favorite image from the weekend – trampoline jump

Another photograph from the PDF event this weekend where I photographed the fire performer, is this one from earlier in the afternoon.  I noticed some event-goers taking turns at a trampoline.  I decided to shoot into the sun for dramatic effect .. but also to make the image more anonymous and therefore more about the feel of the day.  More about the mood than a recognizable portrait.  Shooting at high shutter speeds, I was able to freeze the action completely, and caught this guy in mid-tumble … as if mysteriously floating by.  Slightly surreal.

Image details:
1/2000 @ f8 @ 200 ISO (no flash)
Nikon D3; Nikon 85mm f1.4D

Another image that I really liked, is of this girl dancing with a hula-hoop.  Again, I like the anonymity, with her arms obscuring her face … but you see just enough of the expression as she concentrates on the moves.

Like the photos of the fire performers in the recent posts, it took numerous tries to get but a few images that worked – where the photograph was sharp, and the ‘gesture’ being photographed made sense visually.   The photograph should make some visual sense, and not just a random photo that happens to be sharp.

Image details:
1/100 @ f1.4 @ 3200 ISO (no flash)
Nikon D3; Nikon 85mm f1.4D

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This very colorful street scene is – if I remember correctly – in the quaint town of Macroom in Ireland.  It was one of the towns we visited while exploring the beautiful country-side near Cork, Ireland last year.

It is my choice for this week’s entry for the ongoing Alive for 365 project.

To enhance the colors even more, I used my favorite Photoshop plug-in, Topaz Adjust 4 …

If you do order Topaz Adjust (or any Topaz product) through that affiliate link, use the discount code ‘planetneil’ for a 15% discount off any item in your shopping cart.  (There is also another time-limited discount in effect on their website.)

I used two of the Topaz Adjust effects in combination:

Topaz HDR Sketch, as a Soft Light layer, at 38%  and
Topaz Spicify as a normal layer, at 26%

This gave the image a certain punch, without toppling over towards the garishness of some HDR-manipulated photos.

Here is the original as a comparison:

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a club in Manhattan on Tuesday, past midnight

Canon 1D mk3, Canon 50mm f1.2 // 1/25th @ f1.2 @ 32oo ISO

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It was quite mesmerizing to stand on the front porch tonight, and watch the complete lunar eclipse. It was visible here on the East Coast and fortunately we didn’t have too much of a cloudy night.  My daughter, Janine, had her telescope out, and I just had to take some photos.  This is my best image of the nearly full eclipse.

That was the best I could squeeze out of the 1Dmk3 with the 70-200mm f2.8 IS zoom,
and the 1.4x converter.  It’s a 100% crop … so there isn’t anymore detail there than that.
(There was also light cloud cover.)

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