kaberett: Photo of a cassowary with head tilted to one side (cassowary)
because voting in this year's People's Choice category for Wildlife Photographer of the Year is open (until early February, actually), and I keep dithering over which I want to vote for. I think I've narrowed it down to two -- Dancing in the Snow and Jaguar of Ashes -- but those are definitely not the only ones I'm enjoying looking at (nor even the only ones I'm impressed by!).
kaberett: photograph of the Moon taken from the northern hemisphere by GH Revera (moon)
Astronomy Photographer of the Year, which this year included a retrospective of the ten years the award had been running.

Of immediate interest to me: a lot of the photographs are fundamentally of The Same Thing (the Milky Way; the sun; the moon), so quite a lot of everything is in the composition and -- and this really surprised me -- the processing. Because it is absolutely accepted that post-processing is necessary for a bunch of these (not simply compositing exposures but straight-up colourising them, and of course having to process different types of exposure (infra-red; H-alpha and HII; ...). This is in stark contrast to the rules for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, where in addition to the final image the raw files off the camera have to be submitted and enhancement is right out -- and, of course, to some extent WPY has a much greater range of subjects.

I'm glad I went to see this, to be clear, but especially given that it featured highlights from the last decade I doubt I'm likely to make regular trips to Greenwich for this (in the way that I'm happy to take a minor detour to the NHM on my way to work for the sake of WPY). Nevertheless, some favourites! From the People and Space category I particularly enjoyed Me versus the Galaxy and Expedition to Infinity (this is one A & I disagreed about re the merits of humans for scale); looking at the online gallery, I am also very taken by Keeper of the Light, which was not on display. From Skyscapes: Eclipsed Moon Trail, Holding Due North, Circles and Spirals (not on display!). And also Galaxy Curtain Call, Speeding on the Aurorae Lane.
kaberett: Reflections of a bare tree in river ice in Stockholm somehow end up clad in light. (tree-of-light)
I have now been twice, with [personal profile] me_and and [personal profile] swaldman on the 31st, and on the 5th of January with an uncle (to whom I was handing over, appropriately, some of Papa's photography misc.).

Things learned this year: whales exfoliate and clownfish have horrifying parasites.

Pictures I particularly enjoyed: astonishingly characterful seagulls, beautiful choreography of seals, a resplendent quetzal coordinating beautifully with epiphytes, a turtle (with interesting photographic technique, more turtles (blue & glowy), an astonishing shot of a frog failing to eat a weevil, beautifully set off by the lantern it's on, a lobster larvae surfing on a dead jellyfish, a seahorse surfing on a q-tip (gorgeous colours), a handful of iguanas, and some excellent teasels that get to be my next desktop wallpaper.

As ever, it is great fun going around this exibition with walkers: there are startlingly different perspectives from different heights, and most walking adults don't think to crouch down to see what I do. It's great fun encouraging them to.

Also as ever, Simon & I (and indeed my uncle) remain somewhat perplexed by the winners of most categories: broadly, finalists seem to be picked based on a combination of "technical excellence", "interesting story", and "sheer bloody-mindedness", but somehow the winners are very rarely the ones I (we!) would pick.

It's also always a little baffling how many of the non-award-winning photographs (from the People's Choice Award, go vote) end up being sold in the shop & used on publicity; particular shout-outs from me this year to the sloth, the dragonfly, and especially the lilac-breasted roller riding a zebra.
kaberett: Reflections of a bare tree in river ice in Stockholm somehow end up clad in light. (tree-of-light)
About a fortnight ago now, I went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit at the Natural History Museum with [personal profile] swaldman (we are making a habit of this!). I was certainly of the opinion (and I think Simon agreed?) that this year's finalists appeared to have been selected more on technical difficulty than on anything that we could emotionally connect to in the pictures; this was cemented rather for me by the fact that I have more favourites from the 25 People's Choice Award finalists than from the rest of the exhibition (certainly proportionally and possible absolutely). Voting is open until the 16th of January -- maybe go play if you feel that way inclined?

The particular ones I'm having difficulty choosing between are Caterpillar curl, Jelly starburst and Tasty delicacy (which last hits all my buttons around Victorian botanical and zoological illustration).

My highlights from the main exhibition. )
kaberett: a watercolour of a pale gold/salmon honeysuckle blossom against a background of green leaves (honeysuckle)
Item the first: I turned Rilke's Briefe an einen jungen Dichter into an ebook. Here's the epub; if you'd like other formats let me know, because I can trivially do conversions (with calibre) and upload. (There's a free translation into English as HTML; if you want that ebooked too, get the translator's permission and let me know and I can do that for you.) A favour request: Rilke's letters aren't up on Gutenberg, hence making the conversion myself. I'd offer my ebook to them but, er, they appear to require signing up to a forum to go "here I made you a thing", and I absolutely cannot face that, so if any of you are already involved with them, I'd appreciate it if you'd pass this on? (And, you know, if they wanted to compile it into a volume with the rest of his letters, that'd be nice too, but I'm not going to bother doing that til I've decided whether I get enough value out of this set for it to be worth it.)

Item the second: I've taken a small pile of not-terribly-good photos of entertaining/otherwise pleasing bits and bobs in my area. (I am... getting used to my point-and-shoot. The last one I owned took 35mm film, didn't have any ability to zoom, and I haven't used it in, er, A Very Long Time.) Seven photos below the cut. )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
-- in particular, an assorted picspam. Shoddy cameraphone, sorry, but it gives you the idea.


Clump of pale blue dwarf irises at Anglesey Abbey this spring gone.

Read more... )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
Herein the three shots I'm happiest with from the most recent roll of film. The film stock was a little sadder (next lot will likely be worse, as it's 10 years old and salvaged from my grandfather's freezer ;), so please to forgive that.

Half of this film was shot by [personal profile] noldo on Our Great Malaysian Daytrip and is FLOWERS, and those will get uploaded early next week.

Read more... )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
... of a very hurried point-and-shoot nature (my lift was arriving), but I think it does a pretty good job of capturing the colour contrasts. Taken yesterday evening.

Read more... )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] crazyscot kindly passed a superfluous film SLR camera on to me. The last time I did any photography I was about 12 and using a 35mm point-and-shoot camera: I'm still a very long way from sure about what everything does (yes, I have RTFM, thanks :-p) and, of course, I don't get instant feedback on what I'm doing...

I'm well aware I've got a lot to learn but concrit is welcome.

8 images, click for bigger. )

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kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
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