In the morning of a foggy - duck flied...

2 actions were used: 1. Brightness contrast. 2. Filter Bloor, However I also did not deny it. And what variant to whom is pleasant - it business of taste. And if a photo discuss, she(it) means than that Is interesting. Thank for attention and the comment. Yuri.

Just piping in on the species...

 

I'm not much of a photographer, but know birds. These are definitely not geese, or ducks. They are very likely cormorants. The kink in the neck while flying is the giveaway. The only other possibility are loons, which have a similar profile in flight as a cormorant. Location and date would probably settle which.

 

As for the photo...It seems like MOST shots out here are PS'd to some degree. I don't think the cormorants are superimposed from a separate shot. Who cares if some of the graininess has been smoothed? As for the birds being "too black" to be authentic...cormorants are very dark birds. Shooting against a lighter sky, it's no surprise to me that they show up as nearly black.

 

Very nice shot...PS'd a bit, but not "faked".

You're right, in retrospect, you didn't deny having blurred the image -- it just got lost in translation :)

 

And, yes, my preference for the original, unaltered version is just a matter of taste -- and I said as much.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a good shot. I was merely pointing out, as others have, the reasons why some others feel this is a faked/photoshopped image.

Yuri, congratulations on your POW. I have to say your folder is one of the most impressive folders I've ever seen here at photo.net

Great mood capturing shot. I enjoyed your whole portfolio.

On the photoshop thing...A year ago I would have completely agreed that anything PSed was fake, but after watching the recent special on Ansel Adams, and noting the countless hours of burning and dodging he did in the darkroom, all I can say now is that I appreciate Photoshop.

That's not to say that "anything goes" but certainly some contrast adjustment and a little burning and dodging is Ok.

Great shot Yuri. I love foggy mornings captured like this.

 

I also take a lot of duck, geese and bird photographs. I find it very amusing to hear the so called experts suggest that all of them fly in formation at all levels. This is absoulutely untrue. These comorants were obviously reaching for height and in that process all of the above fly OUT of formation almost all of the time. I wish people that have never watched them take off as a group would stop giving opinions about the wings having to be in unison. They usually are not until they quite high.

This is a worthy pow. Great everything. As for the darker birds, that could be easily achieved by burning in the top or split contrast printing. In fact, the top of the trees look a little darker, although the sky tone doesn't change too much. Congrats. P.S. I'm BLOWN AWAY by your folder. Wow.

I appreciate the technical aspects of the shot and skill or talent it took. But I have to say that I don't like the image for the very reason it was chosen POW; it is ethereal. This image doesn't look natural. To me, this is not a true representation of nature and doesn't capture any real essence. I would probably like the image much more without the ducks flying.

Though I never get really touched by this softer type of pictures, it's nicely done, technically perfect and would make a fine poster or postcard.

Is it? or isn't it? The photographer's forthrightness about just exactly how he processed this image, means that the Photoshop issue here simply doesn't exist. It is nil and done and dead.

The only other issue that's been raised is that of cheesiness (in photography, of course, the brand of choice is not Velveeta but Velvia). I for one don't see any cheese in this picture; I see instead a picture I might have taken had I been lucky enough to be there, and sharp enough to see it. I like the composition, which, like the photographer, is straightforward, as well as lyrical. The darkness of the birds sets them out in relief against the light tones of the trees and the misty air. The lighter toned, resting birds in the background give the birds in the air some context, and set up a nice, dynamic contrast between rest and flight, dark and light. In fact, it takes guts to put up a photo like this: precisely because it does skate so close to Cheeseland; the fact that it comes so close without crossing over into it, makes the image all the stronger. What prevents it from crossing over is precisely its lyricism.

I spent most of my morning with the two most recent compendiums out of Magnum Photos, In Our Time and Magnum Degrees. If you have any doubt about what strong, original images should look like - about what most of us should be shooting toward - these two books are a great place to start. After looking at them for a long while, and then checking out Yuri's folder again, I can see he is well on his way.

Maybe this is exactly the right picture to use for the eternal Photoshop discussion. Because Yuri has done everything right. He took a good photograph, he did some processing in Photoshop. And he *told* us all about it. He even uploaded the original photo, so we can see what the effects are of his photographic skills versus his Photoshop skills (substitute "darkroom" for "Photoshop" if you're doing it the traditional way).

