Friday Flickr Forum: December 22, 2006

Mike:
First, thanks for the invitation and the exposure.

Personally, I enjoy photography as a hobby and strive to find colourful scenes. My preference is nature-type shots, but because of living in the city, I try to take advantage of the bold urban opportunities.

Mine was taken during the Junction Arts Festival this past September... fella was standing outside the Rue Morgue House of Horror - a recent addition to the West Junction business area and home to a publishing enterprise, theatre and macabre gift shoppe. He and his serpentine chargee were entertaining passersby (mostly curious smallfry with nervous parents) with education and opportunities to 'pet' the snake. The handler was smartly holding his friend in a shaft of sunlight, so as to keep it nice and warm, which also provided me with a good opportunity for a crisp, detailed close-up.

Wow, I'm really flattered that you would include me amongst all these great photos!

The picture was taken in Yorkville last week, after the Sassafraz fire (hence the yellow tape). I always like to take pictures in natural light, taking advantage of nearby light sources to illuminate them (haha, this is best way I can describe my 'art'). Photography is a hobby for me, and I try my best with my little point+shoot.

Thanks again!

Thanks for including me ere. HDR tehnique is pretty basic. Usually 3 exposures (+2, 0, -2). Development and tone mapping with Photomatix. I do try for a 'natural' look on most mages.

Hey Hamish, have you gone into the Rue Morgue offices? They have some incredibly gorey horror film character props (and an incredibly friendly and beautiful secretary).

Just a quick comment on the backgrounds of my photos:
The ice picture was taken in G Ross Lord Park in the Finch/Dufferin area. It was freezing that morning and was a very dull and quiet morning when I stumbled across some very interesting patterns.
As for the sign, I spotted the aging lines last year while riding my bike in Downsview Park and it took me several months to have the time to return on an early morning to get the lighting I wanted.
Unfortunately, I don't have great stories behind these shots.

it was my fist time driving down Ossington when i came upon this laundromat with a cluster of empty detergent bottles tied to a post outside. since i was just getting into through-the-viewfinder (ttv) shooting, i was more than glad to pull over, get out, and shoot! that scale and needle on the left side is the belows exposure compensation that appears on the ground glass of my Mamiya C330. I used a Velvia action in post to really saturate the colours.

Thanks, guys!

Taken at a friend's house in Parkdale overlooking Queen.

Not much of a story here, just a part of my artsy-fartsy impressionistic series that I shoot whenever I'm in the mood. Just had to add an equally pretentious title to top it up :)

I wanted to revisit one of my most favourite shots, taken last winter and waited for a streetcar to pass, since I kinda miss shooting them from my window view on St. Clair now that right-of-way construction's started.

(buses just don't have the same zing for me)

It's funny because I was never really happy with this shot, which is why I decided to post-process the shit out of it:

**shot very shallow DOF to get bokeh off the streetcar lights below.

**forced vignetting by making a 200px inverted selection in PS, then pushing the darks in curves.

**ran Ryan Tacay's Provia Custom X-Process Curve to increase the saturation and bring out the greens.

**mezzotint filter at 12% to try and simulate film grain.

Later!

Wonderful details dzgnboy! That's a level of processing I've never ventured into.

I might have to ask you for more details about your forced vignetting, mezzotint filters and Ryan Tacay's curves in the future...

Wow, thanks for checking out my photo.

I am a teacher and every trip the i go on with my students I try and document different parts of the city. It is very intereesting to be armed with my camera as I move with the students, there are times when shots just become available. this is the case with the shot that I took from the subway train. We were going eastbound and just about to go back into the darkness. I guess the reason I really liked this shot was because of the natural framing the window provided.

This is one of a few pictures that I have done with a TTC theme.

Thanks again. I would love to know what others think of this pic.

Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.

The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.

The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.

The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.

It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.