Shooting Star Tree Orchid x2; Ghost Riders of the Mind

[JBW]

I took your critiques seriously. A tighter crop, adjusted the exposure (not as much as some would), better white balance, couldn't change the angle, changed he DoF through localized sharpening. What do you think.

[Shadowman]

Looks good, has a sense of movement and definitely looks alien in nature.

[JBW]

Looks good, has a sense of movement and definitely looks alien in nature.

The more I explore the more I find ways to express in photography what I can't in words.

[ragman]

Brien, I love the colors. I have been playing around with focus stacking to increase the Dof and wondered if this shot was taken outdoors or in a wind controlled location? I've tried stacking, but my Ps skills are limited. Your comments...

[Manfred M]

changed he DoF through localized sharpening.

Sharpening and DoF are two completely different things. Localized sharpening will bring out detail in the area where this sharpening takes place, but certainly does not do anything for increasing depth of field; these are two have totally different impact on an image. Does the localized sharpening (also often known as "in-process sharpening") improve an image? The answer is generally yes.

adjusted the exposure (not as much as some would), better white balance

Again, Brian - we've had the discussion about exposure before. The image out of your camera is the main building block that you use to construct your final image in post-production. If you choose to create a sub-optimal image in-camera and hope to build a superior image, you are going about things the wrong way. The out-of-camera image is your raw material. Make it as good as you possibly can and if you want a moodier, darker final product, do that in post.

[Urbanflyer]

This looks about the best you will get from this shot. Doing the post processing work you did may help you think about these elements more critically at the time you are taking the photo. Agree with Manfred's comments above. Keep at it!

[JBW]

Sharpening and DoF are two completely different things. Localized sharpening will bring out detail in the area where this sharpening takes place, but certainly does not do anything for increasing depth of field; these are two have totally different impact on an image. Does the localized sharpening (also often known as "in-process sharpening") improve an image? The answer is generally yes.



Again, Brian - we've had the discussion about exposure before. The image out of your camera is the main building block that you use to construct your final image in post-production. If you choose to create a sub-optimal image in-camera and hope to build a superior image, you are going about things the wrong way. The out-of-camera image is your raw material. Make it as good as you possibly can and if you want a moodier, darker final product, do that in post.

Grumpy I agree that a better base makes for a better finished product. I disagree that a perfectly neutral sooc makes a better base. I also disagree that a histogram must be centered to be good.

As for local sharpening not affecting the DoF you are both right and wrong. In sales location is everything in photography perception is. This shot is the same shot as the first one but it appears to have a deeper DoF, at least to me and one or two others. I created the illusion with localized sharpening. Our mind tells us that smaller and less detail equals further away.

From top left to bottom right the sharpening decreases creating the illusion of a greater DoF.

As for what makes a superior image that is a very difficult question. Heart, soul, instinct, technique, and technicality all must combine. A technically perfect shot is often found in a text book. But text books are often soulless.

Will my shots improve as I go deeper into the technical side? I hope so. But unless my eyes see better and my spirit speaks more clearly no amount of superior technical perfection will create what i am trying to find a way to express.

So allow me to restate my belief. The shots I sometimes create in camera and then work on may be sub optimal in a class room but they may be optimal for what I am trying to express.
B.

[JBW]

This looks about the best you will get from this shot. Doing the post processing work you did may help you think about these elements more critically at the time you are taking the photo. Agree with Manfred's comments above. Keep at it!

Keep at it I shall. But there are times when i wonder why people assume i took a bad shot because the histogram goes to the left. I actually took a fairly good histogram shot. But when i went into pp i switched from camera shot to linear curve so i could brighten it as I wished to. I didn't do such a good job the first time but it was better the second time.

[JBW]

Brien, I love the colors. I have been playing around with focus stacking to increase the Dof and wondered if this shot was taken outdoors or in a wind controlled location? I've tried stacking, but my Ps skills are limited. Your comments...

It was taken outdoors on a day with minimal wind. I have never tried focus stacking (lacking software). I created the illusion of greater DoF by adjusting the sharpening from top left to lower right with in the blossoms.

I have been intentional about learning how to use my software. With my Sony camera I am finding that Capture One Sony Pro (very inexpensive and world class) is a powerful tool for working with RAW. It allowed me to create the colours you enjoyed.

[Manfred M]

Grumpy I agree that a better base makes for a better finished product. I disagree that a perfectly neutral sooc makes a better base. I also disagree that a histogram must be centered to be good.

I don't quite recall expressing things exactly in that way. What I have said is that in a properly exposed image out of camera, you should not see the histogram against either the extreme left, as this indicates you have lost shadow detail or against the extreme right, as this indicates that you have lost highlight detail. I've also said if you err, doing so to the right is better than to the left. For an explanation of that much has been written about why you can produce a better image through a technique called ETTR = Expose to the Right. Bottom line is that, for technical reasons, noise tends to be in the darker parts of the image.

I have no idea what a "neutral SOOC" is. What I have always advocated is having a shot well done (technically and compositionally) so that you can achieve the result you are after with as little work in PP as possible. My experience is that 1 minute of work in setting up the shot can save around 10 minutes in PP.

