Picture-A-Week 2024 - Week 45

[pierces]

Pictures taken between Monday, November 4 and Sunday, November 10.

 

Dipping into the 40°s at night here. Snow falling here and there around the country. Summer around the corner for our Southern Hemisphere friends.

 

Share some seasonal amazingness! 

 

Rules: See above

That's it. This isn't a contest.

All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising).

Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize.

The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays.

Post one. Post many. Up to you.

Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

[seadog67]

 

Window Shopping the Royal Store on Symphony of the Seas...

 

[seadog67]

Princess behind Bars...

 

Edited November 6 by seadog67

[seadog67]

Royal Theater Sign Symohony of the Seas.

 

 

[seadog67]

Here I am again flaunting the rules 🫣 While this picture was not taken this week, it was last Tuesday, most of my pictures are taken over weekends or during a trip week, but my defense is post processing a bit of each photo counts as part of the photo process, so every photo I upload has been worked on the day of upload in post processing 🤞 Scouts Honor

 

I am new to Light Room and post processing on something more than IPhoto App so I am still getting my feet wet as to learning, particularly on what and how best to adjust photos.

 

This photo of Chicken Parm from Jamies Italian from dinner last week on our Symphony of the Seas Cruise, might have been the best piece of Chicken Parm I have ever tasted. While not a complex dish this had a perfectly fried chicken breast thinned out a bit with flavorful breading, and very nice tangy sauce and fresh basil accompanied by a rocket salad that had a nice bite to balance out the savory of the chicken. 5 out of 5 Forks on the ratings scale.

 

Edited November 8 by seadog67

[seadog67]

MSC Meraviglia in a sea of blue.

 

Edited November 8 by seadog67

[seadog67]

Art Piece on Symphony of the Seas Royal Promenade.. I termed it.. a day in the life as it reminded me of the classic Beatles Song.. I never did look at the Art Tag to see what it was titled.

 

 

 

[seadog67]

Iphone Snap of Symphony of the Seas Bow Profile in Nassau, Bahamas..

 

[seadog67]

Late Fall Reflections from a hiking trail and wildlife conservancy developed out of an old abandoned Golf Course. 

 

[seadog67]

I am not sure if this is the place in the photo forums for this type of addin, and if you feel I should start a separate thread please do inform me, it would be appreciated either way @pierces and I would not mind either way as well.

 

In delving into Photography as more than a vacation time hobby, which it was for many years, I have started to expand my exposure ( pun intended 🫣 ) to many more photography related books and videos amongst media I digest. One that caught my eye was of a youtuber, Nick Carver, who shoots Medium Format and had a series, (now semi by the way side) where he would photograph unique or interesting buildings including a series on taco bell's from his Orange County CA Location. I attached a link to one of his videos where he worked through photographing an interesting Liquor Store. ( he has several of these videos on various locations further down his page)

 

 

 

While watching these I found them interesting, but nothing clicked until recently when driving around town with my wife driving and me riding shotgun, ( a rare occasion) I noticed some unique and even ordinary buildings in my own area that I thought would be cool to photograph, as part of an "Around Town " Series. I literally had the thoughts like wow, some of these, even ordinary grocery stores have character and uniqueness that I never realized and were just a blur to me driving by or walking in. 

 

So I plan to build out my "Around Town" portfolio over time and if appropriate share here.

 

Driving through on our way to our daily walk we pass through Oak Valley. And such Oak Valley Elementary School that as few as 3 years ago had a row of amazing Oak Trees, most since blown down but one remains that this picture does not do justice to nor the building in particular, as choosing to capture this today, we have serious wildfires not far from this area that you can see providing the level of haze (smoke) in the following pictures, but I still wanted to share as this tree when properly in bloom makes this school and corner such a treat to drive by...

 

Built in 1955 with only 4 Rooms it has expanded to cover 2-6 Grades of Elementary School.

 

 

 

 You can see the haze masking the sunrise in the background to a massive extent. ( probably should have cancelled our walk due to the smoke but accomplished our daily trek)

 

[seadog67]

Around Town Series continued..