 

In short, we can *learn* from this. Something we can't when people try to hide what they've done to their pictures.

 

Thanks for your honesty Yuri!

 

Now for the picture. I must admit I find it a bit dull, a bit too much like a cheesy art poster rather than a photograph. I like the original better and I don't mind the grain in it. I guess Photoshop is to blame (and suppose something like it could be achieved with a filter or defocusing with a traditional enlarger). Looking at Yuri's folder it's obvious that he often tries to achieve the effects of different painting styles in his post-processing. Seen in this light, the (slightly) processed picture is successful, but it's a matter of taste.

 

The original photograph on the other hand is very nice. Maybe a bit more space above (and below) would make me happier. Perhaps a crop to the golden section (1.618:1) rather than this almost American widescreen (1.85:1 - this picture is 1.80:1) is what I'm looking for.

 

Of course the timing is good. I wont say great. Not because the F5 can take 8 pictures per second - this could be taken even without a motordrive - but because it would play right into the hands of all those who think *everything* that looks a little extraordinary must be photoshopped. They should spend more time looking at the real world. Yes, moonlight can actually look like that, it's not just an effect of the camera optics, yes, shadows on a bumpy surface don't look the same as shadows on a plain surface, and yes, sometimes things or people or whatever actually line up in the most extraordinary way and a photographer can be quick enough to exploit it.

 

To me it happens to be very important wether what I see in a picture is a photograph of a real scene or a montage or something entirely different. I may appreciate all of it, but I look at them in different ways. To avoid wasting my time figuring out how a picture was made, I prefer knowing (something of) what was done to it.

 

So to round off this my second and terribly long posting on photo.net: Well done Yuri, for making this picture, and for sharing your knowledge with us. You've set a good example in both respects.

 

Back to lurking I go.

As for the all the 'cheese' comments...

If you think this shot has anything in common with the link below... get your eyes checked. ;-)

 

Yuri,

Nice shot. Well put together and a fairly strong composition. I like both the before and after versions. I don't think the small amount of editing/retouching really has had that big of an impact on the final image. I think it was already fairly strong before the editing and find it still holds up well after the editing. Like many have stated - cool that you let us know what the deal was. The rest of your work is interesting as well. Congratulations on POW.

 

Although I like this photograph I recommend looking at the rest of the portfolio, there is much too see. My only criticism of this photo would be the film choice, there is just too much grain. I have some picts taken with tri-x (with a reputation of grainyness) that look quite a bit smoother. http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=191315

Is fuji 800 a color print film?

-- Eugene Scherba

Closely(attentively) having considered an offered photo, has found out, that it is INSTALLATION, and the second bird - copy of the first in the reduced scale. But a quite good photo.

 

I was reading an article this morning in which the author used the phrase "wedded to the aesthetic", this being an accusation leveled at her. Right away I thought of this image. The idea of the aesthetic as such being necessarily a paradigm (someone else's word, not mine) of patriarchal power structures and imperialist oppression, is to the 80's and 90's what radical feminism was to the 70's and 80's: gratuitous and poorly wrought, not wholly workable or thought through. "Death to the aesthetic" gets regurgitated every fifty years or so. Perhaps it comes about because of the consistently close association of tyrants and kitsch. Now there's a wedding.

In any event, our discomfort with images like this comes about not only because of an aversion to all things kitsch, but is also the result of our historical proximity to this perjorative notion of being "wedded to the aesthetic", which, while lying in the dustbin, can still be seen peering accusingly over the rim. How much great work is lost because of our timidity before this stubborn notion. So much so that posting an image like this becomes an act of - dare I say it? - manly courage.

Having said it, I confess that I too prefer the original version of this posted by Eugene. It has a much more natural, pictorialist feel.

Someone, in some thread here on photo.net, said that Photoshop is like a nuclear weapon: just because you can use it doesn't necessarily mean you should. In this case, I have to agree. And I think the same could be said for most of the otherwise fine and promising images in this photographer's folder.

Well, first off I like the image. It has a softness (PS) and degree of contrast (PS) which carries a certain mood. Well done, Yuri. I might add that Eugene's preferred image is absolutly a PS composite. There is only one bird. The top bird is really the bottom bird flipped 180 degrees and scaled down. Here is a version where the top bird is flipped 180 degrees, enlarged, and superimposed over the bottom bird. The opacity was set at 30%. As you can see, the two birds overlap exactly! Contrary to what the photographer had said!!!!!! On the other hand, I really don't care. I use PS all the time as a tool. A wonderful tool. Congradulations on POW.

