1000 Views in under 24 hours…

I know there are those of us on Flickr who complain about the Magic Donkey, also known as Explore… I mean really, how can a computer algorithm really tell us humans what is interesting?

Thing is, when you get in - and high enough, I might add - it really does work… the photo above I uploaded to Flickr Sunday afternoon around 4:30pm local time… by 1:00pm Monday it had over 1000 views. The highest Explore position was #8… in my opinion it’s not even the best photo from the set I took that day (in fact, this sat in my upload folder because I was hedging for the past couple weeks if I should even upload it), but who’s complaining? Not me! Thanks for all the views, comments and faves - and whatever else it took to reach that high on Explore.

Tags: alberta, church, comments, cultural, explore, faves, flickr, hdr, heritage, rural, ukrainian, views, village

Panorama city…

Above is the view from the Hotel Macdonald overlooking the river valley in Edmonton. This consists of 8 images stitched together, no tripod just freehanded it.

I used hugin, Enblend and autopano-sift - worked pretty good in my opinion, and was relatively painless! Didn’t do much post processing (yet) on this either… might run a minor HDR treatment on it to even out the darks/lights.

Of course, make sure you view the Flickr page and view the largest size, uploaded this one a bit bigger to see more of the details.

Just a heads up for you regular visitors, I plan to be doing a few more substantial articles over the next coupe weeks, including one on Street Photography and TtV!

Tags: autopano-sift, enblend, hugin, Panorama, stitch, stitched

Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

Headed out to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton on Father’s Day. It was a mostly pleasant trip with the family, my parents, brother, his wife and her parents. Mostly pleasant because we got dumped on for about the last half hour or so - but hey, a little rain never hurt anyone.

I did manage to get a couple of nice shots.

Both the shots above are 7 exposure, 1 exposure value HDR images generated from a single RAW file. Be sure to check out the rest of the set, I’ll be adding more as the week goes by.

Tags: alberta, hdr, historical, history, landscape, ukrainian cultural heritage village

Shooting the sun…

We have such beautiful sunsets up here, I decided to head out last night and try and get a shot or two… I was using the AEB mode set to +/-2 so I had triple the shots I normally take, but some of them turned out fantastic!

Tags: alberta, landscape, Sky, sun, sunset

flickr Fave of the Day : Lake Beauvert by elementalPaul

Lake Beauvert Originally uploaded by elementalPaul

I had the pleasure of hooking up with Paul while he was in town. I’ve always loved his HDR stuff and it’s really cool to see his treatment of locations I’m familiar with.

I absolutely love this treatment he has given this shot that he took in Jasper.

Tags: alberta, elementalPaul, flickr, flickr Fave of the day, hdr, jasper, lake, landscape

flickr Fave of the Day : Riding the Storm by calakmul

I’ve been following calakmul’s stream for awhile, partly because he’s a local photographer, and partly because his photographs of the abandoned and forgotten are very well composed and processed. I think I’ll have to pay him to let me tag along sometime!

Be sure to stop by and check out the rest of his stream!

Tags: abandoned, alberta, calakmul, flickr Fave of the day, grain elevator

flickr Fave of the Day : No Day is Perfect by Extra Medium

Been following Extra Medium’s stream for awhile now, he used to be stock full of HDR work but has turned his focus on other things… but every now and then he pulls a shot from “the archives” and teases us once again. Not only is this shot great, the processing is superb!

No Day is Perfect, Originally uploaded by Extra Medium

Tags: extra medium, flickr Fave of the day, hdr, landscape

Abandoned… on flickr Places.

Turns out my Abandoned photo (below) is currently the most interesting from Spruce Grove on flickr Places, which means it’s the feature photo for people searching/viewing photos from Spruce Grove!

Sara Vs. The Storm - flickr Fave of the Day

Been awhile since I posted a flickr Fave of the Day, been super busy lately! Anyways, had a chance to check out some of the photos by Gods Emerald and I have to say… wow! Such great shots… this is one of my favorites, love the composition and angle this was taken from.

Sara Vs. The Storm, originally uploaded by Gods Emerald.

Tags: child, flickr Fave of the day, Gods Emerald, storm

Before the Storm - flickr Fave of the Day

Love the mood, tone and colors on this one!

Before the Storm, originally uploaded by honeyjazz.

Tags: flickr Fave of the day, honeyjazz, landscape