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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
Hi Neal: As I mentioned the background behind the buddy wheel was very distracting with "junk" back there. The junk made the original picture delete material. My thought was the only way to salvage the picture was to use a black background and eliminate all of the junk. Also thought the black BG would good well with the weathered buggy wheel and red autumn leaves and add impact.
Would like to find this same scene out in open range land, very unlikely I should be so lucky. |
Jun 13th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Barbara: Like your composition choice with the out of focus green leaves at the bottom right and the flowers in the upper left placed on a diagonal. The addition of the flower bud at the bottom of the frame adds another point of interest.
Would like to suggest using a border with a picture with a very dark background, with the black background of our web page it is difficult to determine where your picture area ends and the black webpage begins. This is quite evident at the top and left hand side of the frame. cheers. |
Jun 13th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Neal: What an interesting and colorful fly, This fly must be more common in your area to the south around Medford, have never seen this in the Puget Sound area. Your 62 image slices provided a fairly sharp image of this fly and exposure is spot on. Am wondering if f/29 aperture was really necessary using 62 images. The reason I mention this is most macro lenses do not provide their best detail at those extremely small f stops, most are at their very best quality around f5.6 to f/11 range. |
Jun 10th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Priscilla: Really like your artistic layout of the flowers, so gracefully done and your soft mood lighting ties it all together. Your background color is near perfect as it continues the very light maroon color on the flower petals. It is easy to see you have put a great deal of thought in how you wanted to present this flower picture.
You will need to add some canvas to the top as those two flower petals touch the top of the frame, then the seam in your background needs to be cloned out. Even with these two nits, just a wonderful flower picture. |
Jun 6th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Barbara: As a single flower in the frame the flower is placed well. Background is out of focus dark greenery in the distance and looks very natural.
Photographing white flowers in open sun can be a challenge to keep the white from blowing out with no detail. Some flowers are more prone to this than others as some have texture on the petals that at times will hold some detail. Carnations have smooth petals so not a lot of detail even on a cloudy soft lighting day. |
Jun 6th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Charlie: A very novel subject that shows a lot of originality. The colors of the various peppercorns are placed well in the small vase, warm toned along the bottom and sides with some variations of colors at the top. Then two red ones are broken open which add another point of interest.
With our very advanced digital camera bodies of today I do not consider 1000 as a high ISO, we can shoot at 5000 if really necessary and what little digital noise appears can be easily removed with the advanced noise reduction programs in todays post processing tools.
Would consider adding your usual small muted border, guess you would just need to try it and see if it actually helped or became a distraction.
Along the left edge of the frame I notice a blue line, perhaps the edge of the vase. |
Jun 6th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Alane: A very original image, have never seen another like it. Photography judges look for out of the ordinary well done pictures that tell a good story and this image certain does that. A lot of interest generated here due to the unique subject matter. The monochrome treatment works well also, if the grasshopper was colorful I bet the original would carry a lot of interest also.
Like the dark background, no distractions back there to interfere. Really good work !! |
Jun 6th |
| 63 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
Hi Charlie: Guess I may have stretched the loaf of bread a little with a portion of a buggy wheel and red fall leaves. Pleased you like the image, your stating this is a "Great Shot" I take as a compliment |
Jun 6th |
6 comments - 2 replies for Group 63
|
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
A good macro lens will open up entirely new avenue of photography as there are endless close in subjects that will now be available to shoot. Also some of the newer pro grade zoom lenses will also focus in pretty close with really good quality. |
Jun 20th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
Hi Vincent: Those of us who have been in photography well before the digital age arrived probably have many what I refer to as "life time" images on slide film they could never hope to go back and duplicate on digital for various reasons. These fine images live in slide pages or carousel trays are are not that easy to find and view. Those 35mm slides can easily be copied into digital files for easy and quick access. |
Jun 19th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
Hi Dan: You mentioned "Trade Offs" above. You are correct regarding trade offs, it seems in flower photography I am always compromising on something. If you correct one area it seems to effect another area in some adverse way.
