One more panoramic image, recommended to check it on big monitor, enlarged:

Voyeur, very nice set, as usual!

I'm going to agree with BSA, that black and white photo of Warebeth beach is the highlight of the set. Interesting crosshatched rocks in the foreground, the cloud movement from the long exposure, the light hitting those rocks, the contrast, damn A+ That should be on 1x. I'd like to see some more b&w from you.

I also really liked the sea stacks, very nice composition. Although I'm going to need some convincing that less of the focus should be on the dry rocks at the bottom of the frame and moreso on the water hitting the rocks in the midground.

Rings of Brodgar: I really like how the wooden poles lead your eye right into the sunset, but the thing that confuses me is that the sun is basically unobstructed in this photo shining beneath the cloud layer, but it doesn't seem to light the scene at all in this shot... These are normally the type of sunsets that turn out awesome, with the sun lighting all the clouds and the foreground, did that not happen??

John O groats: I like the composition but the colors of the houses seem a bit oversaturated for my tastes. Also on a super nitty sidepoint, is the horizon slightly off?

Ninja, cool panos, I like the middle one of your set of 3 the best. However I can't get past the extreme amounts of wide angle distortion, especially with the bridge, and even moreso with church. it's a cool shot and the lighting is awesome, but those bending pillars make me feel like i'm in a wacky funhouse. What kind of lens are you using?

Also, anyone here use the canon 16-35mm f/2.8L? I'm thinking of upgrading from the 17-40, not sure if its worth it. Considering I would use it for a fair amount of street shots where the extra stop would come in handy, it probably is, but I can't make up my mind.

I have the 16-35 but have no clue if it's worth it. I'm rusty but outside in the street with a wide angle does an extra stop really make any difference ? I'm not even sure I ever shot wide open with it. I would think the possible overall better image quality would be more of a reason to upgrade than one stop.

My advice which also applies to most lenses is one they historically hold value well(the 16-35 is retailing for more than i paid for it 5 years ago) so they don't necessarily cost that much as long as you don't break/lose it and two of course rent it or buy it and try it out and return it if you don't like it. Easy game.

*The 16-35 is 82mm which is my only lens that size so may have some additional cost if you use any polarizer/ND filters though I hear 82mm is becoming more common

Ninja, those are nice shots. I would say the first one is my favorite. On the last one, did you use a fish eye lens?

scratchy, I actually shoot wide open with my 17-40 quite a bit when I have any moving subjects in the street and the light is getting low, and there have been plenty of times that I have wished my f/4 wasn't so damn slow. Then i put on my 50mm 1.4 and complain that it isn't wide enough. But I do agree that, in general, nice glass holds its value pretty well, but I beat up my lenses pretty good, so i'm not sure how much that applies to me. Aaand I do have a few filters for my 17-40, so it would cost me another couple hundred to get the same filters on the 16-35. Hmmm

hmmm... If you're going to do low light street stuff, I would go with a fast prime.. but I must confess, I'm not a Canon user, nor a professional photographer.

The Angry Photographer, mostly a Nikon guy, is quickly becoming my favorite photography Youtube channel. He recently called out popular youtube channel who was promoting misinformation (according to him).

https://www.youtube.com/user/kathodosdotcom/videos

Thnx for good words

I think that for outside panoramas I was using 17-55 Tamron Lens, non fancy one. For church indoors I used 10-22 EFS. But outdoor panoramas was stiched from something like 10 images and church interrior from 40-50 photos. Just playing arround with Lightroom.

Nah, just 10-22 (still quite wide) and I stiched a lot of photos together. So I got super wide angle.

I could (and I should) get away with less pictures

It is definetelly going to be good upgrade. But when I was considering such upgrade I was going to buy 17-35 F4 IS version/. It is very good, a bit cheaper and also has very good IS.

Also it is more suitable for photography that I like to do.

Few more stiched images:





It looks like that when you are doing panorama, you get not just better resolution ans sharpness, but you just can't go wrong

Cardshark, have you ever written anything about your trips? I'd love to read a journal, blog posts, anything.
If not, do you have any tips, guidelines, resources for people who would want to travel Central/South America?

ha, I actually have a blog. Hardly anyone reads it, but it does exist! http://www.adamliss.com/blog/

As far as resources, I normally read a lot of thorn tree (lonely planet forum) posts and that's usually good enough for me. I like learning a bit about where I'm traveling but I kind of enjoy not knowing everything, so I can kind of learn as I go along when I'm there.

Also feel free to pm me any questions you've got, although I've only been to 2 countries S. America, I'm pretty knowledgeable about C. America.

Ninja, for your panos I would like to see a more clear cut focal point! For your first one the focal point is that tree that is right in the middle of your frame.

The second one my eye is drawn to that post in the far left, and then that skinny pole. I feel like the main focus should be on the building, but it's basically just a background object in your photos.

Also for your previous set, do you have access to photoshop? If so I would go into lens correction and see what it does, and then go to edit. transform. skew. and try and correct those verticals, although it will take out the far left and right sides of your photo.

