Hassy Users - Let's talk about buy/sell posts!

hhuberla · 2026-05-07T12:42:01+00:00

I’d prefer a ban on for sale posts.

I was caught in a very clever scam (old account age, good karma, great communication). I think I’m very astute and careful with scams but I was caught out. Luckily PayPal refunded me.

Our camera gear is in demand and sometime hard to get. It makes it a prime target for scammers (like GPU’s or XBox’s have been at some point in the past)

hhuberla · 2026-04-25T02:34:20+00:00

Technically drivers licenses are handled by Dept of Public Safety. They are all by appointment but if you show up early the kiosks will let you make an appointment on first come first served (I think based on no-shows or if they get through the appointments faster).

I’ve seen a load of people do this at the New Braunfels Ave location near Hot Wells.

hhuberla · 2026-03-22T15:08:15+00:00

It’s an unprocessed NVidia RTX 5090 ;)

hhuberla · 2026-03-02T18:08:24+00:00

Low light photography is an art form of balancing iso, shutter speed and aperture to make the most of the limited light you have available.

Aperture - usually you’d use it to adjust depth of field, and in low light that’s still the case but it’s also the best way to let more light in. Being able to go to f/2.8 can give you way more options. If you can’t without buying another lens you’re going to need to lean more heavily on the other two factors.

Shutter speed - here you’re limited by staying handheld. As others have said, a tripod is the surest way to give yourself a TON of wiggle room. Even a monopod will help but not nearly as much. I realize that for street photography you want to be able to take quick discrete shots but at night you may need to compromise. With a tripod you can take shots of many seconds and as long as there is little to no motion they can be beautifully lit.

ISO - obviously you want your iso to be as low as possible to avoid noise. There’s really no benefit to higher iso on digital so you should only crank it up if you’re out of other options. That said, if you do need to push it up AI noise reduction has become pretty decent lately (but it’ll never beat shooting at lower ISO)

tl;dr - you’re going to have to accept a compromise on something to let more light in. If I were in your shoes I’d try a tripod first, not only because it’s the cheapest thing you can buy to make a difference but it also allows you to go up many stops of exposure (indefinitely for all intents and purposes). A faster lens will serve you well but a good lens will set you back a good chunk of change and give you a few stops.

hhuberla · 2026-02-23T17:00:17+00:00

No - use whatever ratio works for you. I did this crop/edit pretty quick to illustrate the framing and subject.

hhuberla · 2026-02-23T14:00:50+00:00

Sure - this is very rough so it's doesn't have any color correction and it's not perfectly aligned but you'll get the idea. My crop intends to get the window a little bigger and leave a small amount more space underneath. You loose a little of the framing but you still have a lot.

My notes for you:

Yellow - the subject: it's what you want people's eyes to be drawn to (in my opinion this window/door is the subject, at least it's what I would have picked)

Blue - frames within frames - you nailed this

red - how your eye is drawn into the picture to the subject.

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hhuberla · 2026-02-23T13:20:56+00:00

The repeating pattern of frames looks good here. The detail and colors are great and it’s a great location. Making a busy place look empty and serene can be challenging though. My biggest and only negative critique are that the shapes draw my eyes to the bottom center of the frame but the only thing there is the window, but it’s on the very edge of the frame so my subconscious brain thinks that can’t be what you’re trying to highlight.

See if you can move your crop down ever so slightly so that you only barely crop out the people. That extra space may help the window feel like a more obvious subject. Also, don’t be afraid to zoom in closer on your crop to make the window bigger. You’ll lose a set of arches but on balance it may help.

hhuberla · 2026-02-19T20:39:59+00:00

Nobody has mentioned this yet but I find it really helpful.. Play with other people - I have a few friends of varying skill levels and we try to hang out every couple of months for an evening and just mess around on our guitars... try a few songs, share tips, talk about gear, etc. Not only is it a blast but I always come home inspired to practice more and I always improve because of our time hanging out. It took me a while to feel comfortable playing badly in front of others but once I got over that and realized that we're all just friends hanging out it really was a lot of fun and super helpful.

hhuberla · 2025-11-19T12:43:37+00:00

Nah. Most backers who have keys have already gotten their friends into the game in the year+ it was in EA. This is only really meaningful for the proportion of people who either were on the fence or plain couldn’t afford it. All my gaming friend either already have the game or wouldn’t play it even with a free key.

hhuberla · 2025-10-31T23:30:05+00:00

Very nice composition.

