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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
If you're interested in more info, we could arrange a phone chat (WhatsApp would be my choice, I don't have an Phone so Facetime is not an option). If you're interesting, send me an email and I'll send you my phone number. |
May 31st |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
Thanks, Dawn. I'll experiment with the crop. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, we did get to the South Island for six days. It's spectacular! For me, it was bittersweet: so much spectacular beauty, yet so frustrating and disappointing. We joke that my husband "hates photography, but loves to take pictures". We took an organized tour, spending a large part of the day sitting in a motor coach, stopping for "a brief photo stop" once in a while. Everyone was THRILLED at the beautiful weather: not a cloud in the sky! (While I wished for just one day of moody skies and/or rain, preferably on our day on Milford Sound; never happened.) I did get a few images that I'm pleased with from a helicopter trip up Franz Josef and down Fox Glaciers; I highly recommend the trip, well worth the expense; take a long zoom if you have one.) Christchurch is interesting, and likely offers great photo opportunities if you're interested in architectural photography. If you're planning to take the Trans Alpine Train, I recommend only going as far as Arthur's Pass. And if you do, and want to take photos from the open-car car, get there early, stake out a position on the right side (relative to the direction of travel) and brace yourself for an onslaught of tourists from cultures that are less restrained in terms of crowding than we are. |
May 31st |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
A very good point, Ed. Thanks. |
May 27th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
Thanks, Paul! For what it's worth: those aren't palms; they're called "tree ferns" and they really are ferns. Some of them are quite tall, say twenty feet or so.
And seeing as how I've been posting a lot of waterfalls, you can't be blamed for expecting yet another one. |
May 24th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
Thanks, Neil. To be clear: that's not lava, only geothermal stuff (steam vents, boiling minerals-laced water and/or mud, and so on). Absolutely too hot to walk on. But not lava.
And, yes, if you can get there, DO! But maybe not on an organized tour if you want to do any serious photography. I found the experience amazing and terribly frustrating. |
May 17th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
I have now read your narrative. A very good approach to capture, keeping in my how you intended to post-process. Well done. |
May 7th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
I luv it! |
May 7th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
Ya know, Paul, your black and white images are just gorgeous. You do a great job of evoking a sense of loss and resignation in this series of foreclosed and/or doomed structures. At this point, I bet you are well on the way to amassing enough to assemble a nice coffee-table book.
I felt, at first, ambivalent about the way the curving rails lead off to the left and exit the frame at the midpoint of the edge. Ultimately, I concluded that I find it works very well, as it leads the eye into the very gloomy, dramatic area of the sky which contributes so much to the dark mood of the image. I think it also works to improve the balance, serving to tie the building to the rail cars and complete the story.
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May 7th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
I'm really impressed that you managed to get a sharp image at that focal length and 1/250s. Granted, the Canon R works together with the IS of the 100-500mm, but I wouldn't have tried anything longer than about 1/800s. Does the 2x extended have an impact?
I understand the interest in making something other than the customary side-of-the-road shot, but I'm not convinced you benefitted from eliminating the drama that the head, proper, can provide. Still, it is well composed (or so say I).
You definitely did benefit from the Sun being slightly offset.
Post-processing seems effective and unobtrusive. It's not surprising that you needed a bit of dehaze. So often, it seems makers are tempted to overdo it; no evidence of that here. |
May 7th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
After living in Manhatten for several years, and since then visiting numerous times, I've never made the trip on foot across the Brooklyn Bridge. Every time we visit, I think that this will be the time, but it never happens.
It's a nice view, very iconic, and I agree, the ferry under the bridge is a nice touch. If I may quibble, it might have worked a bit better had you been able to capture it a few seconds earlier, *before* it passed under.
Your edits seem tasteful and, as usual, unobtrusive.
I wonder: did you consider a black and white conversion with a traditional dark sky such as one would get with a red or yellow filter? |
May 7th |
 |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Reply |
Now that I've read your narrative, I'm reminded that you do use Ps. Here's a tip you might not have encountered. Try adding a transparent layer, setting the Blend Mode to Hard Mix, and the Fill to 15%, and then use a 50% grey brush to paint in more contrast where you want it. Alternatively, use a white brush to selectively add contrast in the brighter areas or, conversely, a black brush for the complementary effect. And one can, of course, use a colored brush, but one meeds to be very careful with that; it's very easy to turn a lovely image into something garish. |
May 7th |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
Very nice, Darcy!
