Back in Chicago for a few days before leaving for the Japan photo trip on Sunday (yay!). I had fun today taking photos this morning on the island and then in the car on the way home as we drove through Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Lots of options to post, though none very artistic. This was taken between Charlevoix and Elk Rapids of Hwy 31. We've passed it on every trip for the past 12 years and I finally have a shot I can use (because we can never stop the car for me to take it!).
Thank you for your lovely comments on my seagull shots -- I appreciate your visits as always.
Don't forget -- ETSOOI-35 is all about skies. Please consider entering.
...so this was taken while from the car while passing by? Well done...great comp and clarity. I love the contrast in the clouds...looks like it had ben taken with a polarizer filter.
@kwind@susale@ericdibosco Thanks for your comments! Actually, Eric is right about how I took it -- I was in the front passenger seat, set the ISO to 400 even though it was a sunny day, used my telephoto to get the scene out the back driver's side window as Jim did not slow down. I know where this scene is and try to photograph it every trip. I did stop once last summer when I was driving by myself, but ended up posting a different image from that day, and have been determined since then to get another shot. The lighting was great as we went by -- turning the silos into shiny cones, so I'd set my camera up and just hoped for the best. I'm glad you liked how it came out!
Love the colours in this. Taffy, seen that you are on the mentoring list... approaching the ones on it how I follow already to ask if willing to mentor me. I saw you said you were happy to mentor on composition, wondered whether when you come by my project you'd give some suggestions on where I am getting it right or more importantly wrong!! many thanks in advance
@newbank I'd be glad to! BTW, what should I call you (NL?). Why don't you choose two photos that you are fairly pleased with but would like to continue to work on, and let me know which ones they are -- you can post the link here. Then, if you have specific questions, just add those, but otherwise, I'm happy to just make general comments. What is it you most want to learn about as a starting point?
Call me Ruth, Need to go sort my boys out but will have time tomorrow to choose some photos to post for you. Most want to learn... lighting scares me, just unsure about it, rather key to photography though... I look at some of photos and know they are not as good as some I see on here, I guess its someone else eye to suggest how they could become more balanced and effective be that the colour balance, conversion to mono or removing/changing part of the composition. That make sense? This week for example someone commented on my photo of Nephew, that it's not good to have horizons going through someones head. V helpful to be told that, never knew it, do now and will bear in mind in the future. So I guess when you do pop by any small comments like that really help. Thank you very much.
Wow- you've become quite the world traveler! Have a wonderful trip- although that's probably a given! Love how everything looks so sparkly new on these silos. They are well taken care of it seems. Great shot!
Hey Taffy, I was wondering if you might be willing to mentor me? I follow your project and you take such incredible architectural and city photos (which are my favorite subjects), while I think my photos are alright, I also think that they lack a certain oomph that I can't quite put my finger on. I imagine that you've received a fair number of requests so if you feel you can't commit, please don't feel obligated!
Ah Taffy, I see 2 mentees have beat me to it. Are you full up as a mentor? I just love your shots, especially the interior architecture HDR ones. Could you let me know if you are full? Thanks!
Wow, this is such an awesome shot, Taffy. I am so surprised to read that you took this in a moving car. Amazing. Wow, you are mentoring. So happy that you are and will just be happy with your comments on my photos at the moment. Also headed to Japan. The world traveler. Have a great time and look forward to your photos. FAV
@888rachel@sullivar@newbank Hi Ruth, Ryan, and Rachel. Very long response…but wasn’t sure how else to do this… I'm quite flattered that you'd think I could help you and am happy to volunteer to be a mentor to the three of you. A few ideas of how we could make this a fun and useful experience…
Thought 1. What about if each of us agrees to look at one another's photos and make constructive comments/observations. I could 'model' the kinds of comments and observation that I think might be useful. We could focus on what worked and why, for example, rather than simply saying something is beautiful, etc. We could also point out areas that, if we were going to work on the photo, we would want to address (e.g., a critical friend looked at a recent photo I’d posted on flicker and noted that the white of the sky didn’t add anything, and suggested I darken the sky to bring out the clouds more. This is a very helpful comment – even if in this case, I’m not sure I can figure out how to do it). That way, each of us would have three other people pushing our thinking about our photos. Looking critical at someone else’s photo also helps me think about my own.