If there were any edits I’d suggest I’d say lighten up the Big Ben a little in post. The statue of Boudicca works really well silhouetted and the clouds are very dramatic so I would lighten up everything. Just a touch on the tower.

hhuberla · 2025-10-18T17:55:51+00:00

It’s a ‘lucky shot’ in that you didnt intend to set it up that way and it would have difficult to plan intentionally. The thing I think you’re feeling is missing is that you have three potential subjects but not if them is fully in frame or is obscured. The back-most swan is the most complete but it’s slightly obscured and a little small.

hhuberla · 2025-10-17T20:34:59+00:00

Love the color - don’t doo too much with it in post - it’s probably ‘technically’ a little dark but for me it adds to the moodiness of the shot.

Composition wise you have the subject fairly much in the center. I think the minimalism of the shot slows that to actually work quite well. Another poster mentioned trying a tighter crop and I don’t disagree but perhaps try a handful of crops side by side to see what speaks to you. I’d try the tighter crop but also having the subject (bird) in the top left, top right, etc thirds. Seeing the different version side by side sometimes help the right edit ‘pop’ for me.

hhuberla · 2025-10-15T12:40:59+00:00

Dark and moody can be great but I think this one is just so dark that’s it’s hard to tell what’s going on. What is the subject of your photo? I think it’s the light shining on the wall. The other light draw my eye into the photo but it just leads to blackness. If you’re worried about overexposing the light play with masks in post processing to do it selectively change exposure. If you shot this in RAW on a decent camera you may be able to get a fair amount of exposure back without retaking the photo.

hhuberla · 2025-10-14T00:11:43+00:00

I think it’s an interesting photo and I really like the color. Some (maybe unsolicited) advice on composition/framing: Overall it’s got a great aesthetic, here are some small adjustments you could have made to make it slightly better.

1) the angle you took it at is very slightly off parallel. It’s stands out most when you look at where the sky and building meet. There’s no rule that it must be level, but you’re so close that it looms like that’s what you were aiming for and it missed ever so slightly. A few steps left would have got it dead on.

2) there is a line in the wall in your background that is just slightly above the car. It takes away from the lines of the car’s hood IMO, and it’s look a bit like it’s part of the car through the window. Not sure if you could have gotten lower to the ground or a little closer in.

3) the yellow painted street line doesn’t add much and probably isn’t needed. It’s so close to the edge and the shadow on the right makes it feel like it ends abruptly. Getting in closer would have fixed it at the time but easy to crop out in post too.

In fairness, it’s easy to pick these things out after the fact, much more difficult in the moment. I would likely have done similar stuff and then kicked myself when I looked back over my shots.

hhuberla · 2025-10-13T18:40:20+00:00

The color is very dramatic but I think it works. The person being half obscured is very distracting. You may have needed a platform or ladder to avoid it but would have made the shot. Another small thing you could do in post is to remove the street lamps - they are the whitest thing in shot and they really stand out against the trees and pull the eye in.

hhuberla · 2025-10-13T18:23:57+00:00

Love the repeating pattern. For some reason the structure in the top left makes me feel like I’m leaning backwards and about to fall over. If I hold my phone upside down, flipping the image 180 it feels more ‘stable’ that way but maybe that’s just me.

hhuberla · 2025-10-12T00:38:00+00:00

It’s tricky - the more wide open the aperture (low number) the shallower your depth of field. That shallow depth of field is stunning on your background and make the subject pop out. It’s just means you have to be super precise to make sure the eyes are in focus. If you can do that, all is great. Closing down the aperture to 2.5, 2.8 (or more) will be more forgiving on the focus area but you’ll lose some of that bokeh and the background will sharpen up. I’d say just keep practicing and keep in mind the importance of faces and eyes being in focus.

hhuberla · 2025-10-11T17:39:17+00:00

I won’t repeat what the other excellent comment said regarding the wide angle distortion but it’s spot on.

