Beowulf

Here's another one from my "Scenes from I-85" series. For this shot, I took my little Nikon S1 and mounted it on a mini-tripod on my dashboard. I set the camera to "interval", so it would take a shot every 30 seconds without flash.

RT and I just missed each other on the Furman campus last night...

I think my lens must have the same problem. Either that, or I've captured a UFO! This was taken on the Furman Campus this weekend. It is an HDR composite of three shots...

Yo - NYT. My desktop had the same meltdown last week and I had to do a system restore. Fortunately, I've got an external hard drive where I keep all my media (in addition to the CDs and DVDs). I still haven't gotten in back to normal, but at least I got Photoshop back online.

I guess everyone was out and about yesterday, with no responses here. Nice shot, RT. I've seen that view many, many times, except that it was a statue of Putto in a fountain before the gazebo replaced it.

This one was taken from the top of the Bowater parking garage. I was using a 1960's vintage Nikkor 50mm F/1.4 on my Nikon D50 - basically point, guess, and click on full manual. At the larger size, I see a bit of digital noise creeping in the shadows.

I think both shots are great. The people in this shot almost look unreal. This would be a good candidate for a Tilt-Shift effect.

I had a dream about this thing (nightmare, actually.) It was bouncing down main street and people were punching it up in the air to keep it going, kind of like a giant beach ball. For some reason, that was frightening.

Linkerj and I think this looks like something out of The Prisoner. RT thinks it's a giant pilates ball. What do you think?

That is indeed an incredible shot, Wheels. I'm impressed. I'm surprised I didn't run into one of you guys at Art in the Park today. Here's one shot from the day... This isn't HDR. I juiced the highlights a bit in Photoshop, and it gave it that HDR feel. Here's one more of the fountains in that area. Getting the "silky" effect in mid-afternoon ain't easy, as I discovered. There were a lot of discarded shots until this one came out. One reason I love digital!

Since the Upper State Fair continues through this weekend, I'll post a couple more shots... Someone mentioned that Greenville County no longer has fairs on the fairgrounds on White Horse Road. Anyone know if this is correct?

Nice one - you need to squeeze some cash out of Nuvox for that shot.

I was thinking more along the lines of Rad Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

4H Clubs in this area tend to focus on agriculture. The four "H"'s are head, heart, hands, health. 4H Clubs, along with Future Farmers of America (FFA) are responsible for most of the displays at our county fairs. I suspect that the actual county fairs and the state fair would have more of this type of display. The Upper State Fair looked like it was geared more toward entertainment. There was one display of antique tractors, one petting zoo, and some farm animals brought in from Hollywild Zoo.

While RT was downtown, I was on the outskirts of town Sunday. Specifically, at the Upper State Fair. This was the first time I had gone in ages. There was very little in the way of agricultural or 4H displays. Most of it was midway carnival stuff. Still, it was quite fun and interesting.

I was thinking the same thing. However, I don't know of many urban landscapes that would have as many trees visible.

Thanks for the heads up, RT. If you have links to those other forums, I'd like to see them. I'm more flattered than ticked off, as long as I get credit for the shot. Thanks to everyone else for the kind words. I was playing around with an old 1950's vintage Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens attached to my new Nikon D50 DSLR. It had to be full manual with no light meter - shoot-preview-adjust-shoot again. I'd never try it with film. London was great, but hot as blazes.

OK, I've been MIA for awhile. Here are a couple of HDR shots to make up for lost time... ..and one more non-HDR...

That's hilarious! ...the humor of unintended consequences.

Excellent first attempt. Yours looks much better than lots I've seen on Flickr. Camelot! Camelot! Camelot! (It's only a model.)

I'll try. We'll see how my fake miniatures compare with your real ones. I like your idea of a Miniature Greenville thread. I think you could get some great shots from the parking garages and the Church Street Bridge, in addition to ones looking down from the Liberty Bridge. One of the other pointers is that it's helpful to have a strong point of focus in your image. I think vehicles work very well because there are so many toy cars, etc. Just take a look at your London photo above and you'll see what I mean. Carnival rides would be great subjects, if you can get them. A shot taken from the top of a Ferris Wheel would be excellent. Here's a fake miniature of your model London. How redundant is that?

Give it a shot, GSU, and see what you can do. I do see a couple of potential problems, though. I think you would want the roller-coaster to be the focus of the shot. You're almost eye-level with it, and it's in the background. It might get blurred badly when you change the DOF. Also, that prominent red and yellow pavilion in the foreground might be hard to work around. Still, you'll never know until you try. I'll be curious to see how it turns out. I wonder how it would turn out to do a "fake miniature" of your real miniature! BTW, I'm flying to London in a couple of weeks. I hope to get some good shots on the flight in and out, and to take some shots from the London Eye. I think these would be great for tilt-shift.

One more thing - choice of photo is very important. Images taken in strong lighting work well. The best "model effect" is achieved from shots taken from higher ground looking down. If you get the sky in the shot, it tends to lessen the effect.

It's actually quite simple. I've gotten where I can churn one out in just a couple of minutes. It involves blurring selective portions of the image to fake a narrow depth of field, then blowing out the color curves to give a "fake" appearance to the textures. After that, you crank up the color saturation to make it look plastic. Christopher Phinn has created an excellent tutorial, and there are also several Flickr groups devoted to the technique.

Oh, I've got no problem with selling them, as long as RT lets me still his best shots