No. 1—absolute knockout shot!

=:~)

Beautiful shot! I'm surprised to see what looks like classical 18th century English architecture so far from home. I'd be intrigued to know a little of its history.

=:~)

Very nice and I'm jealous. I have kestrels flying about the local meadows and I can never get them right.

=:~)

That's a great shot of him licking his lips. If I may, I'd crop in slightly from the top and left to bring the cat centre-frame.

More please :D

=:~)

I love abstract stuff like this. The first pic is my favourite—very nice!

=:~)

Well 300mm on an APS-C sensor gives you a horizontal field of view of about 4.5 degrees. Very roughly, that's about the size of your fist at arm's length. The longer the focal length the shorter shutter speed you need if you're hand-holding the lens. At 300mm you should not use less than 1/500th or about 1/250th if it's a stabilised lens.

It all depends on how close you want to get. Long lenses start getting more expensive over 400mm but a couple of cheaper ways of getting longer focal lengths are to use a tele-converter—either 1.4X or 2X or try out a mirror lens. There are a number of 500mm mirror lenses out there some of which have 1000mm and 1500mm adapters. Mirror lenses are tricky to use as they are fixed aperture and have a tendency to be "softer" than conventional lenses but they're worth trying out.

IMHO, digital zoom is an utter waste of time and leads to serious image quality degradation.

=:~)

Great set. Gray's ditch looks very like some areas of Yorkshire along the canal from Skipton to Wigan. The mist really makes it.

=:~)

Lovely shot. I like the deep blue colour of the water.

=:~)

That gave me a chuckle :D

=:~)

Thank you!

That's Horden Viaduct, part of the train line that runs from Hartlepool to Sunderland. It stands around 50m in height. It is a nice subject but it's tricky to get right. One side is dense woodland and the other is marred by a pumping station that keeps the foundations clear of the water running down the dene.

BTW, it's Chas not Chris :D

=:~)

Folks

Here are a few HDR panoramas of Denemouth in County Durham. Denemouth is the head of Castle Eden Dene, the largest dene in the UK and a designated area of Special Scientific Interest. It's also a beautiful area of Durham's coast and I'm lucky enough to live a short walk away. Considering that this area was once the site of the largest coal mine in Europe, the way that Mother Nature has begun to reclaim the area is amazing.

The beaches are still littered with waste from the mines to a depth of over five feet that run for miles along the beaches. Slowly, the sea is eroding this waste and Denemouth itself will become a salt marsh again within the next 100 years. Meanwhile, we get views like this.

Enjoy, and comment as you see fit :D

=:~)

Denemouth 1


Denemouth 2


Denemouth 3


Denemouth 4


Denemouth 5

Thanks :D

You couldn't pay me enough to be a truss monkey. I was (and still am sometimes) a noise boy. Nearest I got to proper work at height was to get the riggers to drop in some points in the roof and haul the whole shebang up, amp racks and all, on a bunch of LodeStar chain hoists. Getting them to remember to put an additional point upstage to handle a brail line for the bottom of the stack to fine-tune its position was usually interesting, particularly when you had to get up there yourself and show them where to put it with not a fall arrester in sight!

=:~)

96F?? Unfair!

Well at least the sun's come out today (I did wonder what that strange yellow orb in the sky was). I was going to take a wander down the beach today but it's the memsahib's birthday and she wants to go shopping for a new frying pan—go figure! I might see if I can catch tonight's Full Moon rising out of the sea.

=:~)

What is it with the weather in this country? It's almost June and I've had to turn the central heating back on!

That, plus mostly foul weather, has conspired to foul up any decent opportunity to get out and give the camera a serious workout. I have, however, managed to do another music event. I managed to get the LD for a local gig I do every month to bash up some more lighting out front for yesterday's show which made a huge difference, so I was able to shoot more portrait-orientated shots. I'm not displeased with the results.

Enjoy, and comment as you see fit :-D

=:~)

Hence the word "experiment" :-) I was really just taking test shots more to develop the post workflow. It's actually rather tricky to find environments which are really suitable for this kind of shot. I did some with horses in a riding school and they were definitely "meh".

=:~)