Enjoy your time in Yellowstone Dan, a fabulous place to visit for a nature photographer. |
Jun 13th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Reply |
Hi Ray: This monochrome version comes across much better than the color version did. Has far greater impact and seems much sharper in detail. Like the composition with the central part of the flower in the upper right corner. The dark shadows within the flower tubes certainly adds a lot of interest to the image, a good example of mood lighting. |
Jun 13th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Dan: You followed all of the correct protocol in photographing this picture. In viewing the picture again I notice in the lower left hand corner the sharpness seems better. I do not use auto focus in my flower work as it never seems to set focus just precisely where I want it to be, but perhaps it would have set focus better for you on this picture.
In my humble opinion a fine documentary picture such as this one deserves to be in complete sharp focus front to back, I do not think the use of f/5.6 was quite adequate, try f/16 the next time and see if you have a better depth of field. Just my thoughts !! |
Jun 10th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Charlie: You have shared an excellent example of focus stacking using 25 slices. In my personal experience this excellent flower picture shot at this low angle across the flower would be impossible to attain with a conventional macro lens using convention methods and still have this kind of superb quality. For one thing it would be impossible to have the image extremely sharp from front to back as demonstrated here.
You mention this picture being "in your face", in this case the orange and yellow colors really come on strong and add to the impact when this picture comes up on the monitor.
Your background treatment is very interesting. KUDOS.
|
Jun 9th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Marge: The orange Cala Lily has a lot of visual impact against the black background. To me the flower does not seem as sharp in detail as it should be, the use of flash at times can remove any natural shadows and cause flower petals to loose detail and appear flat. Also the use of f/22 on most lenses will cause some fall off in sharp details, this situation is called diffraction. Great subject !! |
Jun 9th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Dan: To me this yellow Azalea pictures is a documentary type image of a pleasant garden type setting with soft lighting. The overall picture seems soft in focus and I think this aspect removes some of the impact from this pleasant scene.
I see in your data your chosen shutter speed is 1/100, you do not mention if you were tripod mounted or had your VR turned on. If you did not have either of the above working for you then from my personal experience I have a hard time handholding 1/100 and obtaining really sharp images.
You ask how I would approach this image: I am an old school tripod user so would have the camera on my tripod. Would set the lens aperture on f/16, use aperture priority, then turn off auto focus and set the focus manually about 1/3 of the way into the scene. Just my 2 cents, Cheers.
|
Jun 9th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Ray: Like you I enjoy photographing Dahlia flowers. Agree with Charlie this Dahlia flower is just too dark to have the impact it should display, the picture should just jump off the monitor at you when it comes up, however it does not. With 250 stacked images I would expect to see extreme sharpness rendered, however due to the flower being too dark this sharpness does not render itself very well. |
Jun 6th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Charlie: Thanks for your perspective, your views are always interesting. I think darkening the back leaves does add extra depth to the subject, it did not occur to me to do this. Am not certain what you are referring to regarding pinstriping. It seems you may have darkened down the green border just slightly. |
Jun 6th |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Judy: You have certainly selected an interesting flower specie to share with us. The two flowers themselves are pretty sharp in detail, there is some texture in the white flower petals and the yellow stamens show good sharpness.
It appears you have perhaps photographed this through a board fence with the wood picture frame at the top and bottom. To me the background is somewhat distracting as it competes with your interesting flowers for attention. If you could darken down the background especially the bright green areas it would really improve your image. |
Jun 3rd |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Vincent: Interesting perspective of white field daisies looking straight down at the grouping. If this was your goal to present the daisies in this manner, then you have succeeded.
White flowers in open sunlight are very difficult to photograph well without blowing out the highlights as has happened here. The background is very busy caused somewhat by the open sun lighting. I would be more apt to shoot this particular picture on an overcast day with soft lighting, think the soft mood of cloudy lighting would fit this subject better. Just my thoughts !! |
Jun 3rd |
| 75 |
Jun 23 |
Comment |
Hi Dan: YES; Velvia was a wonderful slide film for nature photography, when Velvia 50 came out in 1990 that was all I used until I switched over to digital in around the 2004 era. Velvia along with Kodachrome 25 both copy really well into digital files and make fine large prints, in my humble opinion better than any other slide film from that time frame. You are certainly correct in stating "tedious work with dust and color casts".
I do agree with you regarding a bit tight on top, that is an easy fix and I will do so and thanks for the tip. Cheers. |
Jun 2nd |
9 comments - 4 replies for Group 75
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15 comments - 6 replies Total
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