Thought 2. Another thought is to take a theme for a few weeks based on something you've seen that I've done that you’d like to know about (like the interior HDR shots Rachel mentioned; the lighting Ruth mentioned would be interesting as I don’t know much about lighting at all but am willing to at least think about it with you – and how to think about ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture as it relates to lighting). We could commit to doing a particular type of shot for a few days and then use our photos to study various successes and challenges and what to do about them.
Thought 3. A process thought…what about doing the following:
1. Post photos as you normally would.
2. In the comment section (not the description/commentary/narrative, but where it says "Post Comment" put each of our tags (@888rachel@sullivar@newbank@taffyr) with a critique question or comment that will help us know what you had in mind with the photo (e.g., 'I was trying to do xx with this photo...) and then anything you'd like feedback on (e.g., something specific like: the lighting was xxx and I want it to be yyy, or something general like, what do you think of this as a composition? Even ore general, 'what do you think of this?').
3. When we see our tag in the 'mentioned' list in our notifications, we'll know a photo for critique was posted.
How does this sound? It might be more fun and a good learning experience if we can learn from each other's photos as well -- and I'm not an expert by any means so this way each of you would have feedback from 3 people, not just one. If you’re interested, it probably makes sense to tag us all (@888rachel@sullivar@newbank@taffyr) if you respond in this thread. If it’s too complicated to do this within the 365 thread, we can always share email addresses and continue the planning off-site, but keep the photos and comments on 365.
Just a FYI – I leave for a photo trip in Japan on the 8th and return on the 18th, so will have sporadic email. I’ll check this page in case the notifications get buried while I’m gone.
@darsphotos Thanks as always for your visit Darlene! Yes, it's been a whirlwind this past month -- after almost 2 years of very little travel (with Nutmeg's situation), many postponed adventures are all happening in a short time. It's not typical, but I'm totally enjoying it while it lasts. Although am feeling just a bit out of control re time at the moment!
It looks to me like you really nailed it this time Taffy. Those silos really shine and what a beautiful sky for a backdrop. I read your mentoring post with great interest. That's very generous of all of you that are mentoring. I think everyone will get so much out of it.
I love reading your comments list, Taffy, because they're always so full of good information! I thought for sure you'd set up a tripod and took a bracketed HDR series! I (now) know one photo can be altered...if you managed that for this one picture, it' fabulous! It's such a nice image of rural America in that setting of green fields, and someone was looking out for you when putting together that cloud-laced sky! All just beautiful! This just may be worth the 12-year wait!
I loved reading the way to have a real critique! It's what I miss so much about a classroom setting! Your group will get so much from this exercise, and, as a mentor, I know you to be exemplary! You're a wonderful example of the best 365 has to offer!
I have just read your mentoring post Taffy and it sounds really interesting. I will be keeping up with your posts with your group and hope to learn something along the way. You have always been generous with your comments and information you give on your shots and I have picked up a lot from you already. I would like to join your group but if adding another is too much I understand as I can continue reading your comments on the others in the group.
I got so carried away talking about your group I forgot to comment on your fab shot!! What a great capture from a moving car!! The silos look so shiny and your processing has brought out some great sky detail and lovely colours. You have made an ordinalry subject look beautiful!! Fav!!
Great silo shot, can completely understand why it has taken a while to capture. I missed them all along highway 65, both ways on our trip to Noblesville!! They look fab when the sun shines on them, so shiny!
