Mirror Image
by janfries

Comment by Willynw:
Hi....I live in Duvall. It was nice to find someone from my neck of the woods. I just bought a Canon S2 IS and am starting to get back into photography....Hopefully I can get as good as you are !!

stained glass greenery
by janfries

Comment by lcarterdavis:
Beautiful. The branches make nice spirals. Would be excellent if the sky retained a little more blue.

stained glass greenery
by janfries

Comment by bclements:
I really like the perspective in this photo.

Mountain Through Trees
by janfries

Comment by janfries:
If I took this picture again, I think I would have cut that one branch out of there.......

Chrome Illusion
by janfries

Comment by janfries:
The illusion was supposed to be the color changes the paint went through. And since the paint is actually called "Chrome Illusion Chameleon Purple" I thought it fit. The car wasn't mine--I saw it parked in a restaurant parking lot, and had never seen the paint before. It deserves all the criticism it got, but thought I'd show it to you anyway, because I thought it was interesting.

Bear!
by janfries

Comment by janfries:
This bear was actually about 5 feet away from me, so that is why I couldn't get him more centered in the frame. And no, he wasn't in a zoo. He was walking beside a backroad on Vancouver Island, and if I'd put my hand out of the car, I could probably have touched him. Not a tame Yellowstone bear, either!

Mountain Through Trees
by janfries

Comment by Reuben:
I love this more every time I look at it.

Planet
by janfries

Comment by emorgan49:
Belated greetings from the critique club-

I don't know what I can add to the other comments on your picture, though they were a bit contradictory (crop closer, crop wider). I think this is a Could Have Been Better picture and I suppose that is what frustrated the viewers.

It is a great image, very bizzare looking and very much looking like a dynamic electric earth (which I see it was). It does look like a planet beseiged by storms, the veins of lightnening at the core seem to move even. The separation of green pn one end, blue on the other woth all the variations between sets up a nice contrast. I especially like that it seems to have a diagonal axis and you have tilted it towards the center of the picture along that axis. Makes a nice composition. I can't decide which I like better regarding the cropping. I think the close up crop makes the planet look more alive and swirly, where more of the black expanse of the universe around the planet might have made it look more like a planet out in space. Did you try it both ways.

Obviously you lost points for focus, out of focus seems to be an unforgivable sin here. How do you focus on a round object? It looks to me like you have focused on the lightening which is actually inside, right? So the surface is out of focus. But when I look at it as a planet I think the lightening is also on the surface and I find the out of focus mountains and edges disturbing. Could a deeper DOF have helped? I know you were outside at night and may have been limited to a wider aperature but maybe a narrow one and a longer exposure would have helped the focus......no wait....you needed the fast shutter speed for the crisp lightening. Obviously I know less than you do.

Overall I thought it was an interesting picture, thought provoking (is OUR plantet about to explode?) and I gave it a six (fell into the out of focus trap myself).

Planet
by janfries

Comment by janfries:
I had a number of people ask me WHAT IS THIS ANYWAY?
You know those electricity balls that you can put your hand on and lightning bolts come to your hand? This is one of those, only in the shape of the earth, complete with bumpy mountain ranges, etc. I took it outside, draped it with black cloth, and took about 50 shots. I did a little sharpening, but not much. It looks fuzzy because it is a glowing ball, and it looks bumpy because it actually has bumps on it. Sorry, no mystery!

Planet
by janfries

Comment by stephan:
That was one of the first things I had in mind for the blue challenge. But unfortunately I didn't have the possibilities to fly into space and take a photo of the earth ;-) Your "thing" (don't know what this could be) looks very interesting and I wonder how you did this. I'll check back after the challenge to see if you put any description on it. The focus could be a better. The photo looks very blurry and while I like this sometimes I think in this case it's not good. -stephan