You had some lovely soft, yet directional, light from the side; this definitely helped lend some interest, especially in the foliage.
Shutterspeed and waterfalls is always a matter of individual preference. I also find that what I want to achieve will vary from one fall to the next. Personally, I tend to want to go either for a crispness, or a more creamy look, but I generally avoid something in between that feels like I didn't commit myself. Here I think I would have gone for a slightly longer exposure; my thinking would be that there's not enough violence here to warrant trying to accentuate it by capturing the detail of motion, and dragging the shutter would help to suggest the direction and softness of the flow. I'd probably have gone for about .4 to .6 seconds. As I said, though, this is just a matter of personal taste.
I like the dead log across the fall. Sometimes this can act as a visual obstacle that impedes movement in the image, but here I find that the strong diagonal adds some energy and helps to define some depth.
I like your crop . I think you could have trimmed a bit off the left and bottom; the colors in the water are lovely, but to my eye they drift towards the drab as one gets to the lower edge.
I like your edits; very gentle and unobtrustive. I'd say you did an excellent job with the surface of the water, which is always tricky.
I "fiddled" a bit with the image (no surprise, there, huh?). I limited myself to what I could do in LrC, but I did make extensive use of brush masks intersecting with luminance ranges; this would of course have been much easier to do in Ps with luminance masks. My efforts accentuated just a bit the light striking the foliage, brought the shadows up a bit further in the rocks around the cascade, cooled the upper end of the fall a tiny bit, and accentuated the contrast on the deadfall. I also simulated a slightly longer exposure by masking in the waterfall itself and *reduing* the dehaze a bit. |
May 7th |
 |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
Very nice, Dawn, and a welcome change from the whack-ya-upside-the-head oh-so-dramatic lighting one so often sees in images made here. To my eye, the light nconditions you had worked very well.
I find this very elegantly composed. The river forms a nice path leading me into the distance. Gentle curves impart a sense of peace and converge to a point below the mountain, so that I can imagine placing myself there. Even the clouds work to point into the heart of the image!
If I might quibble (and it's only a minor quibble), I find that the intense foliage and the mountain compete for my attention, and the foliage wins, leaving the mountain to play second fiddle. I would find it more pleasing were there a bit more balance between the two, so I gently dropped the luminance (-5) and saturation (-10) of the reds. I don't think it diminshed the foloiage any, and I found the mountain was better able to stand its own.
Note that the white of the glacier is in places very nearly pure white (254.254,254). There's data there (the whites aren't plown out), but if you were to print this you might find that no ink gets laid down in those spots. If you do print, you'll probably need to back off the white just a tiny bit.
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May 7th |
 |
| 93 |
May 23 |
Comment |
This must be an amazing place!
The narrow, vertical format works well to accentuate the striking verticality of the rock formations. I find the color palette very pleasing, with the warmer tones of the stone contrasting against the softer blue. I like the way the trees are darker and stand out. While the stone formations are certainly very unusual, I find that is the trees that most engage my interest.
These matters are always a question of personal taste, but I find that rain/fog/mist conditions work best in an image when the haze is localized, so that there are crisp portions of the image that the eye can rest on and explore. With fog or mist, I find it also helps if there is a sense of shape and place about the fog, so that it becomes a distinct character in the story and not just an environmental setting.
It's difficult to work with these highly compressed images, rather than the raw files, but I took a stab at trying to bring out a sense of what I'm describing. First I took the file over to Topaz DeNoise, where I also applied a little sharpening. Back in LrC, I aggressively raised the dehaze (+10). I then worked to spread out and balance the distribution of tones: contrast -18; highlights -42; shadows +19; whites +65; and blacks -80. I felt I still wanted a bigt more contrast, so I went over to the HSL panel and dropped the limunance of the oranges (-23) and the blues (-18).
I limited myself to global edits in LrC to show just how much impact one can achieve without getting particularly technical.
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May 7th |
 |
6 comments - 8 replies for Group 93
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6 comments - 8 replies Total
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