Weekly Featured Image: Week of May 28, 2012

Question

This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of 28 May to be featured on the main site. This contest should showcase your best quality work, demonstrating at least moderate skill with a camera and a general understanding of the artistic aspects of photography. Remember, the selected photo will be displayed on our main site header for a week. Submit something that you and the members of our site will want to look at and admire for seven days!  This contest is for the community to choose what they LIKE (not what they dislike), with the most liked being displayed on the main site header for a week. 

.: Voting Closes on May 28th at 9:30pm EDT (UTC-4) :.

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This week, there is no particular theme for the contest. All photos which would be appropriate for the banner are welcome.

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Submissions may be added any day of the week until voting closes. The winning image (with the highest votes) as of the close of voting will be exhibited on the main site.

Last week's thread
Winners Hall of Fame

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Submitter Rules:

• Limit one photo per person per contest
• A specific photo may be submitted at most two weeks in a row
• A specific photo may not be submitted more than four times a year
• Keep all images appropriate, we want this site to be work safe
• Do not submit any photo if you are currently featured
• Images must be 210 px high and up to 375 px wide
• Images must be in landscape orientation
• Do not use this forum as a means to get critiques!
• Showcase your best works!

Voting Rules:

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• Up votes only!
• Only vote up the images you like...ignore those you do not.
• DO NOT use this forum as a place for image critique. Use chat for that (you'll get far better feedback)!
• DO NOT vote down your competitors! UP VOTES ONLY! Don't like, don't vote.

General Tips:

We encourage you to include a link to a larger version of your image. You may host your work on sites such as Flickr, 1x.com, 500px.com, RedBubble.com, etc. to showcase larger versions.

Feel free to include a concise description that explains the image, the emotion behind them, etc. and perhaps some explanation of gear and exposure settings, etc.

Answer 1

2000 years!

Bronze horses, Xian - utterly superb.

Most of their stable mates are terracotta.
Most metal has long since been pillaged from the site.
Two teams of bronze horses managed to avoid the depredations of tomb raiders and have been returned to the world after 2,000+ years of darkness.

Somewhat larger view here - less cropped as does not need to fit the 375 x 210 form factor.

Original 12mp - 4200 x 2800 - click after loading to expand to see details.

This photo is one of my personal favourites, no doubt as much for the memories as anything else.
As well as viewing the overall image, examining the detail in a closeup 100% view of the original gives me a feeling of having a degree of "connection" with the unknown craftsman who, over 2000 years ago, crafted this masterpiece.

It's hard to do justice to the awesomenness of a visit to these creations from so long ago.
Security is, at least visibly, greater than for the British Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.
You walk along a series of corridors with guards at the occasional doorways, take a guarded lift to a darkened room with these marvels and their two associated 'chariots'.
The displays are in large glass floor level cases.

The light level can be judged by this being a 0.2 second, ISO200, f/1.8 exposure.
[Sony 50mm, f/1.8. Sony A700.]

FWIW this is the sort of situation that you buy a 50mm f/1.8 lens for.
That's more obvious from looking at the highest resolution version, which is worth a look [not because it's my photo :-) ] due to the awesome subject material. It's amazing to take a close up look and to think that this is 2000+ years old.

While travelling on business I carry a wide range zoom, a 500mm mirror lens and the 50 mm f/1.8. The wide range zoom lives on the camera and gets used 98%+ of the time. Even in low light situations such as street markets at night * [roll images, don't click] where you don't want to be too too obvious and want good low light focusing, long practice shows that it's easier to brace against a wall and use the zoom at its f/3.5 best ( 4 x less light) than to use the f/1.8. But when the subjects are not going anywhere and small depth of field is very much part of the shot and light levels are low and you want best quality and ..., the f/1.8 comes into its own.

·* - "A walk through Mongkok".

Answer 2

This was the standout winner amongst all of the images in my first attempt at this classic photography project - water dripping into a bucket. The others (of which there were many) came out really dark or very uninteresting, but this one was just timed perfectly.

I had a black bucket filled with water, a small Coke bottle with a hole in the lid suspended above it, and a speedlite aimed at a piece of card behind the bucket reflecting down onto the surface.

A larger version of this can be found here and here. This version has been processed slightly differently for the smaller size. Also, I used Lightroom 4 this time, rather than Lr3 and the different process has produced a different look - one which I prefer.

Answer 3

Arboretum Blooming

Canon 135mm L + 28mm Extension tube

Answer 4

Current River

Larger un-cropped version

Answer 5

It's Good!

Flikr