Onelargeprawn
I’m a city boy. Taking me into the bush is as useful as a pork chop at a Bar Mitzvah. Every time I think I see a buck, it turns out to be a dead tree branch. Süha Derbent, however, can easily distinguish animals from trees, and has visited many countries, taking amazing wildlife photos as he goes.
More of this work after the jump.
Storm chaser Ryan McGinnis risks a little more than his camera to capture the sheer power and beauty of a storm. Due to copyright issues we cannot show you any of his work, so the above photo is just for show. See his work at The Big Storm Picture – via Haha.nu.
Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) once said, “A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.” so take some time to browse the world as other people see it. It’ll be a vacation for your mind.
See the 10 most stunning photo blogs at Makeusof.com.
Tilt-shift photography is a technique where you manipulate a camera so that a photo of a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model. By shooting the locations from a high angle, it will create the illusion of looking down at a scale model. The example of Nice, France below by Flickr user therealjasonruff shows the technique off well.
There are a few ways for you to create tilt-shift photos:
This method involves obtaining a decent camera, a tilt-shift lens, and reading up on the details HERE, HERE, and HERE. Not recommended for people with ADD or those feeling monetary problems.
This method involves using a graphics editor like Photoshop or GIMP to alter the focus of the photograph to simulate a shallow depth of field that would normally be encountered when using macro lenses. This will make the scene seem much smaller than it really is. By increasing the color saturation and contrast, you can simulate the bright paint often found on scale models.
To make your own tilt-shift photographs with Photoshop click HERE for a tutorial.
TiltShiftMaker is an online site that does all the hard work for you in 3 simple steps. Upload your standard photo (jpeg format, 4MB limit), select the focus size, and get the tilt-shift equivalent.
Use TiltShiftMaker HERE and check out the Flickr TiltShiftMaker pool HERE.
The annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition finds the very best wildlife images taken by the world’s top professional and amateur photographers.
Here are some of the winners from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 competition.
This most striking photo was taken by Steve Winter (United States of America) after spending 10 months and a winter with little snow in Ladakh’s Hemis High Altitude National Park, India.
Snow leopards are adapted to life in the mountains of central Asia. They have long, waterproof outer fur, dense woolly under-fur and large nasal cavities that warm the air as they breathe it in. This allows them to survive temperatures as low as -40°C. But the leopards can also tolerate the heat of the Gobi Desert, where temperatures can reach 40°C.
This photo taken by Miguel Lasa (United Kingdom) shows a bear backlit by the first rays of sunlight.
During winter, polar bears live on the frozen seas of the Arctic. In summer, in areas where the ice melts completely like Canada’s Hudson Bay, they spend months ashore living on a variety of foods. They will also swim in the water and catch birds. By the time the seas freeze again in autumn they are eager for fresh seal-meat.
This specially commended photo by Paul Hobson (United Kingdom) was taken from hide overlooking a lake in Pohtiolampi, Finland.
Ospreys hover over water then dive, plunging into the shallows to grab prey. They have special feet to hold onto slippery fish scales: the soles are covered in spines and one talon can move so the bird can grip either side of the fish.
This photo from Baptiste Drouet (France) won the runner-up prize in the 10 years and under section of the Junior awards.
Great tits are a woodland bird found across Europe and Asia, but many have adapted to urban gardens. In rural areas they eat insects, but urban populations supplement their diet with bird seed put out by humans. Tits can be aggressive at bird tables, fighting off other smaller birds.
Taken by David Maitland (United Kingdom), this disturbing photo shows a Gabon black colobus monkey being tossed onto an open fire to strip off the fur.
A cloud of acrid smoke filled the air. Then, the glossy jet-black fur caught fire, crinkled and crisped up, and fell off as dust. It was deeply upsetting.’ Black colobus monkeys have a distinct, high-pitched roar and frequently call to each other, so human hunters can easily track them down. This helps to make them one of the 10 most threatened primate species in Africa.
You can see more photos from the competition at the Natural History Museum’s Online Gallery.
If you live in Cape Town, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 exhibition will be at the Iziko South African Museum (25 Queen Victoria Street Cape Town) until 15 March 2009. Entrance is R15 and well worth it.
Flickr user Garry took this amazing photo.
The left over of a storm moving out to sea. This cloud really got everyones attention….no surprise. Nature composed this so well we were all standing there just flabbergasted.
Click the image to see it in full size.
The view out of my computer room looks straight into the neighbour’s kitchen, where a married couple delight in their monthly naked cooking sessions. It’s not a pleasant sight. Living far away from the concrete jungle, Eirik Solheim had a much better view out of his window, and in 2005 he decided to shoot images out of his window, for one year. He did this again at the end of 2007 but in much better quality.
What you see below is a 40-second clip of those photos. It’s pretty stunning if you like seeing trees change colour, which I do :)
Read about the process at Eirik’s website – via Neatorama.