@pamknowler@888rachel@sullivar@newbank
Pam, you'll be a great addition! I see this as sort of a mutual mentoring -- when you look at Ryan, Rachel, and Ruth's work, you'll see each of us brings strengths to the group. I'm including the three of them in this response so they'll know to add your tag to the comment section.
@newbank Ruth -- I just noticed that Rachel won't receive the notification because of the ( before the @. You might want to leave her a message or just copy what you have, delete it, then repost it with the ( removed from the start of Rachel's tag.
@pixiemac I can't wait to see the photos you did take of your time here! I wish we would have had a chance to get together. I'm heading downtown for a meeting at 10:30 and will be near the Jim Thompson Center (the ugly round building at Randolph west of the PIcasso statue. I'll send you an email now...
@taffy@rachel@sullivar@newbank@kmrtn6
Thanks Taffy I am looking forward to learning from everyone in the group. I have just checked the others out to make sure I am following them. Sorted!!
@taffy@rachel@sullivar@newbank@kmrtn6 Hi I am following now those I didn't before. Taffy not sent you any images as first suggested yesterday as things have grown since then. Will wait till we decide as a group the way forward. Many thanks to you all.
@taffy@newbank@888rachel@pamknowler Hi, all! I'm really excited to be in this mentoring group with you and I've really enjoyed looking through your photos so far! As a disclaimer, I do a lot of internal editing and quality control for a living which has probably led to me being a little more blunt than most people are used to. If you ever feel that I am being too critical, please let me know, the last thing I want to do is cause offense. A thought I had, if anybody is interested, is to apply some of the processing and cropping critiques to the original image and then upload the new image to an alternate ending. What are your thoughts? I'll be on vacation from June 7th - 14th so I likely won't be able to comment until after then.
@newbank@888rachel@pamknowler@sullivar A few more comments and questions for the group:
1. When do you want to start? I ask because with Ryan on vacation until the 14th and me until the 19th, do we want to set a formal start date of June 21st? Between now and then, we can decide as a group what we want to have as our first theme, if anything.
2. How often do we want to commit to posting a photo to be critiqued? Leave it to chance? Assume anytime we post, we would comment in a critique fashion? My only thought on this is that we probably won't be able to keep up with serious commenting on every thing photo, and I know there are times I post photos that I'm quite happy with as is and really wouldn't be interested in continuing to work on them. So maybe we'd want to post a photo a week? Or set a certain day when we post a critique photo? Or when we post a critique photo, we automatically tag our group members to know a critique photo was posted? This might be particularly useful if we are focusing on a particular technique or theme and don't want to do it every day.
3. If we agree to start on the 21st, we could also use the time between now and then since we just started following each other to 'get to know' each other's photo styles and interest, so that by the 21st, we'd have a better sense of what we might want to focus on together, or focus on individually with help from each other.
Sorry to be so compulsively organizing about this, but since there isn't a model to work from, I'm thinking the time up front to get organized would be worth it.
Last point...if what you're hoping for is just to have more critique of whatever you post, that's perfectly fine with me as well.
@taffy@888Rachel@newbank@Sullivar
Sorry I jumped the gun asking for critique one of yesterday's shots but thank you Ryan for your helpful comments.
Ok with me whenever we start. There will always be holidays and other reasons when maybe we don't be able to join in but you are right to organise up front so we all know what to do.
You are right Taffy I would not want or expect critique on every shot I upload. I like the idea of a theme or technique as that would concentrate the mind on what we are trying to achieve. I would be ok with a photo a week but am happy to go along with whatever the group decides. If between that time we had a particular question or needed help with a photo then we could tag the group members and ask. I am flexible but I agree I don't think I would be able to critique every shot uploaded and would not expect that from the group.
I was already following you and Ruth and am now following Rachel and Ryan and I will have a look at their work.
