind of hunch down whenever I stuck her but she never fought me or tried to hide. I think it's because of how much she loves the whiskas temptations treats she gets afterwards, she's especially crazy for the dairy flavored ones. And of course she also gets lots of love and cuddles afterwards. It still eats at me that I had to leave her behind when I moved, but she is just too old and too sick to handle the flight down here, let alone the 30 day quarantine that would be required. I left her with my mom though, so I know she's in good hands. That's some small comfort at least.

 

@obsidian_cicatrix : What works with aphids is to just don a gardening glove and scrape them off with your fingers. I've done that this year, it takes ages for them to build up again, it's a good organic alternative. After the scraping, just water them and wash the foliage off. It's even more effective than pesticides because it doesn't dry the leaves. Also ladybirds, they sell them in garden centres, they will control the aphids. It's all the rage at the moment

My sister surrendered her entire cabbage patch to a swarm of butterflies last year, her salad'd been held hostage by slugs multiple times, she thinks once they clue on to where food is, they call each other over and pass the knowledge down the generations If that (the butterflies) happened to me I'd at least snap some trippy masses-of-butterflies photos, would make lovely prints, especially backlit, in the golden hour. I just can't be bothered with photography these days, I'm too immersed in writing and my metaphysics studies (I am aware how lame that sounds).

@Wyr : They know. My cat had an awful flea allergy, we rescued him from a neighbour that completely neglected him, he was covered in sores. Now if his flea medicine is late, he comes to let me know. He hates it, but he knows it does him good Mine's favourite treat is fruit yoghurt, Onekin cherry or mango passonfruit flavour, he's crazy about it. Every time I have one, he sits next to me smacking his lips the entire time.

I'm glad you found a solution for your pet, we had to leave a dog when we emigrated many years ago, and it was easier knowing he found a great home with a family friend and their little boy.

 

@jazzabel Doesn't sound lame at all. When you have interests that are time consuming, sometimes you need to forego one to concentrate on another. I'm pretty lucky that when my writing screeches to a halt due to the bipolar, I can pick up my camera and still enjoy the act of creation without overly stressing myself. Just point and click. I do haul myself over the coals if time passes without getting enough guitar practice though. Ta for the advice on the aphids. We do scrape from time to time but they are really numerous year. She did buy a load of Ladybirds a couple of years back but within hours they had relocated to her adjoining neighbours' gardens'.

@Wyr Sorry to hear you had to leave your kitty behind. My two are pains in the ass but I wouldn't be without them. To be honest I don't even like my female cat... she's very hard to love but she hates me too, so it goes both ways. I would never think of rehoming her... it's not just me, she hates everybody, my other cat included. I swear my ferrets go tag-team just to get on her nerves. She hates them too.

 

@obsidian_cicatrix : I had no idea ladybirds could be so fickle! I suppose it makes sense, they are set free so they can roam. The idea I think works better in greenhouses. Yeah, camera is now my back up too. It's so easy and instant, as long as I don't get obsessed with details

 

Me and some friends went to take some pics at the annual Rose Week event at Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon park yesterday afternoon. The weather this past week has been changeable, dry arid heat one day, high humidity and fierce wind the next so the blooms were in a bit of a state. My friend Tel was sneakily taking pics of me taking pics. I rather like this one.

 

What a beautiful picture @obsidian_cicatrix ! Looks very vintage

 

@jazzabel And completely anachronistic at the same time.

 

@jazzabel Oh... and talking of pics that are really heavy on the filters. I took a an opportunistic shot last year of a rainbow splitting a cloud. Whilst the subject was interesting the pic itself wasn't great as it had been taken on long zoom and the exposure was pretty crappy. It was sitting in a folder unloved. I checked out that particular filter to see what effect I could get with it, and came up with this. I really, really like it. There's something almost biblical about it.

​

 

That does look awesome! For rainbows, you usually need a bit of post processing to bring the colours out, otherwise it tends to look muted and unimpressive. I have a pic I took in Amsterdam years ago, I still liked it but the rainbow was a massive letdown (this was before I had photoshop).

 

That's beautiful... really subtle.

 

Thanks It was a magnificent rainbow in person, that's why I snapped it, I thought there was no way it won't show up in a photo I love my Amsterdam street photos, I used to shoot Street mostly before I got sick and I have tons of them, but none since 2008. These days I need to prepare, need assistants, hot tea, cushion, tripod, perfect weather conditions etcetera

I'll go dig some up now

 

Ok, Amsterdam Retrospective:

 

I took this picture on my way to work this morning (with my phone so do not expect great quality). Seems like some pub owners just don't know what they are doing :

 

I don't like to crash in on the quality photography going on here, but this is the first time I've been on this sub-forum. A little character I'm working on, he's a detective going through a messy divorce, probably an alcoholic.

