Recently hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with a Z7II with a 14-24mm lens and tripod. My hiker friends enjoyed the shots, but looking for some feedback from folks with a more critical eye. These are 10 astro/night shots from along the trail. I made a separate post with some daytime shots. Let me know what you think, and thanks in advance!
These are a highly endangered species, and the rescue center has this young male tiger, which they hope will breed with their already existing female Malayan tiger.
A new arrival at the rescue center. She was very friendly and very flirty, rolling about on her back and meowing, then staring at you as if she might be hungry. A magnificently beautiful animal
A small group of red kites were flying above my head, so I pointed my lens up, took a few shots, and hoped for the best. I got two decent shots out of it.
Down on the waterfront this morning, tide was out, Heron were sitting along the water fishing. There was a boat coming across the water from Bremerton heading into Port Orchard.
Kalama Eagle Sculpture: Kevin Stone
Mr. Stones website: https://www.kevinstonemetalart.com/
4 Comments
Appealing images, Josh! I particularly like the atmosphere in the fourth image.
I note that, like many now, you like using fairly extreme short focal lengths (I know some go wider still). I no longer crave anything wider than 20mm in practice because of the geometric distortions extreme wide-angle lenses introduce, unless you use the very expensive and slow perspective-control lenses.
For me, the converging verticals of the trees and their reflections on the right of the third image spoil this image's appeal, and I would correct them in processing, either with perspective control or using the warp/liquify function carefully in your software. With natural elements rather than the straight lines in architecture the latter technique can work quite well for subtle tweaks. I've used it in one at least of my portfolio images.
Hi Josh!
All your photographs are well composed! And well lit! The 1st, 2nd and 7th look beautifully cool and natural. the MW stands out and catches my eyes. I like them!
Night shots - I link with a blue(ish) dark sky and stars in case of no clouds. green & yellowish colors are looking like light pollution or a hint to white balance issue. The last 2 are a case of the white balance for my eye.
The shots 3-6 appear somehow with a greenish sky. Did you catch auroras? But MW in late spring is more in south direction. Unlikely to have an aurora.
Thanks for the feedback! It's funny, I'm mildly colorblind, but definitely noticed a green cast on a bunch of my night shots from this trip and couldn't for the life of me figure out where it was coming from. I played with white balance a bit in post and tried to desaturate the greens in the sky a bit, but clearly some still need some work. Took a stab at correcting #3 as best I could. I think it's better, though there's definitely still some aqua and green tones on the horizon behind the trees. Curious to see if this is better to your eye or not. I'll have to keep playing with the others to see if I can get them looking more natural/less green.
I should add, the aurora thought crossed my mind (particularly on #4), and while I guess it's possible in theory, I was fairly far south at that point (central California) and there weren't any auroras visible to the naked eye. Wasn't really paying attention to aurora forecasts since I was in the backcountry for weeks at a time, but I think it's pretty unlikely.