Weather Today-In Your Vicinity 2013

[Birma]

Intriguing, which I guess all of the best art is

[Greg Beetham]

Ah so, its art. now I ‘get it’ I think. I quite like the paving where there are large but vague squares merged into the overall pattern, quite clever to do merging those into a herringbone pattern that is using contrasted shaded pavers already.
Greg

[aster]

Dramatic photos, Caporip.

Good artwork to cover up the sun and catch its rays through as it suspends in mid air. There probably is a corrolation in the artist's mind about the sun and the sky too, who knows. But it does provide a photo with a good subject to cover and a fine dramatic light show when the weather is going to extremes.

The wires can be seen in the last shot. Good thing it's secured nicely as it overhangs.


Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[aster]

Weather In Istanbul: Clear
Temperature:15 °C; Feels Like 15 °C
Wind(km/h): 15

----------------------------------------------

Been a while since I uploaded any photos in this thread...

The celebrations on the Bosphorus to honour the day for the Proclamation of the Republic, a day that the Turkish Nation also claimed/announced their independence and the will to act on their own to rule within the national borders in full sovereignty. At least that's what the day represents to our hearts...

A series of shots from the celebrations and the fireworks show during the night of 29 October 2013.

Yildiz

29 October 2013-1.jpg

(223.38 KiB) Downloaded 1448 times

29 October 2013-18.jpg

(255.08 KiB) Downloaded 1448 times

29 October 2013-3.jpg

(225.42 KiB) Downloaded 1448 times

29 October 2013-15.jpg

(172.34 KiB) Downloaded 1448 times

[aster]

29 October 2013-12.jpg

(216.48 KiB) Downloaded 1449 times

29 October 2013-9.jpg

(221.96 KiB) Downloaded 1449 times

29 October 2013-17.jpg

(204.34 KiB) Downloaded 1449 times

29 October 2013-11.jpg

(251.49 KiB) Downloaded 1447 times

[Birma]

Wow - incredible display, and great pictures of course

[aster]

Thanks Birma.

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

Those fireworks are really well captured Yildiz, I’m especially impressed at the capture of the blue ones, I tried to find an exposure that worked for blue here without much success, they tended to burn out and become white in most of my photos the last/first time I tried.
Greg
Ps you can hop on a train now to go across the Bosphorus, or will be able to when it’s fully operational.

Townsville weather: fine 28⁰C (feels like 24 or less) patchy light cloud, sea breeze.
Grubs chewed all the flowers last year on this orchid, but so far so good this year, maybe it’s still unusually cool at the moment and the moth/butterfly didn’t get on the ball and lay its eggs in time.
A100 KM24-105

DSC04267.jpg (127.3 KiB) Viewed 3351 times

DSC04269.jpg (164.73 KiB) Viewed 3351 times

[aster]

Weather In Istanbul: Mist
Temperature:13 °C; Feels Like 13 °C
Wind(km/h): 9
----------------------------------------------------------


A misty weather is ruling in Istanbul at this instant, not much is visible.

The orchid looks very nice and full of life, Greg. Orchids require some good care and looking after them in the garden exposes them to all sorts of predatory species. Glad no pests have damaged your blossoming one.

Thanks for the nice comments on the fireworks' shots. Considering I used the A100 for these shots, I also am pleased with the outcome. A newer model Alpha might have dealt with these sparkling action shots but we really don't know that without setting two cameras at the same time to take the shots of the same scene.

What I did with the settings can be seen in the Properties of the Blue Fireworks in te attachment below: I underexposed by "Minus 2" to not lose the genuine colours of the fireworks, otherwise the exposure time being long, burns out all the colours to a whitish bright light.

Yildiz

Blue Fireworks-Properties

PropertiesForBlueFireworks.jpg

(93.51 KiB) Downloaded 1434 times

[Greg Beetham]

Thanks Yildiz, what I was attempting to do was catch the individual bursts from fairly close range on a tripod and it was reasonably difficult to judge how high they were going to explode at, you could often follow the mortar shell as it went up as it left a faint trail of sparks but it was still unknown what lens zoom to use as they varied a lot in size so it was pretty random how big it was going to be when the particular one went off, and being reasonably close there was also a focus problem, they had to be manually focused each time as well as they varied in height and distance a bit.
I was using M mode so you can please yourself what f-stop and shutter speed to use and there isn’t any exposure bias in that mode of course. Basically I was using too short an exposure (1/30sec I think) to get multiple bursts piled up on the one exposure but it was pretty tricky timing, focusing and aiming the shot just as the burst got to maximum size, I had a few duds and a few ok ones, but all my blue ones were pretty much burnt out, maybe the chemicals they use for blue here burn really bright?
I don’t think a slower shutter speed would have helped me with the burn out problem, but f-stop probably would, problem is you never know what colour burst you are going to get in advance. I think I experimented at the time with ISO, shutter speed and f-stop until I started getting something visible on the rear screen.
Anyway next time I’ll try at slow shutter speeds and wider angle as well to get a more spectacular pile up of bursts.
Many thanks again.
Greg
(a couple of samples of my not so great attempts)
A100 KM24-105

DSC03777.jpg (174.62 KiB) Viewed 3341 times

DSC03776.jpg (192.63 KiB) Viewed 3341 times

[aster]

Come on, Greg, they are not that bad.

I suppose you are shooting from ground up and that's difficult to get the focusing right. I took these from the livingroom window. I prefocused and just fired away after I determined which boats on the Bosphorus waters were the ones to fire the fireworks. There were three major ones, so I sort of adjusted the position of the camera to the one in the centre.