For myself I am not an expert but do have a passion for wildlife photography and if I can help anyone in this field that would be great. Landscapes is an area where I often need advice and more so since I have been trying to learn about hdr. The other area where my knowledge is nil is lighting for portraits. I am in my second year of 365 but there is still so much to learn! With your help Taffy and the rest of the group I hope to learn lots! Sorry if that was all a bit long winded!
@newbank@888rachel@pamknowler@sullivar@taffy First of all Taffy, thanks so much for taking us all on. I really appreciate you doing this, and I'm really impressed at how organised you are.
For me, I am happy to post a picture and tag everyone if I really want more critique. But happy that anytime one of you is looking at my shots and can see room for improvement to please let me know. Starting on June 21st is fine with me. or anyone can critique before that time too if they have the time. Maybe we can be more descriptive than 'beautiful shot'!
Taking on board one of the comments from the discussion, are we going to call the comment 'Requested Critique' or something like that? That is to stop other 365'ers getting upset on our behalf, if you know what I mean...!
I mainly love macro photography, but I'm trying to branch out and try everything. I tried a bracketed shot the other day, and it was a failure, so I definitely need help along those lines! And as my family are reluctant to be photographed, I'm not too hot on portraits either! A lot to learn.
Now I must get and follow all those not followed already. I'm looking forward to learning a lot.
@888rachel@pamknowler@sullivar@taffy Thanks Taffy for your amazing organising. I am happy to try and provide a more detailed response to people images when they ask for it but would struggle every day. I like the idea of working on a theme for a few weeks as we could see from each others work how to develop and be pushed into trying to improve/ try again with the suggestions given by the group. Yes June 21st good for me to officially start and use between then to get an idea on the couple in the group I didn't previously follow.
@taffy@pamknowler@888rachel@newbank I am happy to give and receive informal critique whenever, but I agree that we should tag the team and officially ask for critique once a week to help control the expected time commitment. I like the idea of using "Requested Critique", it might even invite others outside of our team to critique the photo a bit too.
June 6th, 2014
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Fav
Thought 1. What about if each of us agrees to look at one another's photos and make constructive comments/observations. I could 'model' the kinds of comments and observation that I think might be useful. We could focus on what worked and why, for example, rather than simply saying something is beautiful, etc. We could also point out areas that, if we were going to work on the photo, we would want to address (e.g., a critical friend looked at a recent photo I’d posted on flicker and noted that the white of the sky didn’t add anything, and suggested I darken the sky to bring out the clouds more. This is a very helpful comment – even if in this case, I’m not sure I can figure out how to do it). That way, each of us would have three other people pushing our thinking about our photos. Looking critical at someone else’s photo also helps me think about my own.
Thought 2. Another thought is to take a theme for a few weeks based on something you've seen that I've done that you’d like to know about (like the interior HDR shots Rachel mentioned; the lighting Ruth mentioned would be interesting as I don’t know much about lighting at all but am willing to at least think about it with you – and how to think about ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture as it relates to lighting). We could commit to doing a particular type of shot for a few days and then use our photos to study various successes and challenges and what to do about them.
Thought 3. A process thought…what about doing the following:
1. Post photos as you normally would.
2. In the comment section (not the description/commentary/narrative, but where it says "Post Comment" put each of our tags (@888rachel @sullivar @newbank @taffyr) with a critique question or comment that will help us know what you had in mind with the photo (e.g., 'I was trying to do xx with this photo...) and then anything you'd like feedback on (e.g., something specific like: the lighting was xxx and I want it to be yyy, or something general like, what do you think of this as a composition? Even ore general, 'what do you think of this?').
3. When we see our tag in the 'mentioned' list in our notifications, we'll know a photo for critique was posted.
How does this sound? It might be more fun and a good learning experience if we can learn from each other's photos as well -- and I'm not an expert by any means so this way each of you would have feedback from 3 people, not just one. If you’re interested, it probably makes sense to tag us all (@888rachel @sullivar @newbank @taffyr) if you respond in this thread. If it’s too complicated to do this within the 365 thread, we can always share email addresses and continue the planning off-site, but keep the photos and comments on 365.