Also as far as any of you guys know, is there actually any money to be made in travel photography? This is kind of a drunk post... I mean travel photography is obviously my strong suit, but I don't even have the slightest idea what to do with my photos. I basically post them here, on my blog, and on my facebook (ie no visibility). I know they're pretty good, but there are so many awesome travel photos out there. All my friends tell me I should be like a national geographic photographer or whatever, (which would be my dream job) but I dunno I basically relegate that to something like my grandma would say. And I just assumed nat'l geo just hires out freelancers for whatever they want photos of nowadays, do they even staff full time pros anymore?? And even if they did, what would I do, be like hey nat'l geo check out my portfolio! wanna hire me?? Maybe I'm selling my self short... or not, I'm not sure. Either way, I guess I feel like I should do something more with them besides posting them here and my blog that only my friends read. hmmm

And fwiw, as much as my hometown friends like my travel photos, no one wants to buy a nice portrait of some rajasthani woman in india, they'd much rather buy a cool skyline photo of Chicago. So maybe that's what I should I should concentrate on if I actually want to sell any photos.

Nat Geo has at least some very serious full time photographers it seems. I've watched some documentaries and there are some big budget productions.

I doubt you break straight in as a Nat Geo photographer. But there are probably ways to work your way up. I assume there are travel photographer forums? Also stuff like 500px. They'd probably have some good advice about how to break in. It's not easy I'm sure.

Yeah it was depressing to learn most of the photographers I looked up to seem to make the majority of their photography income from workshops for other photographers. I think wedding photography is where the money is.

Or open a gallery next to Peter Liks and slightly undercut all his prices.

Hey, what do you mean by focal point? I get it from some other meaning, because it should be everyhting in focus, so i bet that you talk about some composition concept that I am not aware of

No, I bought just LR 6 ( not CC) so I don't have photoshop. I saw in videos, that photoshop does very good job in panoramas with lens distortion tool. but I don't use it and I am not planning to use it soon.

Problem with photoshop is that it is to powerful. Couple years prior LR I used photoshop and it was kind of big demotivator for me, because I used to work too long on my photos, try too many things and finally my retouched photos mnumber was 1/50th compared to now. Also I bought perpetual license, so buying CC now would be kind of mental loss

Photos worth as much money as people are willing to pay So even best photo in the world is not worth cent, if no one wants to buy it.

There is couple of ways to earn from travel photography (that I know).

1) Be photojournalist
2) Organize workshops where you travel and teach others to shoot. Actually I think this one is most likely to happen. I watched a lot of videos about traveling photography, tutorials and most of those guys was doing exactly such things. It is cool think to do and you are targeting quite wide range of possible customers.
3) Selling your own photographs. This is the most difficult I would say. Well it is business and you have product. But still you need to do very good marketing to sell those photos. And actually this is is most important part. So work on this. Get knowledge about this and find what people likes most. I bet that never anyone will buy those indian womens, because it is not the the thing that people want to hang on the wall. Maybe learn about stocks and techniques there and transfer that knowlesge to personal marketing.

Another way to sell photos could be making exibition and sell prints right there.

Go and look for sites like 500px or some other where you can directly buy prints and you will see how hard competition is.

Maybe you rather specialiize as real estate photographer. I see quite good niche for this.

Thanks

The Warebeth Beach shot is also one of my favourites - I probably don't consider B&W as often as I should do, but I knew this one was going to be B&W when I was shooting it.

I have other compositions from nearer the water (see the below pano, for example), but the rocks in/near the waterline were basically all black and I liked the fact that the rocks further up the beach had warmer tones that complimented the warm tones in the cliff. I know what you mean about this composition though, as it does somewhat minimise/diminish the sea stacks themselves as a focal point of the image - although I found that was also true of any non-telephoto composition, and my telephoto compositions were all a little flat.



They're standing stones, rather than wooden poles - neolithic, so around 4000-5000 years old (there's actually a very well preserved neolithic village on the island of around the same age, called Scara Brae). Unfortunately the cloud's didn't really light up in the way you're suggesting - the best we managed to get was a little bit of orange colour on the horizon. Not sure why, as like you we thought the conditions were perfect for it, but possibly because the sun was setting behind a line of hills? I did get a couple of nice long exposures (5+ minutes) after the sun set, of which this is my favourite:



Yeah, it turns out the horizon was a little off - now corrected

On the other hand, I like the saturation of the houses - or more accurately, the contrast between the brightly coloured houses and the rest of the basically monochromatic scene. I did boost the exposure on the houses a little, but probably less than you think - and I didn't touch the saturation/vibrance, they're actually just painted very brightly. Incidentally, if you ever visit John o' Groats I highly recommend staying in those houses, or in the lodges that are part of the same outfit.

I have the 16-35mm f/2.8L II and I love it, but I'm not sure if it would be worth upgrading from the 17-40. When I was purchasing I looked at both, and ultimately only went for the 16-35 because I had (still have) aspirations to shoot some night stuff like the milky way, star trails etc and thought the faster lens would be helpful there - potentially letting me stop down a bit for extra sharpness if necessary, but still being at f/4.