It says Coolage McGoolage if you were wondering.

 

@jazzabel I like them all but I particularly like how you've offset the white panel to allow for the asymmetry of the windows. The one of the guy riding his bike while checking his mobile phone is very evocative too. Anybody who's been to Amsterdam has memories of nearly getting knocked flying by a bike at least once. (Or have a tram creep up behind them.) Do my eyes deceive me or is that Nick Cave? What was he up to?

 

@HelloThere Never worry about quality. I love seeing all efforts, from the planned to the opportunistic. Pencil sketches to full on digital processing. Pics of our animals being cute, pics of bugs... not so cute. Keep 'em coming.

 

Oh I wasn't. It was just funny, you were talking about some divine rainbow with poor exposure and a long zoom, and I was all like. "Here's a cat named Coolage McGoolage."

 

LOL... and that's why I love this forum... the sheer variety. Don't think for one moment I know what I'm talking about. @jazzabel is the pro in that respect.

 

@obsidian_cicatrix : thank you! The first one did best, it won a second and third place in a couple of random competitions a while back. St Nick is signing autographs after a gig. I've seen this man a million times, both in Australia and Europe, on the street, parties and venues, I kept running into him everywhere for about ten years or so, really strange. Love his music so I can't complain.

Most of these were taken from moving vehicles, boats, trams, taxis, back of a bike, so there's a bit of movement in them, which was what I was going for that time, for some reason (I was trying to do panning shots, and the only one I managed, I can't now find anywhere, lol).

 

@jazzabel... always the way. I really need to take a bit of time and tidy up my folders and sd cards. I'm constantly forgetting where I've put stuff, just can't keep track of it all. One of my cards has nearly 32 Gigs worth I haven't even looked at yet. Because I don't have much in the way of skill, there will probably only be a handful of well composed shots, but I'd hate to lose them if they are there. (I'm assuming rather a lot. )

It's funny constantly running into Nick Cave. I had the same experience with the Rev. Ian Paisley. I even saw him once on a train traveling from Glasgow to... Paisley. Given the choice, I'd rather get stuck in a train compartment with Nick.

 

Haha, that made me LOL. It's like an unhappy coincidence, the Universe wasting your allocation of weird and wonderful on something so wrong Bad Universe, bad!

ps. Forgot to say, I'm having one of those bad attention span days. Have you tried shooting from the hip? It's a great technique for getting some truly awesome street photos, you basically stand or walk with your camera hanging on a long strap, so it's at your hip, and shoot. Works really well on busy street locations, gives really interesting angles.

 

It's time to back it up to a hard drive or Bluray disk / DVDs before it's too late

 

@jazzabel. That thought didn't even occur to me. A question....how can you tell what's gonna be in the frame if you do that, or is it purely a matter of take enough of them and something will fall into frame? Another thing I seriously need to do is learn a bit about RAW. I've been meaning to, just haven't got round to it.

@Vandor76 Indeed. I generally select the ones I feel I can work with then bin the rest. I back them up when I know they are worth saving. Seriously, some of the attempts are less than stellar and would not be worth the plastic they were burned on. I hate to contribute to the pollution of our planet for no good reason.

 

@obsidian_cicatrix : RAW is basically a digital negative and can be used as such. There's a massive amount of information in it, you can get even incredible HDR images from a single RAW, it allows really huge adjustments in exposure and other parameters without any loss of information. But it has to be post processed, can't be shown 'out of camera' and it is very large (over 200 MB). If you want to make prints, exhibit images or simply take your photography to a new level, shoot RAW. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do it, you'll love it. The only drawback is that they take a lot more space on the memory card.

Google 'shooting from the hip' and you'll find loads of tutorials, articles and examples. You can make it random, but as with everything, there's an art to it. One of the tips is to stand in front of a wall, and decide what distance you want your subjects that are in focus to be. Then stand that far and manually focus, and lock the focus. Then, use very small aperture (f16 and above) and fast shutter speeds (1/400 or 1/500, bump iso if you need more light). This will give you best chance at getting some sharp images. The rest is trial and error as you stand or walk the streets, pressing the shutter when you see something interesting. The beauty is, you get such incredibly candid images, like you never could holding the camera to the eye, personally, I love it .