There is of course one more difference. You see the histogram from the SOOC image whereas we only see the edited image that you have posted, so I assume that this is the look you are after.

As for local sharpening not affecting the DoF you are both right and wrong. In sales location is everything in photography perception is. This shot is the same shot as the first one but it appears to have a deeper DoF, at least to me and one or two others. I created the illusion with localized sharpening. Our mind tells us that smaller and less detail equals further away.

From top left to bottom right the sharpening decreases creating the illusion of a greater DoF.

Brian - this definitely looked like the same shot to me, with a different crop (as well as other changes). The reason I may not be picking up the same thing you (and others) are is that I am viewing the image on a 27" screen. If you are looking at it on your smaller laptop screen, you could be perceiving additional DoF from that technique that I am not. A smaller image (because of the downsampling involved) will give the perception of being sharper than a large image.

I've gone back and looked at both images side by side in Adobe Bridge, and while they look different at a reduced scale and I am sorry, I don't perceive the changes you have made as increased DoF. Both images do look sharper when they have been downsized, but the effect in your second image is not an increase of DoF .

As for what makes a superior image that is a very difficult question. Heart, soul, instinct, technique, and technicality all must combine. A technically perfect shot is often found in a text book. But text books are often soulless.

Will my shots improve as I go deeper into the technical side? I hope so. But unless my eyes see better and my spirit speaks more clearly no amount of superior technical perfection will create what i am trying to find a way to express.

So allow me to restate my belief. The shots I sometimes create in camera and then work on may be sub optimal in a class room but they may be optimal for what I am trying to express.
B.

That Brian is something I have heard many times before and parts of it I can agree with and other parts I don't. First of all, any "text book" I have ever seen shows both excellent and heartfelt images (after all the author is trying to set a high standard for the students to follow) as well as technical and compositional errors so that the students can see and learn from the mistakes others have made. If I were to identify one key flaw in classical paper textbooks, it would be the printing process and its limitations that obscure many of the details found in the original work. Yes, there are some "souless" images in textbooks, but they are there for a reason. This is no different from seeing a final product from a great artist hung in an art gallery and to also see the sketches or prints that did not make the cut is also equally interesting as these show the process the artist used to get to his or her final result.

I am also quite aware of the physical limitations you are working under, so let's be clear I have some level of understanding of how that affects what you can do. I also find your experimentation interesting and do hope that other members gain some knowledge. On the flip side, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is a somewhat optimistic approach. There are some things that CANNOT be fixed in post. Missed focus is definitely one of them; if you don't get that right in camera PP work is not going to help. Sharpening an image that is soft is going to give you a more contrasty image, but that is not the same thing as focus.

To some extent I understand some of the rest of the statement, but as I do not have any delusions that I am (or ever will be) an artist, so I cannot understand where you are coming from. You have taken a picture of a flower. I pointed out some technical shortcomings and erroneous assumptions on what PP. You disagree with my analysis. I'm certainly okay with that (although I am pretty certain that I am right). What am I missing here? I don't understand the whole "trying to express" comment.

[JBW]

I don't quite recall expressing things exactly in that way. What I have said is that in a properly exposed image out of camera, you should not see the histogram against either the extreme left, as this indicates you have lost shadow detail or against the extreme right, as this indicates that you have lost highlight detail. I've also said if you err, doing so to the right is better than to the left. For an explanation of that much has been written about why you can produce a better image through a technique called ETTR = Expose to the Right. Bottom line is that, for technical reasons, noise tends to be in the darker parts of the image.

I have no idea what a "neutral SOOC" is. What I have always advocated is having a shot well done (technically and compositionally) so that you can achieve the result you are after with as little work in PP as possible. My experience is that 1 minute of work in setting up the shot can save around 10 minutes in PP.

There is of course one more difference. You see the histogram from the SOOC image whereas we only see the edited image that you have posted, so I assume that this is the look you are after.



Brian - this definitely looked like the same shot to me, with a different crop (as well as other changes). The reason I may not be picking up the same thing you (and others) are is that I am viewing the image on a 27" screen. If you are looking at it on your smaller laptop screen, you could be perceiving additional DoF from that technique that I am not. A smaller image (because of the downsampling involved) will give the perception of being sharper than a large image.

I've gone back and looked at both images side by side in Adobe Bridge, and while they look different at a reduced scale and I am sorry, I don't perceive the changes you have made as increased DoF. Both images do look sharper when they have been downsized, but the effect in your second image is not an increase of DoF .



That Brian is something I have heard many times before and parts of it I can agree with and other parts I don't. First of all, any "text book" I have ever seen shows both excellent and heartfelt images (after all the author is trying to set a high standard for the students to follow) as well as technical and compositional errors so that the students can see and learn from the mistakes others have made. If I were to identify one key flaw in classical paper textbooks, it would be the printing process and its limitations that obscure many of the details found in the original work. Yes, there are some "souless" images in textbooks, but they are there for a reason. This is no different from seeing a final product from a great artist hung in an art gallery and to also see the sketches or prints that did not make the cut is also equally interesting as these show the process the artist used to get to his or her final result.

