USA - 60085
Winter storm advisory
Long exposure I took to try and accent the sky it really looked like this the white balance isn't off

DSC00333 by CrashCo. Photo, on Flickr

That is a very stormy looking sky CrashCo - nice pic

Is that city light reflecting up on the cloud CrashCo. Photo? It does look a bit ominous for sure.

A bit of a bridge update, they seem to be progressing with building the pillars; I can’t get very close so there is other foreground clutter.
Greg
Townsville weather: 24.9|28.9°C, H71%, 20|28km/h ESE|ENE patchy cloud.
KM5D KM18-200

Nice update Greg - now we can see one of the pillars we can start to imagine the height of the bridge.

(I notice a guy there with no hard hat, or high vis jacket, and no rigger's boots - quick, someone call the Health and Saftey department .)

Love that last shot!

Beautiful morning so off we went for a walk. Very photogenic but as I lifted the camera to take the second shot I got "Battery Exhausted". No spare with me Doh! Really must remember to check beforehand in future. Anyway, here is the shot. The one that follows was taken later on with an old iPhone but it is quite amusing.

I had a spare battery in my pocket - not needed! Took the A77 and 70-400mm out for some more tests of sharpness after micro focus adjustment. Conclusion is that I'm very happy, under better conditions I'm seeing what I expected to see from this lens despite the lenshood causing so much buffeting from the wind I could hardly keep a stable view even with a monopod.

Later in the day, saw what was happening with sunset, rapidly diverted to Scott's View of the Eildons - aware that another car was chasing hard on my tail. I pulled in, jumped out, grabbed the camera with 16-50mm and took a dozen exposures rapidly without any tripod or monopod, no filters, no messing - I know only too well that when the sunset looks like this, you can have ten seconds to get the shot. Even the next frame of the sky was not as good.

Two guys in combat jackets with large Nikons jumped out of the other car, opened the back, wrestled out tripods. I had finished shooting by the time No 1 had got himself stuck in a kissing-gate because he chose to open his tripod first, then get over the wall (there is nothing better OVER the wall than you get from shooting behind it!). Not even with the camera mounted. I had driven off by the time No 2 had finished finding his lens.

It's a composite of two exposures and two different raw developments, hand-held, but Photoshop is dead easy to 'snap to'. I settled on a final size image 5120 pixels wide to reduce the noise created by some rather extreme contrast/brightness manipulation of the foreground exposure.



I have many shots of this view of course, their merits entirely depend on the sun position and weather.

David

Stunning shot, David and amusing tale to boot. I usually view these posts on an iPad but photos, when linked in from Flickr or wherever, come through square, with the right 30% excluded, whereas the ones I post using the upload attachment come through rectangular as they should. The former are fine on a PC/Mac though. Don't know why this should be.

The sunset itself lasted another twenty minutes and more, so I am sure the duo in their camouflage jackets and fatigue caps got some good pix. But I shoot this view regularly, and I wanted to catch the fan of rays of light below the clouds when it was at its best. It reduced to one half then a single ray, and then the sun got into the gap between the clouds which for me creates too much contrast. There's already some clipping in shots like this.

David

A very chilly scene from DennisG, and a nice spot for a walk Artington. Easy to get lost at that signpost .

Nice sunset DK - I like the green , and the gorse in the foreground. There is a lot to be said for keeping the camera handy in the car

The green is thanks to a 'Landscape' profile installed in ACR for raw conversions. I'm not sure it is very accurate, but it works in this case and a few other shots today.

David

Beautiful landscape, David. Funny story too. Having image stabilization and a wide angle shot one probably doesn't gain much by fooling around with a tripod, especially when doing so means one misses the best light.

I like that boat in the ice shot too DennisG, won’t the ice do damage to the boat?
Good pickup Birma, I only noticed him in the shot later myself, I don’t know what he was doing there being late Saturday arvo there were no bridge workers or machinery moving that I could see.
Good sign artington.
It’s a very nice scene David, it might be just a tad contrived looking with that slightly luminous green but its eye catching just the same with the sun rays, that makes it I think.
Greg

It has been a mixed weekend weather wise here. Blustery with a mixture of sunshine and showers. Not really cold for the time of year. Here are a couple of shots from Saturday. One definite advantage of not using an OVF is when taking pictures directly into the sun.


2012 Old Hills - Winter Sun Through The Trees by Birm, on Flickr


2012 Old Hills - Winter Sun Through The Grass by Birm, on Flickr

Both Nex 5 with SEL 16mm.