Thread: Kow Chang, Gulf of Thailand.

Blown away Greg. Were any filtters used during the photos the green of the surround and the old lady and dragon. I was going to ask same question for Stoney ones also??

Hi mate ... The short answer to this is no, no filters.

However ... That is no answer at all. I was ... ummm ... made thoughtful ? By your comment in the 'Stony Desert' thread. I would like time to make a considered reply as I feel you do not ask lightly ... Your pen, 2nd Barrell, it stands apart, like your writing .. Exceptional !

Will reply here tomorrow with an explanation of how the photos were taken, if thats OK with you ?

thanks for the kind remarks ... Greg

Thanks Greg sepia and BW for the Billabong I understand. The Red of the night shots and tinges of stricking colour in others.

Well ... first .. I am only self taught at photography ...but years of practice occasionally pay off with a good shot ... haaa.


I have a good 35mm DSLR. I find this to be important. It makes up for what I lack. I always have it set on manual, never used Auto on it. I practice my settings like a gunfighter practices kwik-draw so that it is almost reflex to set ISO, shutter and aperture. I also mostly like to manual focus, my canon lenses never auto-focus correct for me. But my Tamron lens is great at autofocus and fast, I trust it.

Mostly I tend to low ISO 100, 125, 200 .... (except for nite shots) I have no flash, dislike the effects of flash.

Also ... I very very rarely photograph people, portraits .. I am always disappointed at the results. I think you have to be a real photographer, or have an inborn talent to do this.

Also I tend to look for shots that I call monochromatic. That is, mostly the one colour. Deserts are perfect for 'monochromatic' shots.

My camera has a huge advantage over most others, in that it takes HUGE megapixel fotos. It is a true 35mm CMOS. Something like 5.5K pixels wide and about 3.5-4pixels in depth. This allows me to 'crop' (and I always crop) and still end up with perfect resolution on the crop. Also allows me to make what look like wide panoramas, but in reality 2/3rds of the height of the foto have been cropped.

My camera can shoot 9 shots per second and I always have it on 'automatic fire' like a machine gun I press the button and it fires continuously. I shoot maybe up to 50 shots over a short period, sometimes just a few minutes.

Now, my secret, I don't know what photographers would think of this, and its probably wrong and against all the rules. I shoot 'dark' or underexposed. I only shoot RAW fotos at the highest resolution. Sometimes the foto size on disk is up to 40-50 megabytes per shot.


Sometimes I am 3-4 steps underexposed.

This was taken from about 4 metres and in broad daylight. Image Size (5616 x 3744 pixels in RAW)



As you can see it is well underexposed.

At night I go thru all the shots discarding out of focus, too dark, etc .. this usually leaves me with 2-3 fotos out of 50-100 (all the same shot)

Now I pick something in the shot that I know has a standard colour, like a persons skin, (or in the case of the Stony Desert, the red petrol and water jerry cans) and slowly I bring the colour up 'out of the darkness' until I match the colour of the 'real' object ... then I tweak it a fraction higher again just to give it a bit of 'vibrancy' ..

In the Stony Desert I was helped ENORMOUSLY by the Dust storms. When the wind had stopped each evening the dust gave everything a beautiful light, mellow, and spread over all .... (Look at the sky in the 'Milparinka Court House and Pub fotos) It was almost impossible to take a bad shot. Everything was tinged in the reddish halo ... especially in the darker places like in the dry billabong. As I bought the colour and brightness up I was getting great effects. Sometimes I am so tempted to 'over-saturate' because I just love the colour and I have to fight against it and get others to review it and 'tone me down a notch' ... Haahaa

But in the 'jungle lady' scene the photo was cropped, removing all the sky. I cropped the sky out all together. That night as I bought her skin colour up to normal out of the darkness of the shot, the 'green' started to 'leap' from the picture. I knew I had a great shot. This is such a good feeling, because really, I know sweet bugger all about photography.

You would not know it, but in that shot traffic is roaring within inches behind me, to the left of the 'jungle lady' is a sewage drain and it is littered with rubbish and detritus, the smell is terrible, there are about ten Thais standing beside me, all strangers, all giving advice at once. Thais are such great people, so friendly .... But still .. there she was, an old lady digging her veggie garden in the middle of stink and pollution ... I yelled out above the ceaseless noise of the traffic, she looked up involuntarily... I fired off about 30 shots in 2-3 seconds ... HaaHaa .... But all you get to see is the 'best one' and thats a two-thirds crop ... so funny, an illusion really ... but still that is what 'photos' are all about to me ... a 2 dimensional illusion to 'show the folks' at home the 3 dimensional reality as you are seeing it, feeling it, and experiencing it.

The sunrise-sunsets shots in the Stony Desert were pure pain !!! no fun at all.

The stony desert during the day can reach 50degC easy ... but at night it drops to zero and below. To drag myself out of my sleeping bag, pull on my clothes in what I call the 'false dawn' is agony. The false dawn is before sunrise but when the sun is already reaching from below the horizon into the sky above you, no visible light, but heats the upper atmosphere and causing 'thermals' on the ground. A faint light high in the sky, but dark on the ground, a cold wind starts to blow all round you in all directions. You would probably never notice this in a camper or caravan ... But when your sleeping on the deck of the desert you can't help but notice it ... brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

To drag myself of to a good location, freezing ... wait and wait ... and shoot ten or so shots every few minutes ... and hope and hope that just one will pay off ... It ain't no fun at all .... after the sun has popped the horizon I head back to camp and crawl back into the sleeping bag. with maybe a hundred-two hundred un-reviewed shots in the camera.

Sometimes you can get spectacular results as you bring the dark shots up to 'skin tone' or a known colour.

I also have a wireless remote that helps enormously as I can set the camera on tripod and sit somewhere warm and huddled out of the cold false dawn wind and just press the little wireless fob every few minutes while sipping coffee .. Haahaa.


In this shot there a HUGE roo looking at me but I was too lazy, too tired, too sleepy, to re-focus. I wuz just hoping he was in focus. My camera makes a very loud clunking noise and the roo could not see me but continually kept glancing towards the noise. The sun iz just popping the horizon. The light iz perfect for what I want. (If you right-click on this image, like all my images, and select 'view image' you will get a much larger version, and sometimes a liddle magnifying glass to make it bigger again)



But unfortunately he was not in focus and so I had to be happy with this 'second rate' crop ..... sigh. Also ... desert shots ... when the sun 'pops' the horizon you get lo-level parallel lite ... no buildings, mountains to interrupt ... as soon as it rises it lites everything, see how it is lighting the rock wall behind the roo ? ... this is great for fotos.

Don't know if all this explains much, and truly, probably goes against all the rules of photography .. But if i had to learn all the rules I would probably no longer enjoy it ... Haahaa

cool bananas ... Greg

Greg a great background to the photos taken many thanks.

Have you seen the thread on photography started by Fence Furniture.? https://www.woodworkforums.com/f11/ph...ence+furniture

OMG !!!... I just read the thread you linked too. I FAILED, EVERYTHING. except Manual.

I knew I shouldn't have read it .... so funny. I will honestly try to make some changes in my thinking and photography.

Greg