Rich, I had no luck with the polarizer filter.
Kort, I have been to Blue Springs many times but never after a hard frost. COOL
Any sea COWS in IR.  Or do the IR rays even make through water?

Mike

Arrggg, I cant escape the dreaded wonkyness curse.  But it looks as though it runs a little in all of us.

@Rich, first shot is very cool.
@Kort, what a coincidence, I live on Cow Creek Road.  Weird huh? 
@Tom, feel for you on the trees, my big oaks are finally starting to fill back in after the hurricanes knocked most of the leaves and branches off a couple of years ago.  Hope you have better luck.

Mike

Soap bubbles rock.

Mike

First shows the water drop still tied to the surface of the soap bubble as it passes through.

Chrissy, I googled Slitheen and found they are a calcium based race and we have very hard water here in Florida. So its possible mine are related.

Mike

Mantis and macro, made for each other.

Nice bit of "junk" displayed here lately.

Mike

As a beginner and untrained picture taker my opinion is there seems to be a need for a page with some basic rules.  I seemed have been ticking off a lot of members and not knowing it.  My apologies for not specifically asking for critique, it must have been very agonizing not to be able to add a constructive comment. I checked the box on the upload page.  The mission statement of this gallery provides some guidelines but seems to be mostly ignored.  And I can't help but wonder what kind of thoughts go through your heads when you see my thumbnails.  Of course my last upload speaks volumes to that and the buddy system point of view of this thread.

The views in this type of  thread have  been educating and eye opening.

Many thanks for taking the time expressing your opinions here,  I know that it is very valuable.

Mike

And as a postscript, I was viewing an upload of a very established photographer this morning and thought something just didn't seem right to me.  So as I was reading the posted comments I ran into a critique that expressed what was bothering me about the photograph.  However the next comment blasted this view essentially saying the reviewer didn't understand a thing about this type of photography and the picture was perfect.  There were about a dozen other comment saying how great it was also.  Buddy system.  Tough on a newby to pick up whats needed for an acceptable photo to post here.

First of all, where are these rules located? Have I not found all the nooks and crannies in the Photography gallery? I have uploaded 30 or so images without the benefit of the basics. After following a number of these type of threads I have found that I have no comment etiquette, my pictures are not only boring as s*** (pardon my asterisks) but are not even worthy of critique or even viewing. And now I am going back and to figure out if some of my uploads have met these rules. I have reviewed a couple of obvious pics and agree they miss the 50% rule by a large margin. I don’t agree with moving them to the 2D or mixed media galleries so I have removed them. I don’t think its that big of deal for me since each only had a couple of wow,cool comments(which I like but now wonder the motive) and were not on favorites lists. I really don’t understand why the two tutorials were presented in the Photography gallery when both break the 50% rule. I should have actually just posted the ‘rayburg’ type pic in the tutorial thread.

I don’t know about other newcomers but I am a little discouraged by this type of thread. Where were you elder guys 3 or 4 months ago? This type of picture or the comment thing was going on then too.

Whew, got that out my system. The Photography members have been great to me, but I should have spent a little more time on the ins and outs of this type of website and really have no excuse for not knowing the basics.

Many apologies for my indiscretions, I still like this place and there is plenty to keep me coming back for inspiration.

Finally, does cropping a photo to under 50% of the original fail under the rule?

Mike

Wow, this is cool.  I guess I have come full circle. I joined Renderosity looking for tutorials and ideas for Poser  then accidently stumbled onto the collection of water drop art in the Photography gallery.  Thanks for the recognition and thanks to the Poser artists for sharing your awesome work. 

Mike 

I have the 5100 4mp Fuji and use the FinePixViewer which has a RAW to TIFF converter that was loaded when I intalled the viewer. 
I always transfer the files to the PC harddrive first and the FinePixViewer really works well for the 10MB tiff files, I can scan through pretty quickly.  It will slow a bit when the format of the file switches from RAF to TIF. 
The card reader transfer is much faster than directly moving the files from the camera, I think this is due to the PC computer(very fast) communicating with the Camera computer(not so fast) whereas the card reader gives the PC computer direct access to the flash memory.  

I am really happy with my camera and am continually surprised at the results.  Of course this may change over the next week when I try a few things with my sister-in-law's Canon.

Mike

Attached Link: http://www.channel360.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=C3IIG&Category_Code=tech

Same method as  Lew's.  I thought the "How to create..." page was informative.

Mike

WOW.  There were a lot a great shots last week.  Thanks for the recognition.  And thanks to all the photographers for sharing and inspiring.

Mike

Hey Matt nice pine cone, have you tried to take a macro of it?  

Mike