Market value? I don't know, they always say on the Antiques
Road Show that petina is important to an item's value.
Considering the where Guppo has just been, nudge nudge,
he should be worth a million bucks by now! :-)

It seems to me that there's a problem with the angle of the
lighting on the flower itself. Was this taken with a flash
unit? Because the angle of the light is close to parallel
with the line of sight, it seems to be reflecting right
straight back through the water droplets, which tends to
illuminate them too much, so they don't stand out. Also,
since the petals of the flower have a sheen of their own
the bright reflection from them contributes to keeping
the droplets from standing out as well.

Would it be possible to reshoot this flower with a different
lighting angle? If you can do it with just natural light
you can use a white card (like you'd get from a package of
new t-shirts or undershorts) to brighten up the flower. Hold
it at different angles just out of the frame using the shiny
white side as a reflector. Take a bunch of shots with the
card at different agnles so you can choose the best one to
work with.

The only automated mode I ever use is Aperture Priority
mode. And that's mainly as a convenience because I'm left
handed and it's difficult to manipulate the 4-way switch
on the back of my digi-cam with my right thumb (I'm always
changing the wrong setting, etc.). I don't think I've ever
even tried most of the automatic modes that my camera has.
Most of them just set the camera to typical settings for
a certain type of shot (e.g. Landscape Mode just stops
down the aperture all the way to f8 and locks focus on
infinity), and I can do that myself easily enough.

I learned on a totally manual 35mm SLR, and have started
using it again. It's much easier for me to handle the
very traditionally layed-out SLR than the little digi-cam,
but I'd love to find an SLR that's layed-out for left
handed people.

Heh! I don't know why, but I love dirty windows!

First of all that's a great photograph. And it's just got
to be a photo-montage, which makes the image even better when
you realize that it was done strictly in a darkroom without
the aid of photoshop or somesuch.

I think it's a great combination of etherial lighting
(implying heaven) and a bleak barren landscape (implying
hell), but finding a hangman's noose on a dead tree with
a cross-shaped cloud over it in nature would be astronomically
unlikely, IMO.

Since I've had this monitor and card setup for so long I
kinda presume that others have a similar setup, seeing as
how I always seem to be behind the hardware curve compared
to other people. I have a 21" monitor running in 1600x1200,
so those dimensions are the absolute maximum limit for my
final images. My digi-cam produces images that are 2272x1704
and after cropping I scale that image by about .5 as a
matter of course, which leaves me with an image of less than
1136x852. A little large, I guess, for smaller display
systems. I always try to go for maximum quality / minimum
jpeg compression that stays under the 500k limit.

That's for my Gallery postings. For here in the forum, I
typically reduce the dimensions by half again (568x426)
and stay under the 200k limit.

This brings up a question that I've had in the past: Would
PNG files help in preserving quality while maintaining small
file size, and will Renderosity accept this file format?
Would many people have trouble viewing this format?

Sounds like what my father used to tell me were "money stealers" when I was little. They were the seeds from milk weeds, which on the stem are in a pod (a cresent shaped green sack that would pop open and release the seeds on the wind). As kids we used to bat at each other with milk weed pods until the seeds were everywhere. Kinda like a pillow fight.

So, when can I move in?

Jordy, I'm sure you'll be able to find much older artifacts
around where you live. Stonehenge leaps to mind for example.
I do realize on the one hand how relatively young this
country is, with respect to Europeans living here. I often
wonder if present day people living in Europe and the UK
have an appreciation for how old their home towns are. On
the other hand, because life has changed so radically in
this country since the pilgrims settled here (social moors,
standards of living, environmental changes), that scant 300
years seems much longer and more distant.

If you do photograph ancient sites where you are, then
please post them. I'd be very interested to see what you
find. In fact, this might make a good Challenge some time.

Nope, I don't bother to sketch out my ideas. I do form a
mental image of the ideas I get though. Then I'll either
set up the scene as close to what's in my mind, or scout
up a location with lighting conditions that is closest to
my mental image. Other times I'll just cruise around,
staying alert for things that grab my attention.

Nplus: You oughta post some of your photographs. I'd be
interested to see them. (Oh, and thanks for steering me
clear of buying an old Graphlex. I think that was good
advice after thinking it over.)

Did a little math, and it seems that Mr. Street was born
only 15 years after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock,
in Dec. 1620. He might well have been one of the children
of those original settlers.

Welcome, and I like this shot because of your unselfconsciousness;
you seem to not notice the camera at all. In most
self-portraits the subject usually appears quite
aware of the camera. It's not easy to forget about the
camera, especially when you're the one operating it. I
would never have thought that it was a self-portrait if you
hadn't said so. Nicely done.

As far as what it's missing is concerned, that's hard to
say. What do you think is missing? What would you add to
the scene if you could choose from anything? It all depends
on what you would like, not what others would like. (And
yeah, composition of a scene is one of the hardest things
to decide on, for me, and I think that's where a large part
of the art in photography lies.)

Damn, that's a whole lot of film! I hope you have a camera
that makes it easy to switch film in the middle of a roll!
For me, that's the most annoying thing about film cameras.

Some of those classic Ferraris are quite sexy, so don't
forget your soft focus lens! :-)

Large format cameras have been in use for over 100 years.
Although they produce images with extremely fine detail --
much better than 35mm, objectively speaking -- I have
determined that they are over-used, and are therefore
largely cliche' and for beginners and the naive.

See? It's easy to sound like an authority, even if what's
being said makes no sense at all.

Although nay-saying self-proclaimed authorities can be
irritating, I'd just ignore them. Their opinions do more
damage to their own credability than to anyone else's.

My favorite quote of all time comes from Thomas Jefferson,
who said, "The right of the people to freedom of speech
does not include the right to be taken seriously."

I hope it's not tired! I just got my longevity check and
intend to blow it on some new (used) lenses. One of them
is a 100mm macro lens.

I'm not sure how to define macro though. The recent shot
of water drops on leaves (honeysuckle, in case anyone was
curious) was done in "macro focus" mode with my Canon G2,
with it's point-n-shoot lens. Just the bare lens though.
No macro adapters or anything.

I guess the trick is to find something unusual or particularly
good looking to shoot, no matter what the angle.

I agree with Bev, too, in that it's fun to explore the world
in close-up. I have a theory about photography in general
that goes something like: If you were to take a picture of
Earth from outer space that had fine enough detail to allow
you to crop and enlarge infinately, you would keep finding
more and more interesting and beautiful images, right down
to the sub-atomic level. Or something like that; I'm tired..