Here's some other things I've done to that photo.




I think the first one is the best....

Agreed that the first one is the best. Like the original, the noise around the edges in that second one slightly spoils the effect for me.

I was out walking when I noticed a field full of wildflowers (It's Texas, what did I expect?) and decided to take some pictures of them. The iPhone 4S's close focus can actually be surprisingly good. Here they are:

These pictures were all taken by me.

Oh wow, those are beautiful, nice job!

Thanks! I really just took them because I was bored, but I appreciate the appreciation!

This Summer I decided I wanted to get serious about photographing the Milky Way, more specifically the Galactic Center which only makes an appearance in the Northern Hemisphere during the Summer months. I was a bit late to the decision as (1) I have hardly any experience photographing the stars and night sky and (2) I am not familiar with ideal places to take these pictures. I've had luck in the past but it was just by chance that the conditions worked out.

PANORAMA3.jpg by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

I took the above photo on top of a local mountain, Mount Hamilton, while out watching the Persied Meteor Shower with some friends. In a naive faux-pas, I colored in what I believed to be the Milky Way in the photo. I certainly have done night photography and I really enjoy it but capturing the stars is another game. The first photo in the thumbnails below was taken in the same location as the panorama above, however the moon is in the shot and there is no heavy fog over the city which both contribute to the lack of stars. The color is odd because I took the photo in infrared and a bonus side affect was that lens flare became extremely exaggerated; here's an infrared vs visible light comparison.



It's always been hard for me to photograph the night because I work early mornings. I used to start work at 6a for 4 years but I got a new job now start at 3a. Leaving me time on Friday and Saturday nights to head out and get these shots. Another limiting factor was the number of places I could go. I live in the Bay Area and finding unpolluted sky is difficult. I'm a bit spoiled that I live in a suburban neighborhood relatively close to the hills that surround the inner valley. It's a quick 20 minute drive to find dark skies but sadly the glow from the city still affects the view when looking West. For example, here are two photos I took from Mount Hamilton Friday night. One facing West over the city and another with my camera turned 180 degrees, facing East away from the city.



The difference in the amount of stars is substantial. Unfortunately, the center of the Milky Way rises in the South and sets in the West. So I'm either going to have to make a 90 minute drive to the California coast or go much farther inland, perhaps towards Yosemite. The drive up to Mount Hamilton is about 40 minutes.

I only have 2 weekends a month to try and photograph the stars: The weekend before a New Moon and the weekend of. I try to go out both Friday and Saturday but it's hard. Especially in the beginning when the core is in prime position at around 1:30a. I was out until midnight on Friday night and I just didn't have the energy Saturday night to do it again.


Space: The Final Frontier by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

I know I shared this photo about a week ago but I'm bring it up as it's slightly relevant and I want to talk more about it. This was on a road about 20 minutes from my house. It's part of a loop that's popular with young drivers who like taking their cars around the tight corners and winding road. It's a road I love to drive because it lets me get away from atmosphere of the city; I'll admit that it is fun to drive around too Some day-time photos I've taken at this spot:



IMG_2657.jpg by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

This is another favorite spot of mine. It's a bit deeper into the hills than the photo above but much closer than the first photo in this post. I don't have a cell signal when I visit this place but it provides a nice area to look at the sky. There's a clearing that faces East so the city is behind me again but it's a wonderful getaway. A day time photo I took at this location:



In all, I'm hoping to take a decent Galactic Center photo at some point starting in July and ending in September, giving me about 6 weekends to get a photo. After taking the Star Trek titled photo I got inspiration to do a photo after a song by "The Carpenters" and really hope I can bring that to life; if I do I'll be posting it on March 15th, 2017.

If anyone is interested in an attempt to photograph or view the Milky Way your best shots are the first few days of the month, the New Moons are in the first few days. September is the exception where there's a New Moon on the 1st and on the 30th (the first and last day of the month!) Next good viewing is July 4th (but honestly the few days before are good too) and you'll have about 4 hours to view the Galactic Center (11p to 3:33a), I don't think this is relative to any timezone but do your research! By September 1st the Galactic Center rises at 9:20p and sets at 12:00a and, by September 30th the viewing times are 8:30p to 10:30p.

I hope you guys can get out and marvel at the vastness of space. Are we alone? Is there anyone - anything - looking at their night sky, unknowingly looking at Sol wondering the same thing?

Carrying on, here's my first attempt at the Milky Way. It's a practice shot so I didn't concern myself with the foreground or setting up a good shot of the Galactic Center. Instead I focused on what settings were best used and proper editing techniques. There's some color noise artifacts and some distortion from my lens on the upper edges if you look at the stars; they are in focus in the center and the closer to the corners you get they get a bit blurry and elongated.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try perfecting my editing down so I can create a Lightroom Preset to do most of the tedious work like correcting for the aforementioned distortion. I'll also be researching where I can find darker skies and a good setting to capture the Milky Way. Since most areas are a good 2-3 hours away, it'll be a lot of Google Images and Google Maps. I don't expect to get a phenomenal photo this summer but hopefully by next summer I'll have a good idea of where to go and how to frame the shots.

I'll be taking my next photo on July 1st then likely again on the 2nd and 3rd.


Milky Way Practice Shot by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

You may be able to find a good location by narrowing down these:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=milky%20way%20california

That's definitely part of my research but, a bit more narrow than just "California." It'd be cool to go anywhere in California but for now it's just gunna be single night trips so 2-3 hour drives are my limit. Spend about an hour on location then drive back. Next summer I'm going to plan a few multi-day vacations.

