Show off your photos

[Laurent]

Because I didn't find a topic like this one yet 

I'll start 

Show off your photos

Some nuclear garbage somewhere

Show off your photos

This one is quite a lucky shot, it's called a 'meeuw' in Dutch

Show off your photos

A male duck, I have another picture where the female swims behind her husband, but that one is less sharp 

Show off your photos

An empty glass of 'Kriek' beer


Now it's your turn! Come on, show them 




Laurent

[freddyp]

Nice photos, but the empty glass of beer made me a little sad so, I snapped a photo.... I call it "full glass of Hoegaarden"  

[Jaws]

Great start guys. Keep 'em coming.     The photos, that is...  and maybe the beer too. 

Cheers

[PGTips91]

Here are some recent photos I've put on my Picasa Albums.

Pohutukawa in bloom

Stiking Sunset

Torbay - Waiake Beach

Hope you can find something there to like!

Paul

[Dadster]

  Great shots Paul. 

[PGTips91]

  Great shots Paul. 

Thanks for the compliment!

Here is an earlier collection that I made with a grouping of sea-side and flower photographs. It had a couple of personal photos in it which I have moved and now made this a public gallery.


Local sea-side scenes and flowers in my and others gardens.

This is a friend's Protea, called Arctic Ice and a very slow-growing Protea. I still don't seem to be able adequately to capture this amazing flower.

Protea, Arctic Ice

Here's one featuring flowering tulip trees.

Flowering Tulip Trees

All my public galleries are at http://picasaweb.google.com/paulgtaylor91

Hope this isn't an over-kill!

Paul

[Dadster]

Hope this isn't an over-kill!

  Not at all.   Thanks for the opportunity to see them.  I've never heard of these plants.  What's the diameter of the Protea ?    It looks like it could be a fairly large flower. 

[PGTips91]

Hope this isn't an over-kill!

  Not at all.   Thanks for the opportunity to see them.  I've never heard of these plants.  What's the diameter of the Protea ?    It looks like it could be a fairly large flower.  

The protea comes originally from South Africa and they are indeed often quite large flowers. Arctic Ice would be one of the largest, in diameter, that I have seen and it is quite an amazing flower.

The 'common garden' variety, which my friend has also, is more like this although that is actually a hybrid. That specimen is said to be 3 1/2 inches in diameter, so my guess is that the Arctic Ice flower may be five or six inches across. Not bad, eh?

They open from the outside inwards and over several weeks before the flower is finally spent.

I just wish that my camera was more able to take macro-shots of very close ups and keep the sharpness, as blowing these photos up shows some incredible details, like looking through a microscope almost.

Paul

[Dadster]

    We have a couple plant dealers with some very extensive collections of flowers.  My wife and I find it nice to browse the green houses in the winter.  Kinda like a mini escape from the season strolling the warm interior of the glass houses.  Seeing all the flowers in bloom.  Now I have something to look out for on our next visit. 

Thanks Paul

[Jaws]

Great shots Paul. Neat how you included the maps that a person can zoom on.

Thanks for contributing.

[PGTips91]

Here are two of my most recent albums, one outside from the summit of One Tree Hill in Cornwall Park, Auckland, and the other inside Acacia Cottage, the small wooden building in which lived Sir John Logan Campbell, the benefactor of Auckland with this marvellous park.



The only touching up done here was to remove a person in the foreground using the clone tool in GIMP. Rough as guts but you may not notice. Like I said, good enough for screen only.



This series of shots includes three that I took in order to create a panoramic view of the main room of the cottage. I used Hugin to stitch these together using its 'Assistant' for the entire process. I was much impressed with the improvements to this application since the last time I used it, when I had to select all the control points manually. Now it is so easy to use that I think almost anyone could create a panoramic view with this wonderful tool.

hugin
Version 0.7.0
(http://hugin.sourceforge.net)
by Pablo d'Angelo

When I had the output from Hugin, I opened this in the GIMP and used the perspective tool to correct this aspect of the panorama. Then I used the clone tool to fill in some of the gaps left by Hugin. Then, not satisfied with the result, I copied, pasted and scaled the rear leg of the table over the front leg which I had roughly cloned, and improved it quite a bit.

There are still some faults with the cloning, especially in one area, but it will have to do for now. Ready to share!

Paul

[PGTips91]

Here is a panoramic view of Rangitoto and Auckland's North Shore, taken from a nearby park overlooking the Hauraki Gulf, Rangitoto and around past Takapuna to glimpses of the Waitemata harbour.

I was experimenting with using the manual controls to get similar exposures on a number of photographs about the same time. I leaned quite a lot in the process and the most successful series was this, going from the left to right over the entire field of view from this park. I noticed as I drove past, about 12:30 pm, that the lighting was about as good as I was going to get it, so returned with my camera and took about 70 shots.

What I learned about my camera, a Kodak Z650, is that it is rather difficult to get the same exposure with any of the automatic settings but, with a manual setting, there was a closeness in exposure which I could live with. I put this series of photos into a panorama using Hugin. My first attempt produced a file 1 GB in size which I could not open with my computer! I then had another go, using the smaller files that I had uploaded with Picasa to my Picasa Web site. After several attempts I got a good result which I could open in the GIMP and crop/clone to the desired end result.

When I tried to save this for the Web I got a message that it was too large a file for that. Several attempts later I managed to produce a result that could be uploaded to Picasa Web. Here it is for your enjoyment!

3828×400 pixels – 542KB

Paul

[Jaws]

I don’t know if it’s been said here before but, besides your great photos and contributions , you sure you do live in a glorious looking place on Mother Earth.

Cheers

[PGTips91]

I don’t know if it’s been said here before but, besides your great photos and contributions , you sure you do live in a glorious looking place on Mother Earth.

Cheers

Hi Jaws,

I'd have to agree! I've lived in Auckland for most of my life, so I don't have much to compare it with. The combination of a narrow isthmus and two large harbours squeezing the city in the middle does make for a unique situation. With forested hills to the West and islands dotting the ocean to the East there's always a view not far away.

My first house in South Auckland was right by the water in the Tamaki Estuary, and when we moved over to the North Shore I was able to have the water at the end of our street. In earlier days I could take my kayak to the water in five minutes, but it has been a long while since I did that. I might get back into it with my grandsons, who knows. I have a double [very heavy] and a slalom [very light] kayak but no paddles at present.

Paul

[PGTips91]

I took a hundred photos yesterday, from the summit of Mt Eden, a volcanic cone of 190 M in altitude,  and 170 today starting at Torbay and finishing at Wenderholm Regional Park [you can see these locations linked in my albums], so I have a lot of work to do before I am ready to present my work.

Here's one choice photograph from today's collection to start with.

Magnolia flower on tree in grounds of Couldrey House, Wenderholm Regional Park.


Photo of a single flower, amongst many, on the Magnolia tree in the grounds of Couldrey House, Wenderholm Regional Park.
This flower was about eight inches (200 mm) in diameter.

The photograph was taken with the zoom lens from quite a distance, so I am pleased with the clarity of detail.

Paul