Camera Club Competition Night

[Horus]

Well saying as Grandad and LLL have been good enough to treat us to some wonderful pictures I feel rather hesitant in showing you my own images that I have entered into our final internal club competition of the year that takes place on Thursday evening. As I may have previously mentioned we are allowed to enter two images into each of two sections comprising Colour and Mono. I had to scrape through a few back folders to find something suitable to enter so I chose a manipilated smoke plume image and a manipulated woodland scene for the mono entries and for the colour I chose a close up/macro of a butterfly on a flower, mainly because I liked the Bokeh effect especially as this shot was straight out of camera. The other colour shot you may have seen before, but I entered it because in two weeks time we have an AV (audio/visual) evening when we can show any project that combines images with music and or sound and text to create a short continuous picture show to be viewed by the rest of the club. My theme will be a series of images from Egypt combined with music, a spoken poem and scrolling informative text and this image will start and close the AV in what I can only describe as a dream sequence. Quite how that will go down I don't really know, but I will keep you all briefed on how it all goes, I would upload it for you to see but I don't think I can upload an MP4 file of around 40 Meg to this forum, maybe Keefy can advise? anyway here they are feel free to comment. (nothing about cloning out cars Grandad )

[LovelyLadyLux]

Wow H - your entries are terrific! My favourite is the butterfly on the flower but I understand the categories you're putting the different photos into. Keep us in the loop as to your winnings!

[Jayway]

Love the last one, hope to see the whole entry if you can post it here. Is the woodland HD because it makes my eyes feel strange ? The smoke is a mystery, how did you pour smoke into a spoon ? Good luck -

[Grandad]

OK, OK, I know you want 5* too

Brilliant pics H. My fav is the smoke, I really like that abstract image and I am a big momo fan. I could see a big framed copy of that with a white mount in my home.

My only comment, not criticism, is that the butterfly picture seems to be dominated by the flowers and less on the main subject. Interesting to see what the members say.

Good luck.....and stop reminding me of Egypt when it is unlikely that I shall ever go again

[Horus]

Thanks folks
Jay the smoke one is easier than it may seem, I just set up the scene upside down with the spoon above a burning joss stick, it then looks like its cascading over the edge when you invert the image. and yes the woodland one has been given a treatment, but I have changed the blacks rather than using HDR.

Grandad, the butterfly, which is a female by the way, blends with this particular flower (a Lady's Smock) and is very hard to see against it, note the matching pink of the antennae. Also it's size doesn't help as they are quite small and they are particularly flighty and will move on at the slightest disturbance and this hand held shot was as close as I could get. I am hoping that the clarity of the flower heads will impress the judge more so than the butterfly.

[DJKeefy]

I would upload it for you to see but I don't think I can upload an MP4 file of around 40 Meg to this forum, maybe Keefy can advise?

Upload it to youtube

[Kiya]

Smashing pictures

And my favourite is the last one of Egypt.................I think a while back you were going to give a tutorial on how to do it.

Goog Luck in the comp

[LovelyLadyLux]

How did you get the butterfly photo? Were you staked out? Just came upon it? Were you trying to capture the butterfly or was this more an opportunistic capture?

[Horus]

It was taken while out on a walk and it is a place that I know where they can usually be found at a certain time of the year. It is quite a boggy area located in a meadow and the Lady's Smock flowers grows there quite profusely and the males who have a beautiful orange tip to their wings can be seen dashing about chasing the females. As I said they are very fast moving so it is a case of just picking a spot where they seem active and standing still, hopefully one will land on a flower close enough for you to get a picture, but the slightest movement and they are off again. You have the same problem with the males because when they rest up they close their wings and the orange tips are no longer visible, so once again it has to be a chance shot taken very quickly so they are often blurred or out of focus.