Just a FYI – I leave for a photo trip in Japan on the 8th and return on the 18th, so will have sporadic email. I’ll check this page in case the notifications get buried while I’m gone.
I loved reading the way to have a real critique! It's what I miss so much about a classroom setting! Your group will get so much from this exercise, and, as a mentor, I know you to be exemplary! You're a wonderful example of the best 365 has to offer!
Pam, you'll be a great addition! I see this as sort of a mutual mentoring -- when you look at Ryan, Rachel, and Ruth's work, you'll see each of us brings strengths to the group. I'm including the three of them in this response so they'll know to add your tag to the comment section.
Thanks Taffy I am looking forward to learning from everyone in the group. I have just checked the others out to make sure I am following them. Sorted!!
1. When do you want to start? I ask because with Ryan on vacation until the 14th and me until the 19th, do we want to set a formal start date of June 21st? Between now and then, we can decide as a group what we want to have as our first theme, if anything.
2. How often do we want to commit to posting a photo to be critiqued? Leave it to chance? Assume anytime we post, we would comment in a critique fashion? My only thought on this is that we probably won't be able to keep up with serious commenting on every thing photo, and I know there are times I post photos that I'm quite happy with as is and really wouldn't be interested in continuing to work on them. So maybe we'd want to post a photo a week? Or set a certain day when we post a critique photo? Or when we post a critique photo, we automatically tag our group members to know a critique photo was posted? This might be particularly useful if we are focusing on a particular technique or theme and don't want to do it every day.
3. If we agree to start on the 21st, we could also use the time between now and then since we just started following each other to 'get to know' each other's photo styles and interest, so that by the 21st, we'd have a better sense of what we might want to focus on together, or focus on individually with help from each other.
Sorry to be so compulsively organizing about this, but since there isn't a model to work from, I'm thinking the time up front to get organized would be worth it.
Last point...if what you're hoping for is just to have more critique of whatever you post, that's perfectly fine with me as well.
Sorry I jumped the gun asking for critique one of yesterday's shots but thank you Ryan for your helpful comments.
Ok with me whenever we start. There will always be holidays and other reasons when maybe we don't be able to join in but you are right to organise up front so we all know what to do.
You are right Taffy I would not want or expect critique on every shot I upload. I like the idea of a theme or technique as that would concentrate the mind on what we are trying to achieve. I would be ok with a photo a week but am happy to go along with whatever the group decides. If between that time we had a particular question or needed help with a photo then we could tag the group members and ask. I am flexible but I agree I don't think I would be able to critique every shot uploaded and would not expect that from the group.
I was already following you and Ruth and am now following Rachel and Ryan and I will have a look at their work.
For myself I am not an expert but do have a passion for wildlife photography and if I can help anyone in this field that would be great. Landscapes is an area where I often need advice and more so since I have been trying to learn about hdr. The other area where my knowledge is nil is lighting for portraits. I am in my second year of 365 but there is still so much to learn! With your help Taffy and the rest of the group I hope to learn lots! Sorry if that was all a bit long winded!
For me, I am happy to post a picture and tag everyone if I really want more critique. But happy that anytime one of you is looking at my shots and can see room for improvement to please let me know. Starting on June 21st is fine with me. or anyone can critique before that time too if they have the time. Maybe we can be more descriptive than 'beautiful shot'!
Taking on board one of the comments from the discussion, are we going to call the comment 'Requested Critique' or something like that? That is to stop other 365'ers getting upset on our behalf, if you know what I mean...!
I mainly love macro photography, but I'm trying to branch out and try everything. I tried a bracketed shot the other day, and it was a failure, so I definitely need help along those lines! And as my family are reluctant to be photographed, I'm not too hot on portraits either! A lot to learn.
Now I must get and follow all those not followed already. I'm looking forward to learning a lot.