 

Wenonah Train Station a bit of history -

 

"Wenonah Train Station is a historic transportation hub situated in Wenonah, NJ, offering a glimpse into the town's past as a bustling railway stop.

Today, the station serves as a community gathering space and event venue, preserving its rich heritage while providing a unique setting for various occasions."

 

 

This was an easy one and I knew even before thinking of this as project to photo interesting local places that I wanted to photo this in some way..

 

[pierces]

21 hours ago, seadog67 said:

I am not sure if this is the place in the photo forums for this type of addin, and if you feel I should start a separate thread please do inform me, it would be appreciated either way @pierces and I would not mind either way as well.

 

Feel free to post anywhere. The only caveat I would add is that starting a separate topic might make your content more visible. 

 

Nice subject, BTW. Enjoyed it!

 

Dave

[pierces]

Sunday was another cold one at the rink. It was also the only outing that involved photography during a busy week of work and projects. We got there just in time for the warm-up and had to leave a bit early to head up the hill for church and to provide a bit of auto repair for Pastor Dan’s aging Jeep Cherokee. The game was better than last week where Matthew’s team faced off against a perennially undefeated team and lost 6-0. That sounds bad, but the other team usually scores in the mid-teens, making the loss less painful. This week saw a more even match and it was a good game with a lot of back-and-forth action that ended with a 6-2 win and before we had to leave, we got to see Matthew score one of the six from his defenseman position about a mile away.

 

Goooooooaaaaaaalll!

 

 

 

 

Dave

[seadog67]

3 hours ago, pierces said:

Sunday was another cold one at the rink. It was also the only outing that involved photography during a busy week of work and projects. We got there just in time for the warm-up and had to leave a bit early to head up the hill for church and to provide a bit of auto repair for Pastor Dan’s aging Jeep Cherokee. The game was better than last week where Matthew’s team faced off against a perennially undefeated team and lost 6-0. That sounds bad, but the other team usually scores in the mid-teens, making the loss less painful. This week saw a more even match and it was a good game with a lot of back-and-forth action that ended with a 6-2 win and before we had to leave, we got to see Matthew score one of the six from his defenseman position about a mile away.

 

Goooooooaaaaaaalll!

 

 

 

 

Dave

 

Great series of shots. Matthew has good form and that shot looks like it had some heat on it!

 

[pengu1n]

Some shots from a recent cruise on the Zuiderdam:

Barbados

 

Some one else's ship - the post card shot

 

Hurricane David vs. bus in Dominica (no one was on board the bus)

 

Dancers in St Kitts

 

Fish at Half Moon Cay

Edited November 18 by pengu1n

[Host Bonjour]

On 11/10/2024 at 12:31 PM, seadog67 said:

photo forums for this type of addin

 

We're happy you're here!

 

We're all here to share info about photography so you're in the right place. Many of the people here naturally are quite interested in cruising, but as you'll see if you browse many of the topics, there are lots of cool images of birds, landscapes, family, sport, and of all sorts of places/things discovered on shorex or other travels.

 

There are also topics that discuss photo editing so if you have curiosity about Lightroom or any other app or just general editing questions (a lot of the concepts are the same, no matter the app)

we talk about it here.

 

Also, South Jersey is a travel destination for a lot of people, particularly the beaches, so there's that. As you've already shared, lots of scenic places for people to discover!

 

btw, have you got a medium format camera? There are more commercially available, and somewhat reasonably priced new, probably even better used, though most photographers still generally using the old faithfuls. You can always rent one and have a go, maybe attend a workshop. (There may be no turning back 😉)

 

Glad you're here.

[seadog67]

21 hours ago, Host Bonjour said:

 

We're happy you're here!

 

We're all here to share info about photography so you're in the right place. Many of the people here naturally are quite interested in cruising, but as you'll see if you browse many of the topics, there are lots of cool images of birds, landscapes, family, sport, and of all sorts of places/things discovered on shorex or other travels.

