These shots are very nice. Eye pleasing.

I love the early morning light.

Thanks. I’d been trying to get a sunset but it was blaw not very interesting, so on the spur simply rotated on the tripod and CLICK there it was.

It’s an 1885 era fence bordering one edge is a cemetery. In 1885 it surrounded the Cumberland County (Illinois) Courthouse lawn, at which time the courthouse burned to the ground, and the wrought iron fence was preserved by moving it to the local cemetery.

Thank you.

I have to use a tripod, a shutter cable, and a VERY long zoom on a Canon SX60 to get shots like this.

A fascination with Fences

Capturing moons that almost got away.

Post processing is fun, and it looks like you're really enjoying it.

A very nice image

I have a Canon T6s and use it every day, with a Tamron 16-300. In my opinion it's a great camera, I highly recommend it. I like the WiFi being able to transfer photos to the iPhone to post on line.

I like sunsets too. My camera is a Canon T6s with a Tamron 16-300 lens. I use the Manual mode, Auto ISO, and control exposure with F-Stops. Shutter speed is a minimum of 1/500th, and usually Hand Held. No tweeting necessary afterwards.

Well, you see, here's the thing; normally when a person takes a hankering to get shots of the moon... and to post them... they'd want everything razor sharp and finely detailed. So detailed that you can see the little moon mice scurrying around sampling various tidbits of moon cheese. But a couple of nights ago the moon was just making its appearance over the eastern horizon, perhaps a couple of hand widths above the distant tree line. A misty haze made the moon the center of a gossamer halo, and a thought occurred, "I wonder how a photograph of that would turn out?" After several unsuccessful shots I finally got the exposure turned down low enough to punch through the haze and get a focus on Mr. Moon himself. The shot is strictly hand held with the SX40 IS, elbows pressed firmly to my sides. The lens is zoomed all the way out to 840mm (35mm equiv), and the 2x doubler was turned on, which I presume makes an equivalent zoom of 1680mm. Digital doubling leaves behind some pixel artifacts, normally, but what with the moon being kind of misty anyway, I guess it didn't much matter in this particular case. Oh yes, and another thing that bugs me is that 99% of the time people post their moon shots smack dab dead center in the frame... know what I mean? Gizzy

Punching Through the Haze

Thank you Cindy, your avatar is such a pretty bird.

The moon had not long arisen from the eastern horizon when I took this shot a couple of night ago. An eerie misty halo was encircling it, and I had to take three or four shots before finally getting a good enough focus, and even then it was too bright when reviewed on the LED screen. So I dropped the exposure a couple of notches and tried again. Finally, the last shot seemed okay. For you guys who're interested, I was using a Canon SX40 IS, fully zoomed and had the 2x digital doubbler turned on. The shot was fully hand held, elbows pressed tightly to my sides. Right out of the camera, shots like this when viewed at full pixels, 1:1, reveal notacable pixel artifacts. But a couple of passes of noise reduction in PhotoShop takes care of most of the stray pixels, and then a shot of UnSharp Mask helps clear things up a little better once again. I don't really care all that much about the technical jargon, but sometimes it's nice knowing how a particular shot was achieved. Gizzy

a hazy moon

The photo below was taken inside the interpretative center at the Lincoln Log Cabin State Park, located about 12 miles south of Charleston, Illinois. This particular display, depicting 1840s farm life in Illinois, is so well crafted that I stood looking at it for several minutes before it finally dawned on me that, hey! here's a great photo opp looking me right in the face. So I took this photo. Actually, I was visiting the park a couple of days ago because they were putting on an 1840s Christmas recreation, complete with period actors doing all sorts of rural Christmas things, I.E., making spiced cider, baking cookies, hand crafting decorations, all the things that Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas, would have encouraged on his farm back in the 1840s. I did get a few other photos, which I'll post later, but this one I really like, even if it is only an optical illusion. Gizzy

1840s Farming in Central Illinois