I guess your shooting type is more difficult since you can't see where the mortar shell is coming from and which direction or shape it will explode into. Considering the difficulties, I think you have some reasonably good ones. I wouldn't know about the blue coloured ones from these shots though, since they look reddish presuming that's exactly how they were intended to look like.


Thanks for sharing, : )


Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

Thanks Yildiz, you are the only one I can remember getting blue fireworks really well so far, there isn’t much point in me posting my blue ones as they look white with a faint tinge of blue maybe, I did get some green ones that actually looked green-ish.
Gold isn’t too bad it tends to come out reasonably well, but silver, which looked silver to the eyes at the time comes out white-ish in the photo also.
Greg
Townsville weather: fine, sea breeze, patchy cloud, not hot (for me nice).

Murray noticed a Bower Birds bower over near his place (near the walking trail at the foot of Castle Hill) with lots of trophies scattered around so he gave me a call to come get a couple of shots.
A700 KM24-105 KM100-300apod

DSC04365.jpg (212.72 KiB) Viewed 3317 times

This Bower Bird seemed keen on rio support stands and tools.

DSC04366.jpg (220.21 KiB) Viewed 3317 times

He wasn’t far away, watching to make sure we didn’t steal any of his treasures.

DSC04370.jpg (160.54 KiB) Viewed 3317 times

[aster]

Hi Greg, : )

Thanks, I don't know if I'm the only one who was able to shoot a bunch of blue-exploding fireworks before...there were a couple of fireworks photos uploaded by other members early on but I can't remember if those were blue either. : ) Don't remember to which threads those were submitted at the moment. I personally believe in creating a "dark room" witht the settings of the camera while shooting such brightness as is dispersed by fireworks; the less the light from the environment the better the subject colour. Maybe like shooting the stars at night where the night has to be cleared off of any environmental light or urban light for that effect; the darker it is the better the star constellations show.


The Bower Bird is amazing! I wonder if the female will actually fall for these thrashed pieces as attractions. From what I saw from multiple cases of mating preparations, the males had more colourful treasures deployed for the purpose. I wonder what the female will see in these broken and cracked pieces of plastic, not very colourful and bright. : )

The find is great though, even the Bower bird is "trapped" in his mind by the disposables of the industry. Hope he doesn't swallow anything which would be fatal.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

Ps. Apparently the train that's supposed to ease our commute to the Asian part of Istanbul presented a problem for the Marmaray Train passangers in its first day of running; some passengers are known to leave the train halfway and walk across the tunnel to the other continent. : ) I'll take my time when it comes to using the Marmaray Railway. When things begin to run smoothly, I'll give it a try and see how efficient it is and let you know.

[Greg Beetham]

Hi Yildiz and thanks,
I guess I could have exposed the blue ones better (if I knew in advance which one was going to be a blue one), but I’m thinking that doing what I was doing, freezing the burst with a fast-ish shutter that by the time I underexpose (so to speak) and get a nice bright blue sparkle a lot of the other detail would have to be exposed a lot less at the same time and thus disappear from view in the photo.

Having a long shutter, like 1 or 2 seconds there is no motion freezing going on so you get the burst from start to finish as each bright speck radiates out leaving a coloured trail in the exposure. (the best way I think, but I was interested in freezing the burst in mid burst at the time)
The only conclusion I can reach about blue here is it must be brighter than the other colours, it seems to burn out as compared to the orange, red, green and yellows etc. using the same exposure for all of them.
Anyway no problemo, it’s all good fun.
Blue example.

DSC03780.jpg (78.18 KiB) Viewed 3306 times

The Bower Bird trophy collection seemed to be arranged in groups according to colour, the red plastic caps were on the side and the whitest whites were inside the middle with a mixture of white, silver (spanners) and those green concreting stands at both ends, I didn’t notice any yellow or blue objects.

I remember when I was about 5 years old there was a bower in the bush behind the house and it had a lot of small blue things as well as white, no plastic back then, but those blue aluminium foil milk bottle tops were there and some buttons and marbles, also pieces of broken mirror, lots of seashells and maybe some other odds and ends I can’t remember now. That one belonged to a Satin Bower Bird I’m pretty sure, they like pretty blue things as well as white.

And yes apparently the female Bower Bird is mesmerized by the whole thing, I’ve seen them courting in the yard here (don’t know where the male bower is though) and the male goes really spas, hopping about in front of the female (the pink feathers on the back of his head sticking out), with something in his beak, a piece of twig or a conifer spine and tossing it down and picking it up and and jerking his head and generally looking totally dorky, the female is watching intently almost hypnotized, so his magic seems to work. (I have no idea why though)
Greg

DSC04361.jpg (192.8 KiB) Viewed 3306 times

[aster]

Hi Greg, : )

Well, looks like the Bower Bird achieved his goal then. : )) The whole bunch of gifts looks more like a danger zone to me than a place for procreation and raising an other nestful of Bower Birds. There must be a catch.


Greg, I suppose that if you're after specks of blue spark bursts captured the task should prove difficult. It shouldn't be easy for red or other warm colours either but just maybe the blue and the green being cooler prove to be more difficult to catch; You must acquire a very fast camera and lens to test the theory, I guess. The blue trails are there to be if the exposure time is not any less than 0,5 seconds.

Good luck. : ) I won't be seeing fireworks for a while now but maybe I can try with the ships' lights at night...

Yildiz