 

There are also topics that discuss photo editing so if you have curiosity about Lightroom or any other app or just general editing questions (a lot of the concepts are the same, no matter the app)

we talk about it here.

 

Also, South Jersey is a travel destination for a lot of people, particularly the beaches, so there's that. As you've already shared, lots of scenic places for people to discover!

 

btw, have you got a medium format camera? There are more commercially available, and somewhat reasonably priced new, probably even better used, though most photographers still generally using the old faithfuls. You can always rent one and have a go, maybe attend a workshop. (There may be no turning back 😉)

 

Glad you're here.

Thank you for info @Host Bonjour! I have been making myself at home now in the Photos Forum and enjoy all the photos shared! I do not have medium format... yet, but as I progress I hope to give it a go eventually.

 

Got lots to learn still and getting time to photo is currently the biggest challenge.

 

Thank you again for the welcome and info!

[pierces]

On 11/27/2024 at 6:41 PM, Host Bonjour said:

btw, have you got a medium format camera? There are more commercially available, and somewhat reasonably priced new, probably even better used, though most photographers still generally using the old faithfuls. You can always rent one and have a go, maybe attend a workshop. (There may be no turning back 😉)

 

Sorry Colleen. I hate to throw cold water on medium format, but unless you are willing to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a digital MF camera, the bang for the buck just isn't there like it was back in the age of film. Even with the best MF camera currently available (the Phase One XT - 150MP - $56K, body only), you are still limited to a sparse lineup of very expensive lenses and except for a couple like the Hasselblad X2D 100c ($8.5K - 100MP - body only), you give up niceties like optical or in-body stabilization.  

 

If you go with film, you have to consider that you need to scan (a really good scanner if you want more than 8MP-12MP equivalent) the negatives to get digital content and those negatives come from film that has a minimal ISO limit and a dynamic range 2-3 stops less than digital. I can relate to the nostalgic return to an old film camera, but I can't bring myself to take a step backward in overall quality at the cost of multiple times the effort.

 

I'm not pooh-pooing MF randomly. I researched it strongly when deciding on my move to full-frame and later to the A7rV and since I was raised in a middle-class family and can't cough up the astronomical sums to go with top-end medium format, I instead concentrated on high MP full-frame. What I found was a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-most. The A7rV will shoot ten 60MP frames per second at a fairly clean ISO12800 with class leading tracking autofocus that will adjust exposure via aperture, shutter, ISO on the fly. That fit my need for an action camera to keep up with the grandkids' sports or a breaching whale. The wide range of lenses make it an excellent (superb?) landscape or portrait camera (though for portraits, it can capture a little too much detail at times...thank God for Photoshop). In pixel-shift mode it can capture landscape or still-life images at 240MP by taking a series of images with a minute shift of the sensor for each image. The latter is a cool feature but is a tedious process to finalize and I have found the phenomenal Topaz Gigapixel AI software can match the output if you really need a 9ft by 6ft 300ppi image printed at native resolution.

 

Original 60MP frame

 

Snip from 3.7x enlargement in Gigapixel AI

 

To be honest, the A7rV is not cheap, ($3.5k) and you need great glass to keep up with the resolution. That said, the body and a great f/2.8 standard zoom ($2k) would cost less than just the body of any medium format digital camera that can match or exceed its imaging capability. I would list the sky's-the-limit MF cameras that can match the autofocus, burst speed, lens availability and portability if there were any. Alongside the Sony, Canon and Nikon have recently released high-resolution full-frame mirrorless cameras in the same class that are priced in the same range.  

 

Again, I'm not casting aspersions on medium format, I'm just a fan of cost-effective, multi-purpose efficiency and with a 400lb bench-press a couple of decades in the past, I've become a big fan of portability as well.

 

Dave

[tom808]

Hi Dave:

 

I was amazed at your enlargement using Topaz Gigapixel AI and have been waiting for you to come to comment more on the three AIs - PhotoAI, Gigapixel AI and DenoiseAI.

 

Best wishes