Weekly Featured Image: Week of May 21, 2012

Question

This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of 21 May to be featured on the main site. This contest should showcase your best quality work, demonstrating at least moderate skill with a camera and a general understanding of the artistic aspects of photography. Remember, the selected photo will be displayed on our main site header for a week. Submit something that you and the members of our site will want to look at and admire for seven days! This contest is for the community to choose what they LIKE (not what they dislike), with the most liked being displayed on the main site header for a week.

.: Voting Closes on May 20th at 11:59pm EDT (UTC-4) :.

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This week, there is no particular theme for the contest. All photos which would be appropriate for the banner are welcome.

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Submissions may be added any day of the week until voting closes. The winning image (with the highest votes) as of the close of voting will be exhibited on the main site.

Last week's thread
Winners Hall of Fame

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Submitter Rules:

• Limit one photo per person per contest
• A specific photo may be submitted at most two weeks in a row
• A specific photo may not be submitted more than four times a year
• Keep all images appropriate, we want this site to be work safe
• Do not submit any photo if you are currently featured
• Images must be 210 px high and up to 375 px wide
• Images must be in landscape orientation
• Do not use this forum as a means to get critiques!
• Showcase your best works!

Voting Rules:

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• Up votes only!
• Only vote up the images you like...ignore those you do not.
• DO NOT use this forum as a place for image critique. Use chat for that (you'll get far better feedback)!
• DO NOT vote down your competitors! UP VOTES ONLY! Don't like, don't vote.

General Tips:

We encourage you to include a link to a larger version of your image. You may host your work on sites such as Flickr, 1x.com, 500px.com, RedBubble.com, etc. to showcase larger versions.

Feel free to include a concise description that explains the image, the emotion behind them, etc. and perhaps some explanation of gear and exposure settings, etc.

Answer 1

Days' Cottages

Days' Cottages are a venerable Outer Cape Cod image. All artists paint them, photographers shoot, and of course families vacation in them year after year. I had thought long and hard about how I want to represent them and I have to thank my girlfriend for this shoot. She was heading into work and called me. "Go out and shoot, the sky is gorgeous." I knew I had very little time to get to any destination before the light changed (and indeed, she says the sky was much better when she called me than in this shot.) So I took off down to the cottages and shot for about 20 minutes up near the buildings.

And then I decided to walk down to the water and I liked the composition even more. And so then I went into the water. It was in late December but fortunately I had my waterproof Sorels on!

The shot was taken with a crop body Canon 40D with a 17-40mm f4 lens on, all mounted on a Manfrotto tripod. It is an HDR shot, consisting of 3 exposures of 1, 1/4, and 4 seconds all at f8, the lens was at 17mm. Manually focused. Processed in Photomatix Pro.

Oh, and in case you want to see how deep I got in the water, check this out. Notice the seaweed on the tripod.

Larger one here...

Answer 2

Brooklyn Bridge at Night

Larger here

Answer 3

The Unswing Bridge

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Answer 4

2000 years!

Bronze horses, Xian - utterly superb.

Most of their stable mates are terracotta.
Most metal has long since been pillaged from the site.
Two teams of bronze horses managed to avoid the depredations of tomb raiders and have been returned to the world after 2,000+ years of darkness.

Somewhat larger view here - less cropped as does not need to fit the 375 x 210 form factor.

This photo is one of my personal favourites, no doubt as much for the memories as anything else.
As well as viewing the overall image, examining the detail in a closeup 100% view of the original gives me a feeling of having a degree of "connection" with the unknown craftsman who, over 2000 years ago, crafted this masterpiece. For 12mp original click icon 2nd from right at top right of the above photo.
This shortcut to the hi-res image works when provided but may stop at some stage but may be a dynamic address. [If viewing full res image be sure to click after opening to expand to full size to see how well the workman knew what he was about].

It's hard to do justice to the awesomenness of a visit to these creations from so long ago.
Security is, at least visibly, greater than for the British Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.
You walk along a series of corridors with guards at the occasional doorways, take a guarded lift to a darkened room with these marvels and their two associated 'chariots'.
The displays are in large glass floor level cases.

The light level can be judged by this being a 0.2 second, ISO200, f/1.8 exposure.
[Sony 50mm, f/1.8. Sony A700.]

FWIW this is the sort of situation that you buy a 50mm f/1.8 lens for.
That's more obvious from looking at the highest resolution version, which is worth a look [not because it's my photo :-) ] due to the awesome subject material. It's amazing to take a close up look and to think that this is 2000+ years old.

While travelling on business I carry a wide range zoom, a 500mm mirror lens and the 50 mm f/1.8. The wide range zoom lives on the camera and gets used 98%+ of the time. Even in low light situations such as street markets at night * [roll images, don't click] where you don't want to be too too obvious and want good low light focusing, long practice shows that it's easier to brace against a wall and use the zoom at its f/3.5 best ( 4 x less light) than to use the f/1.8. But when the subjects are not going anywhere and small depth of field is very much part of the shot and light levels are low and you want best quality and ..., the f/1.8 comes into its own.

·* - "A walk through Mongkok".

Answer 5

Butterfly sitting on a leaf

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Answer 6

Aaaagggghhh! A bug, a bug! Kill it! Kill it!

Larger Version