I'm also using a Dark Sky Map, which I also have an app on my phone for. I also have an app called PhotoPills which helps me immensely in my photography by showing me where the sun will be at certain times of the day. Useful for planning photos in advance; it also shows me where the Milky Way will be. I've had this for about a year but mostly used it for day time shoots, just now using it for night shots.

So, it comes down to looking on the Dark Sky map for a suitable place then looking around the area. What I did last night was saw that there was a stretch of road between Davenport, CA and Pigeon Point Lighthouse that was darkest so I set my GPS for Davenport. (I knew where it was but at midnight it's hard to miss those small costal towns) and once I drove past Davenport it was a matter of looking for a decent place to pull off the road and snap photos. Since this was for testing and practice I wasn't overly concerned about much. As I said in my post. I'll definitely be putting more thought into my next few photos.

For the next trip I'm looking at a place just South of Monterey Bay, around Big Sur. It's two hours away and I'd have no huge light pollution to the South like I did for this photo.

I hate your forum name change. They hate it too.



_MG_8336 by
Nikky, on Flickr

Nice collection Allynfolksir love it, i believe that taking pictures is an art but as far as camera is concerned but you have to give more meanings to your digital picture you must add blend of digital software to take a step further. Seeing all these pictures from flicker i would say that photography and GIMP Download 2.8 Free Photo Editing software Softlay make things more attractive and meaningful

Thanks Bruh

La Concepción 2 by Frank Martínez, en Flickr

Canon EOS D30 + Canon EF 50mm f1.4 + RAWTherapee in linux[/url]

I like it; Nice color and isolation!

I dropped my 50mm 1.4 and broke the focus dial. I was bummed. Bought a 14mm 2.8. Not really a replacement but I have other lenses I can use instead of the 50mm for now, I just really wanted a wide angle.

I had a fascinating thing happen recently. Almost two weeks ago I had a message on Facebook from someone curious about a photo I had taken of a Coke bottle with a glow stick in it. They saw it on my Jellygraph and wanted to know how I created the affect so she could recreate it for her studio project. I was confused. I have never heard of Jellygraph and searching yielded no results for apps similar to Instagram, on top of that I have never photographed a Coke bottle. She used the name attribution on the image, like I add to all my photos, to find me and ask this permission.

To say the least, I was perplexed. I inquired about the photo and she linked me to the photograph. Sure enough, my name plus it was on a blog called "Jellygraph." Pieces were falling together. The caveat was that the name on the photograph was Alexander and not Alex. Now, I was fascinated. I only knew of a few other Me's and I'm friends with one of them on Facebook. None of the ones that I've known about were photographers. Who is this mystery Me?

Anyways, I helped her figure out the photo a bit. We concluded it was more than one Coke bottle. She had the info she required and set off to recreate it. I decided to do the same. Alexander certainly put more technical thought into this. I grabbed some empty soda bottles from work over the week, found some glowsticks and in the span of 45 minutes got my shot. We figured it was at least 4 bottles, one for each color.

I tried to match the studio style setup but I lacked a gray or black sheet of paper, even if I had one it wouldn't have been big enough. So, I did the next best thing and photographed the bottles outside. I started off with my 24-105 f/4L lens, zoomed in all the way and at f/4 to maximize the depth of field. Surprisingly, I didn't think of doing this earlier but the EXIF data is still present and he shot it at f/8 for 30s. Which is about what I guessed. I guessed an aperture of f/7 with a long shutter since there didn't appear to be any outside lights but I didn't really know how long.

I love depth of field, or more specifically BOKEH. And the depth I was achieving with the 105mm lens just wasn't cutting it. So, I put on my 85mm 1.8 Prime lens. I would have liked to have used my 50mm 1.4 Prime, but my post immediately above :'( Anyways, I got a shot I liked.


Coke Bottles by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

Some stuff I would have done differently:
Mixed the colors up a bit. The Yellow and Green are too similar to be next to each other here but the reflections are great. It's just the blown highlights of the glow sticks that strike me as too similar. I would have swapped the bottles but I didn't want to go through the time of aligning them again.

I would have spent more time finding better Coke bottles and glow sticks. Neither of the objects I used were wrong, per say, but it would have been nice to get Coke bottles and glow sticks that were close in height. Moving the glow sticks in the bottles was not very fun.

Would have had an easier light to turn on. Since I did this outside the nearest light bright enough to light up the yard was inside where the kitchen table was. The light outside the back door was too dim. I left the lights out since they would have affected the photo. I ended up stepping, and cracking, a few glow sticks. Not the end of the world. I actually threw those in the background and you can kinda make them out behind the first bottle.

I would have also been more prepared. Had I actually properly planned this shoot more things would have gone right. My battery was half dead to start and, coupled with the above, made for some rushed work. Nonetheless, proud of what I got and I look forward to trying this again!

edit: fix'd link/embedded image

I can't see the photo, but I have got into your flickr and saw it.
I'm sorry about your 50mm f1.4 (I can't live without mine). But the 85mm f1.8 prime is a very good lens. (perspective is different).

Full frame sensors are good for bokeh. I'm actually using APS-C and bokeh is good, but not the best.

To celebrate election day:


I Voted by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

Got a new camera, retook the photo above with it:



Hopefully in the near future the photo will be a bit more interactive This one is small to save bandwidth for mobile users, it's only 3.8MB. I can link to a larger gif if it's desired, but it'd be like 83MB.

I think you mean to say "instrument of sorcery".

1D mk II N + 50mm f1.4 @ f2.5 + RAWTherapee in Linux




APS-H sensor improves bokeh a bit