I think by 'focal point' he means a compositional element to which the eye is naturally drawn, or which is clearly the dominant/most important element in the composition.

Usually the decision to shoot a stitched panorama is made because you want to get a wider view of the scene, and fit more 'stuff' into the frame - the problem with this is that if you don't pay attention to the composition the viewer's eye doesn't know where to go in the photograph, because there's too much going on; it's also harder (or, at least, I find it harder) to use traditional compositional elements such as leading lines, or emphasising foreground objects, in stitched panoramas, because often the stitching distorts them and/or composing in a manner which includes them results in parallax issues.

It's therefore often helpful to have a very clear subject for your panorama, with the rest of the composition essentially showing the 'setting' in which your subject is found rather than being a point of interest to which the eye is drawn - although there are obviously exceptions where a 'busy' panoramic scene works well because everywhere the eye travels within the image there is interesting detail for it to latch onto, although even these will often have particular focal points such as familiar landmarks (think, for example, of cityscapes - particularly those shot from a tall building or similar vantage point).

cardshark,

I work for a scenic flight company and I'll be framing photos and putting them up on the walls in our office to see if any tourists are willing to pay. You could do something similar, contact some high-end tourism companies, take some photos relevant to their product/area, and see if they will put them up on their walls to sell to their clients for a 10% commission. They will get some awesome art on the walls, a nice product for their clients, and some passive income. If you want to sweeten the deal for the company, you can allow them to use some of your photos in their advertising.

Suzz, I googled travel photography forums and it's pretty weak all around. Dpreview seems to be the largest, but its landscape and travel lumped together, but mostly landscape. And like almost every forum I've been on, it's mostly ooh, nice photos! but not much in the way of critiques.

I suppose posting on 500px would be a good way to go, but I still wouldn't know how to increase viewer counts once I posted. I feel like my photos would just get lost in the muck. I might have to do some googling to answer this...

Hey didn't you post how much Marc Adamus makes one time? I remember it being pretty underwhelming. Which is depressing.


Scratchy: Yea that sounds about right as for how photographers actually make money. I also hate wedding photography. I guess real estate photography could be my most viable option.

Ninja: basically what Voyeur said, the focal point of the photo is the part that draws your eye in. So in your pano that has a tree in front of the building, that is what catches my eye first. So my point was that you should move to a spot where the main focus of the shot is the building itself, without any distracting elements to catch the viewers eye.

Also I feel you about working in photoshop. I spend way to much time in there, but I kind of like it.

Hero, thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into it

Yea, I do see your point now about the nice complimenting colors of the rocks. I still might crop out a bit of the very bottom though.


Well if the lighting was better than I would have been able to tell

Yea, definitely one of the most frustrating parts of landscape photography, not knowing what the sky is going to do. That long exposure is nice, the ever moving clouds definitely adds to the ancient, ethereal feel of the shot, like not even time has touched these rocks.
haha sorry I just can't help myself with the horizons! But yea it definitely could be the houses are brighter than I would have thought. I guess I wouldn't have expected houses on the far corner of scotland to be brightly painted! And if I ever do visit J.o.G then I'll certainly check those houses out.

Yea, still deciding on this one. My 17-40 is pretty nice for traveling because it's beat up, but still works perfectly, and I wouldn't care too much if something happened to it at this point. But if poker keeps going well then I'll probably say f'k it and get the 16-35.

It might be worth looking at the images you've shot with the 17-40 and seeing what focal length you are normally at - if you find you're always in a pretty narrow part of the focal range, then you might want to consider whether a prime around that focal length would be better. I'm thinking of the Zeiss 35mm f/1.4 T* Distagon, which costs roughly the same as the Canon 16-35 but should be much sharper (and has the wider aperture), and would be my pick for a single 'street photography' lens if I had to choose only one, but you might find you're always wider and something like a 24mm prime would be ideal.

In Lightroom you can filter your images by lens and then by focal length, and it will give you counts for the number of images you've shot at each focal length - dead simple

I'm proud of this photo below, given that I've had so many failures trying to take photos of people inside planes. Any advice on how to improve on this effort would be greatly appreciated! This is with the flash built-in to the camera:


And a couple aerial shots:



Any advice here with the aerial landscapes also appreciated. I wish I had some image stabilization for these shots...

Oooh damn, that is a cool feature! Any way to to do that in PS? I feel like my most memorable photos are usually on the widest end of the spectrum though.

I like the shot, nice lighting of the pilot and the mountains. I guess the only thing I would like to see in this shot is more of behind the pilot shot, where you can still see part of the pilot's head and the instrument panel, but get more of his field of view as it's laid out in front of him. Not sure if that's possible from the passenger seat though. How wide were you shooting??


1st one is a good photo, but it looks like it could be taken by anyone with a telephoto lens, so it doesn't really impress me much by aerial standards. The 2nd one definitely does a better job conveying the vastness of the mountains and the low light contrast is nice.