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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Your white looks very black to me :-)
Sorry, I preferred the original background, I liked the diagonal lines and "real" base. However it does have good impact.
I had sharpened to the limit that I thought safe - what did you use?
|
Jan 23rd |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
All the comments have spurred me on, thanks, to doing more like this. I'll try a stack and use a larger aperture which might improve the sharpness. My lighting setup will have to change as the flashes set up this way won't follow the camera's auto focus bracket, but I can do them by hand. The ambient light was a small contributor, the camera saw it as -5 stops so I'd thought the flash would completely dominate, but maybe not - worth more experiments. And the grape is sacked! |
Jan 22nd |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
OK, 3 people think I should omit the grape - must be right! Interesting to me, I'd not have guessed that. I'll do it again when we get some more tangerines! I agree the orange is over-brightened if you look at the white pith; what I was trying to do was to make it "pop", which is a crusade I'm presently trying to achieve in all my photos as often I've had judges saying my photos are too flat.
For anyone's info if interested, I've found the remedy to the issue I was referring to above. My Olympus has an electronic viewfinder of course, and normally it is linked to the exposure, so if the camera sees that the settings will lead to a photo which will be underexposed, say, then it shows it as underexposed in the viewfinder and on the LCD screen. This is normally very useful and I've never used the other setting, which is to switch this off and let the camera display a correctly exposed viewfinder or LCD, even if the actual photo is going to come out wrongly exposed. If I do that, my problem of not being able to see the image in the camera due to deliberately underexposing badly to make the flash dominate goes away. So one of my custom settings now has that programmed in. The other custom settings and non-custom setting have the other display setting, which is more helpful I think in "normal" photography. Quite complicated, these modern cameras! But really brilliant. |
Jan 19th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Yes, I did hand hold it. |
Jan 17th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Thanks, Cyndy. I tried to prevent the peel becoming more than a supporting act by holding back its brightness, but looking at it again I would understand people thinking I've over-done that. It formed this shape naturally if I wanted to preserve the same colour upwards. Even better, it was delicious afterwards! |
Jan 16th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Thanks, Mark. It will lose the colour contrast if I do that I think. Worth a try though! |
Jan 16th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
OK, thanks, I've seen that before, but had forgotten the acronym. |
Jan 9th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Tom,
Sorry for my ignorance, what's "ACR"? Whatever it is, I do like the tone. I'm wondering if it would qualify as a monochrome - I can't see why not. Judged as a mono, one might say it is lacking in contrast, but here I think the soft tone goes with the soft feel of the petals, so I like it as it is. I like the little bit of out of focus in the bottom left, it gives more depth. Would a little vignette help? Perhaps, maybe a lightening one rather than darkening, with a cream mounting board? |
Jan 9th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Dick,
If I'd seen this a month ago I'd have asked for more details of the post processing as we had a themed competition in one of my clubs, "Like a painting". This would surely have done well in that competition! I love the painterly effect. I've just looked at the Topaz website - something for the future for me perhaps.
My only comments would be, would a slightly altered viewpoint so that the leaf isn't appearing over the stem and bottom of the petals, and would a little more at the bottom say to show the start of the bowl, help? |
Jan 9th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Janet,
Yes, it almost looks like it's smiling.
I think it's an interesting subject and well taken. Whilst tight cropping is sometimes effective, do you think that a little more space over the top of it's head would improve the picture? |
Jan 9th |
| 6 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Salvador,
I love the way the wasp jumps out from this picture as the depth of field is just right I think. It's something I must strive for in this group. Lovely sharpness and exposure.
My only suggestion would be to remove the dark brown top right corner as once noticed, it does attract my eye. And I suppose the bottom right is a bit similar. A little more cropping or cloning seem OK to me, perhaps better cloning to preserve the composition. |
Jan 9th |
5 comments - 6 replies for Group 6
|
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Yes, in view of your and Jerry's comments I tried again and lightened the walls to see if I could make them more attention-grabbing, but the result wasn't worth keeping in my view. The highlights had blown out to get it light enough to notice, and I knew that would attract criticism.It's a bit too fussy I think to make into a simple picture, but it was an interesting exercise. The real view was very attractive, but I'm sure we've all been disappointed by a picture not showing what we remembered. |
Jan 27th |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
OK, thanks John. I'm no landscape photographer, as you can see. I'm interested in Jerry and Stan's comments. I could crop it to make it less busy; my initial edit was left in to try to give a stonger sense of depth which I thought is often a key property of successful landscapes, but it still has depth with a crop. I didn't intend there to be any "main subject" - it is its own mains subject, and the house just is part of it. I could tone it down if you think it's distracting, but I figured it pins the mid ground. Here's a further modification.... |
Jan 15th |
 |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
Yes, I'm not sure how the light band at the top made an appearance, it's a side effect somehow. I didn't notice it until it was shown here. How about now? |
Jan 15th |
 |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Reply |
You're all right, of course. OK, back to the RAW file, let's try again. I've found that the dehaze is causing the "halo" effect round the tree, but judicious use of the sliders is getting better result. I whacked up the contrast in the RAW converter first, and have cloned in and used the burn brush to improve (I hope) on the first attempt. At the end of the day I suppose it was a dull and overcast scene in the first place, but scenes like this are evocative to me and my photographer's eye takes a back seat. Anyway, any better now? |
Jan 15th |
 |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Yes, fascinating. I wonder what edge detection would do? Here's a quick attempt but I think it needs to be decluttered somehow. |
Jan 9th |
 |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Abhijeet,
What super light you've captured, at first glance it looks like a collage to me. I do prefer the mono, the water droplets are so much clearer in it. The underside of wings, both natural and man-made, are always tricky, but I would like to see a little more detail there. I'd suggest cloning out the drop in the top right in from of the bird, it seems out of place to me. Also the loss of the top wing tip is a shame - could be cloned in, although the nature photographers would call "fowl" ;-) (Pardon me) |
Jan 9th |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Stan,
"Back to the past", then? I think the prof would be proud of this! Sorry, I can't suggest anything, I just love it. Oh OK, maybe just an extra few mm under the rear tyre? but even the current crop seems to go well. |
Jan 9th |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Jerry,
As a chemical engineer, I've seen lots of piles of solids with similar textures. The unusual thing to me is that there seem to be different materials in the same place, unevenly blending together, which is not good for a chemical process which usually need consistent feedstocks! Back to photographer mode, it is indeed an interesting photo of shapes and textures. I like the darkened sky. I like the original too, it shows the light off batter I think, especially if the bottom and left are cropped off a little. |
Jan 9th |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi Don,
Great capture in the circumstances. Years ago at school, we had an industrial archaeology group which visited old machines - furnaces, boats, winding engines etc, and drew them. This would have been ideal!
If it were studio conditions of course we'd say "lost shadows", but that's not the case here, I think it captures a super feeling of dereliction and past power.I'd suggest considering removing the bright spot in the top right and perhaps toning down or removing the item leaning against the front of the machine base (bottom centre), but I love it. |
Jan 9th |
| 64 |
Jan 19 |
Comment |
Hi John,
It's a striking photo, but I soon thought "What a pity the bottom has been missed off". Reading your narrative, I see why. I'm wondering what I would do with the picture. We can't add anything not there, so perhaps crop more? I don't know if the original will take heavy cropping, how about this? (Sorry, Don!) |
Jan 9th |
 |
7 comments - 3 replies for Group 64
|
12 comments - 9 replies Total
|