I am also quite aware of the physical limitations you are working under, so let's be clear I have some level of understanding of how that affects what you can do. I also find your experimentation interesting and do hope that other members gain some knowledge. On the flip side, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is a somewhat optimistic approach. There are some things that CANNOT be fixed in post. Missed focus is definitely one of them; if you don't get that right in camera PP work is not going to help. Sharpening an image that is soft is going to give you a more contrasty image, but that is not the same thing as focus.

To some extent I understand some of the rest of the statement, but as I do not have any delusions that I am (or ever will be) an artist, so I cannot understand where you are coming from. You have taken a picture of a flower. I pointed out some technical shortcomings and erroneous assumptions on what PP. You disagree with my analysis. I'm certainly okay with that (although I am pretty certain that I am right). What am I missing here? I don't understand the whole "trying to express" comment.

Okay, in no random order;

Donald is one of the finest photographers in this group. He is colour blind. Others are tall, short, fat, thin, male,female, bald, American, Canadian, Turkish, and some of us are even old while others are young. we all have our physical / emotional realities. My reality is harder to spell than bald or colour blind but it no more defines me than colour blind or bald defines others. We all have physical / mental restrictions that we work within. Enough said.

The focus was spot on. I nailed it exactly. One particular blossom sharp the rest from top to bottom becoming less sharp.

I use two monitors, one of which is 24". Both to my eyes showed increased apparent DoF wity the localized sharpening.

We all have our own style. I prefer ETTL. I use ETTR on occasion but my goto is to the left.

I meant soulless shots as in text books on computer innards.

You are saying two contradictory things. One is that it is best to set up the shot in camera. Doing this allows much less processing time. Then you say that I should set up my shot to the right even though i will have to correct it to the left. Seems to me that I can best follow your advice by shooting to where i want the shot to be. In this case it was to the left and soft except for the one flower in focus.

Your analysis was undoubtedly right for a shot that was attempting to express the reality of the tree orchid. But that was not the shot I was taking. I thought the title was a bit of a hint that this was going to be other than a text book shot of a flower.

brian

[Manfred M]

You are saying two contradictory things. One is that it is best to set up the shot in camera. Doing this allows much less processing time. Then you say that I should set up my shot to the right even though i will have to correct it to the left

Brian - this is referring to the ETTR technique and correcting it to the appropriate (correct?) exposure takes a few seconds at most. Shooting to the right can mean a two step operation; correcting exposure and then doing some noise reduction. When shooting in a studio setting I nail things to the point where I don't need to do anything other than post a jpeg, because I can control everything so carefully that I can get away with NO PP work at all. Unfortunately, this is not true when I shoot out in the wild.

Here is a SOOC jpeg using one light and one white reflector.






When speak of getting it right in camera, I am referring to framing, composition and taking taking care of the technical things. I'd rather physically remove a dead leaf or a piece of a plant that is intruding into the frame by physically doing this at the scene, rather than taking a picture of it and then having to do so in post. I'd rather get a good exposure (if necessary, biased to the right). I can spend two minutes in PP or two hours on the same scene. The only difference is the up front prep and care taken in setting up the shot.

[JBW]

Brian - this is referring to the ETTR technique and correcting it to the appropriate (correct?) exposure takes a few seconds at most. Shooting to the right can mean a two step operation; correcting exposure and then doing some noise reduction. When shooting in a studio setting I nail things to the point where I don't need to do anything other than post a jpeg, because I can control everything so carefully that I can get away with NO PP work at all. Unfortunately, this is not true when I shoot out in the wild.

Here is a SOOC jpeg using one light and one white reflector.






When speak of getting it right in camera, I am referring to framing, composition and taking taking care of the technical things. I'd rather physically remove a dead leaf or a piece of a plant that is intruding into the frame by physically doing this at the scene, rather than taking a picture of it and then having to do so in post. I'd rather get a good exposure (if necessary, biased to the right). I can spend two minutes in PP or two hours on the same scene. The only difference is the up front prep and care taken in setting up the shot.

Hi grumpy the first time I looked it was a carved feast bowl. now it's a pair of old work boots.

I went out at dusk tonight. tripod, no flash, natural light and intentionally shot both left and right. Took about 25 shots of a fully opened rose at various settings. I must admit i do prefer to shoot to the left but i went with a shot to the right and tried to make it 'moody' in pp. let me know what you think. Please and thank-you.

[NorthernFocus]

Nicely done, Brian. I like the composition. The in focus bloom is well placed and the OOF blooms let the viewer know that the main subject is part of a group without being distracting. Nicely done.

[JBW]

Nicely done, Brian. I like the composition. The in focus bloom is well placed and the OOF blooms let the viewer know that the main subject is part of a group without being distracting. Nicely done.

Thanks. here's a thought; maybe you could use the same theory on a momma bear and her young?

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks. here's a thought; maybe you could use the same theory on a momma bear and her young?

With critters it's rare/difficult to have the opportunity to do so deliberately, but sometimes it does present itself. If I get a chance later I'll post up a couple or send you a link.