Curacao - Windfarm and Vultures

[lambroving]

Since it's freezing here, maybe it's time to post this. MP .58, 35/2 LHSA, f5.6 at 125th, Portra 160 NC. Remote north coast of Curacao during the "rainy season", December, 2006. It was ~ 30 C.

[andybarton]

Can't see much wind farm, William.

Can't see many vultures.

I would have liked to have seen this with a 50 or 90 to get more real subject in the frame. The 35 vignette is unfortunate.

Good sky, though.

Thanks for sharing.

[lambroving]

Forgot you wear glasses. You don't like the cactus? It's about the light at 12N. Didn't carry my full kit as this was taken from an open Land Rover and it had been raining. I used a UVa. Without it you would barely see the hills in the distance. I could barely see them with the naked eye. The vignette is much worse when I compress and "save for web". Anything else you don't get/like? Don't answer that.

[Edward S. Isaacs]

Hi William,
I like the second one, The colors really make me feel I'm there.
Thanks for sharing.

Ed.








.

[stunsworth]

William, some good manners wouldn't go amiss. Andy's advice is good.

You're too far away, there's nothing of interest in the foreground. You took it from a car and it looks like it. You should have got ou of the car, walked over to the cactus and worked around that. There would have been some interesting shots.

[jmr]

William,

I like the first shot - it has a nice balance between the near cactus and the distant scene (with the small windfarm ). I like the soft colours too.

[davidmires]

Good sky. The trio of vultures is cool, but I would like to have a closer view of them.
The contrast between the vultures/windfarm/desert/sky would be more interesting if you were a little closer.
I think a longer lens would compress everything too much though. No way around it, really, other than getting closer to the vultures. Sometimes they just won't allow that...

[martinop]

Good eye to catch & photograph (with a range finder & 35mm lens in a moving vehicle) the 3 vultures resting on top of the cactus and possibly a 4th in the background at left center.

Also like the colors and contrast in the 2nd shot.

[abrewer]

Nice shots William.

I like your "tongue-in-cheek" title on the first one.

When I lived in Texas we had large windfarm near our local golf course. The sound those things make when they are in full song is damn near deafening: Whupwhupwhupwhupwhup....it just drives you crazy. Frankly, I wouldn't want to get any closer to them than this!

The realistic colors of the sky and the distant mountains and the arrid dirt/dust ground reminds me a lot of where I lived in the desert.

Hope I don't have to go back there anytime soon!



Thanks.

Allan

[azzo]

I would have liked to pass my comments and a few usefull suggestions about these two images. Obviously i'm not going to do that. One thing though..Not being a glasses wearer, does not necessarily make you a better photographer...case in point.

With Sincere & Very Best Regards,

Azzo.

[ddp]

Originally Posted by andybarton

Can't see much wind farm, William.

Can't see many vultures.

I would have liked to have seen this with a 50 or 90 to get more real subject in the frame. The 35 vignette is unfortunate.

Good sky, though.

Thanks for sharing.

The 35 Summicron does have a tendency to vignette at times....not like we haven't been down this road before. Unless of course we're stirring the pot.....

[LADP]

William, the terrain is very interesting, and I rather like the colors in the 2nd shot too. Considering they were shot from a vehicle, I think they are quite good "sketches." I tend to like wide angle lenses in general, so I wouldn't have preferred longer focal length lenses to capture these images.

Personally, the vignetting does not bother me.

Being closer to the cacti and/or vultures would have provided more compositional possibilities to create graphic tension, but hey, you were in a moving car after all.

[rob_x2004]

William, you could snap off a cactus and see if it reams through Armitage's S bend.
Anyway, I like the colours here. Do you have anything without the filter for comaprison?Long shot I know but it would be interesting.

[stunsworth]

Originally Posted by LADP

...but hey, you were in a moving car after all.

Not sure that it was moving - William doesn't mention that.

I'd assumed that William had stopped the car at the side of the road, taken the snap, and then driven off.

[lambroving]

Well..., where do I begin?

Ed, John, David, Paul, Allan, Dan, Anthony and Rob, pleased you found this interesting. I take snaps for my own pleasure and this really is a weird place. Not what the lemmings (tourists) expect of Curacao..., and they don't see it either.

So.., if you are stuck on a cruise ship for a week with a bunch of Land Rover people and are not particularly "beachy", what do you do? A few of us spotted a Land Rover at the dock which was taking people off-road to the far side of the island. Not expensive, so out of the eight on board, five were Land Rover types. In four hours the vehicle stopped three times, once for a cave, once for a beach club where you could grab a Dutch beer, and once for a pit stop. So, yes, three frames shot quickly from a slow-moving vehicle, only one where the cactus was in the right spot. The vultures landed as a bonus. Go figure! I'll post a snap of the vehicle later. It was interesting because a retired Dutch Army type had converted four military 110's to drag tourists around out here. I took the shot because the light in the distance was interesting as was this location, at least to me.

Rob, the toilet bowl is gone. No worries. Because it had been raining hard when we left the ship, I just grabbed my walk-around kit, MP .58 w/ 35/2 and UVa for protection in salt air, dust, etc., and a folding umbrella. So, no shots without. Might contribute a bit to the vignetting in the first shot, but you would not really expect me to carry a bare lens with salt spray everywhere, would you? http://www.leica-camera-user.com/dis.../11/74140.html

[andybarton]

Under the circumstances, William, these were fine shots.

The title for the first post is a bit misleading, though... hence my confusion.

[stunsworth]

William, it sounds like it was a difficult period to take photographs to say the least. But the problem is that for the observer of the photograph the problems encountered when taking the image are of no real interest, it's the image itself that is of interest - there are exceptions of which Capa's D Day images are probably the prime example.

The bottom line is that when I see a photograph titles 'Windfarm and Vultures' there are two main things that I expect to see, neither of which are really apparent in this image.

Now I know you will probably think 'Here he goes again trying to kill my thread', but that isn't the case, I'm trying to offer some photographic advice.

[Rona|d]

I don´t expect William to learn how to use a Visoflex and Telyt 800 these days but maybe he learned something about photo-forums and their members

(with a headline like "landscape and sky" you never go wrong ) A headline is a headline and a photo is a photo. Good photos don´t need no titles

[stunsworth]

Originally Posted by Rona|d

Good photos don´t need no titles

Indeed they don't.

[dotandcom]

William, I greatly enjoyed reading the story that gives context to your shots. I know that photographs stand or fall on their own merits, but I am a simple soul who responds to a good story. Purists probably won't agree with that. I just happen to be someone who is at least as interested in the person taking the photograph and in what his experiences were at the time as I am in the equipment used. An old gossip, basically.

The photographs themselves I find unsettling, in the very best sense: a desert apparently fringed by greenery; a desert with puddles; and a desert with a wind farm. All very unexpected, and fascinating.

Any cruise ship pictures and gossip?

All the best,

Chris