To All:

I want to thank everyone again who has contributed to this Photo Thread. We have after two months 3,000 views, and over 200 posts. My hope is that we can continue to share our life experiences here with our best photos and have some fun with it at the same time. This is the place to share your life with the rest of us outside the world of Randall speak. I think everyone will agree that we have seen some great creativity, interesting photos, and world class entries. Please continue to share your best of the best!

Best,
Warren

Rick be nice to see some shots of your Axe's!

See Ya, Chief

In Alabama, State employees are given the choice of celebrating Robert E. Lee's birthday or Martin Luther King Day. About 50 miles from my home, in Oneonta, AL, they held the state Robert E. Lee flag raising and speech ceremony. Here are a few pics:











If you are interested in seeing more pictures from this event then go to HERE.

Here's a full on bling classic. If the Gibson Les Paul is the quintessential rock guitar (and that's debatable) then this "Ultima" is the apex of the contemporary Les Paul.

Here's another Lester. This one is a custom shop Les Paul Elegant. David Warther found me a big piece of ivory and Will Hunt fashioned this Les Paul pick guard and a matching truss rod cover.

In keeping with the universal intent of this thread I thought it might be helpful to post a Technical Note from time to time. It is very obvious there is a vast wealth of knowledge and experience among those that have already contributed to this thread and I encourage everyone to continue to share their knowledge and experience.


Depth of Field

Depth of field is the range of distance within the subject that is acceptably sharp. The depth of field varies depending on camera type, aperture and focusing distance, although print size and viewing distance can influence our perception of it.

I immediately thought of this when I viewed one of Raindog's (Gary Howie) beautiful photos of small town festivals. Aside from being an exquisite photo it is one of the best natural photos that I have seen that demonstrates the concept of Depth of Field.

Notice how the fruit in the foreground is out of focus and gradually becomes clearer as you approach the green peppers. The green peppers are perfectly in focus and as you move further into the background the image gradually gets fuzzy. This clearly demonstrates the range of distance within the subject that is acceptably sharp. Many times depth of field is experienced in photos where the foreground is sharp and the image loses focus as you move further into the background but Gary's photo shows that depth of field is actually a range of focus within the image.

At the other end of the spectrum is another beautiful photo posted by Warren Polidori, Icicles & Berries. In this photo, Warren used an artificial black background so in essence there is no background or depth to the photo and because the camera lens was very close to the subject there is not a foreground to the picture so Depth of Field in this example is a moot point.

For additional information on this topic I have found the link below to be as good as any.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

Tom,

This is really good stuff and very technical in nature. This is something that I am very much aware of when photographing knives close-up when the knife is at an angle. When shot on automatic exposure, many times I find that the camera selected an f stop somewhat larger and it tends to render the photo somewhat blurry at the near end and far end. I mostly take these types photos with a tripod and select aperatuture priority. The higher f stop selection generally results in slower shutter speeds but results in sharper images.
To illustrate the point here are two photos of a piece of crown antler that were taken on a tripod at the very same distance and focal length. The first photo was taken on automatic exposure and resulted in an exposure of 1/100th sec @f5.
The second photo is aperature priority setting. I selected f16 the camera set the exposure @ 1/5 sec. The results are night and day. Notice how the foreground is blurry in the first photo. If left up to the camera this is what you get. The second photo is sharp from front to back. No other photoshop corrections were done except for cropping. This is one way to get better photos just by using the f stop correctly and I thank Tom for posting the idea.

Best,
Warren

We've had a few good freezes in Florida recently so I thought I would try this Ice Fishing stuff.

Man, I Love This Ice Fishing







My Friends Son Just Retrieved These Two Beauties From The Local Ice Pond

Very witty Tom. What did you use for bait Hamilton's?

Best,
Warren