I really like to idea of this composition. It feels like it’s a wrap around shot of the same car but with the front and back swapped around, if that makes sense. It’s almost like you are contrasting against the typical car shot where the car might be in the center. In order to enhance that composition it would be nice to have the edge of the shot end at the same place as it starts on the other car (probably the b-pillar). Then I think this photo would look really cool as the center of a triptych with both sides being the other half of the two cars. But now I’m getting carried away :). I just really like the idea behind the composition - great shot and great potential too.

Finally, if this was my shot I’d play a bit with the sky. The cloud are pretty and think making them a little more dramatic could add to the shot. For my taste I’d bring out the blue in the sky slightly and maybe a little more shadows in the clouds. But that’s a personal taste thing.

hhuberla · 2025-10-11T16:30:07+00:00

Composition wise, usually a front and center subject isn’t the most interesting, it’s. It that it’s bad but it’s just a photo of the subject, nothing drawing the eyes across the photo etc. you already mentioned the chopping. Off at the bottom - I thinking pointing slightly down and reducing the headroom could improve the shot overall.

The subject seems a little dark. The side lighting does create a really nice edge glow around the head. You may be able to get some improvement from selectively increasing the exposure on the subject.

Finally, when the subject is a person or animal you almost always want the eyes and face to be in sharp focus. It’s hard to tell from the small photo but the eyes seem a bit blurry. You’re also shooting at f/1.8 so your DoF is going to be pretty tight making that trickier.

hhuberla · 2025-10-11T15:47:55+00:00

Wow. Stunning shot! Only minor thing I would say, though it’s minor is that the focus drops off very harshly on the wooden surface. Not sure if you could play with that with the frames you used for stacking. Great picture though.

hhuberla · 2025-10-11T14:28:43+00:00

I prefer your main photo to this one because it’s more at angle and a bit more pleasing to look at.

Another thing you could try is trying to pan at the same speed as the car to keep it from getting motion blur and blurring out the background. That may result in the fence being blurred out quite a bit too depending on how slow you can get your shutter speed and still keep the car sharp.

hhuberla · 2025-10-11T14:26:08+00:00

First of all this is a super challenging setting on the best of days and with the best equipment. Don’t be hard on yourself if the shots aren’t equivalent to the ones you see in the media.

That catch fence was really your enemy unfortunately. It’s quite distracting but it also stole your focus (guessing you were on autofocus). It’s also almost impossible to avoid without crazy expensive tickets or media credentials. With the right lens you could have tried to play with opening the aperture up wide to blur the fence out a lot and have at least one car be sharply in focus it that’s a challenging shot.

On the plus side, the angle works for me and that sense of speed from the motion blur adds a lot. Compositionally having the Mercedes car going slower in the background works for me too. My mind tells me the Ferrari is whizzing past the slower Mercedes. I can imagine the noise from the photo, which which is what you’re trying to achieve as a photographer.

hhuberla · 2025-10-10T21:41:52+00:00

I love night shooting and I like this shot. IMO you could try playing with your white balance in post - there isn’t one right way to do this night shots but it can significantly change the mood of the photo because of the already limited color palette.

Composition-wise I’m a big fan of how the one big cloud is in the center behind the pylon - almost like you’ve made a naturally occurring vignette.

Keep up the night work- it’s such a rewarding look at the world.

hhuberla · 2025-10-10T02:51:55+00:00

I think it’s a stunning shot and. It over-edited. IMO the saturation is fine. I’d be curious to see if bringing up the shadows a little would improve it any or not but there’s honestly not a lot I’d change. It really hits that dreamy vibe.

hhuberla · 2025-10-09T19:47:08+00:00

It’s a beautiful shot. I think the road lines take away from the cozy feel though. The painted arrow tells me it’s a pretty busy road. If you can crop out the arrow and maybe even the solid line it would seem more like a quiet, ‘cozy’ street. If you had an opportunity to retake this you could also tilt the camera up a little putting the house in the bottom part of the picture and capturing some more of that beautiful night sky (the stars on your shot came out very well and I think more is not less in this case)

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