Steve, thanks for turning me on to the work of Shelley Schipper of photo.sig. I just checked out Shelley's work, starting with the Herons Circling picture you showed above, and discovered that Shelley has quite a rich diversity of work, one of the best I've seen on photosig. Someone with a portfolio like that I think we should try to get to jump the fence and come on over to photonet. We could all learn a lot from someone like Shelley. If the Herons is a fake, you couldn't prove it by me. I just did the same test, and the BIRDS DON"T FIT.

 

This picture of the geese here is not a fake either, even though photoshop was used to enhance the picture. It is evident that Yuri has a high level of experience using photoshop and used it at a very professional level, to create a very pleasing photo.

There is so much talk about photoshop manipulations and that the photographer should reveal everything he has done with this 'evil' tool, but i never read something like this when the photo is done in the good old credible darkroom. Here is a nice example of traditional darkroom techniques: www.f45.com/html/tech/techc.html. Imagine the photographer had done this with photoshop: buhhh, manipulations !

50,000+ hits!!..... This is one heck of a POW-- this piece deserves such level of exposure. Also I do have one thing to say: If you know your work is for real but some people don't approve... don't go to all the trouble trying to pull them out of a pool of ignorance. But if you are a genuine pretender, time would unmask your real character and you will pay for it. Personally for me I don't care much if this is a product of back-to-the-basic photography or digitally-manipulated methods... what I saw on the monitor pleases my eyes and I give you all the credit for it. Good luck.

Everything I said about "real" photography above still applies, but should be transferred to the original raw image, not the one we see here now, which (it has become clear) has had more manipulations applied to it than a volunteer patient at an Oestopaths' convention.

My original comments above were based on the photographer's assurances (that there was minimal Photoshopping) being taken at face value... mea culpa. It must have been the translation. I know I'd have a lot of trouble expressing Photoshop technicalities in Russian, much less via babelfish.altavista.com.

Comparing the rough scan (supplied as an attachment to Eugene Scherba's post a couple above), it seems apparent that the vertical dimension has been squashed as well (as opposed to cropped). Both versions contain exactly the same scene elements.

Why on Earth Yuri wasn't satisfied with the original version I'll never know. From the raw scan above, he clearly has the ability to capture a decisive moment with feeling and skill. A lighter Photoshop touch than the one applied would have done it more justice.

Two morals to this story:

"Beware of long thin cormorants"

and,

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Somewhat chastened...

Friends! Who that uses Photoshop who that is not present, and in a result I have come to a conclusion, that it is the most important an end result. Recollect many old photos, where we earlier Used:Scissors, a photographic enlarger, and other ways what to receive interesting result. Simply Photoshop it is the TOOL of the PHOTOGRAPHER WHICH to US HAS GIVEN TIME! You not go on a cart with the horse, and move on the automobile (Though it poorly for a nature). In this case if was not Photoshop, there would be nothing to not discuss. Huge all thank for interesting and instructive comments, I hope that such discussions help us to grow creatively and to study each other! Yours faithfully YURI.

It looks like a flashbulb memory from a dream you can barely remember. After seeing the original, the POW still looks great (studio great) but, Eugene's version has a seductive quality that really stands out. Nice choice for POW for sure.

I'm sorry I dredged up the whole Photoshop issue, so soon after insisting it be put to bed. Yuri has been straightforward about it; PS is an extension of the darkroom and a legitimate tool; on these things I think most of us agree - so they are not at issue. My only point was that, in light of the much "improved" raw version seen just recently, the PoW version is wearing too much makeup. It's still successful; it just happens to be, in my view, one of those images that looks better unaided. However, if the photographer had not been so generous in distributing freely this raw image, we'd never have known that. So I really don't see that there's an issue here at all, as regards PS. Unless of course we just need something to talk about . . . .

Just to clarify: I don't have anything against Photoshop per se - use it m'self... lots (not to cheat though, darkroomy business only). Douggy Thacker said it better: "too much makeup".

My criticism (albeit belatedly) was more about ruining a good picture by heavy-handed dandification. Then again, Yuri (who seems like a sterling fellow) probably didn't think that, of all his photos, this one would be held up as the greatest example he could supply of the photographic art.