minicucci

Wonderful shot, TIm! The tonal work here captures the soft, soft cocoon of working in falling snow.

 

Have a great new year!

ummm.....oops. Leave it to me to pick on a Kubrick expert. :))

Utterly charming, Bulent. And I particularly like Carlos' comment re the dog's election to deal with the too bright light by closing an eye instead of moving. As a keeper of really big dogs, that choice resonates completely with me.

 

While the details are rich all across the image, the eyes really finish the shot. They are vibrant and twinkling and inviting.

Chris & Bulent:

 

Thanks so much for your comments. I've been so absent over the last months that it comes as a surprise that anyone would notice a new upload.

 

Chris, I am so glad you got the humorous reference in the caption. Bulent, you may not be familiar with the movie The Shining, but it uses a number of fast slap zoom shots that quickly isolate the characters in various states of angst (and made the chant REDRUM a signature). In the above, the boy's look of dawning mischief while life proceeds around him just struck me as funny and reminiscent of some of those slap zoom shots.

 

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR to both of you and to all members of your families!

Incredibly lovely shot, Jack. I find it complex, very evocative and strangely, a little sad. The outside, cold in temperature, given grudging depth only through reflections. The inside, where there is warmth, is disguised and shielded by the same reflections as well as the hard reality of the glass barrier.

Robert: A stunning shot. The top and right side are awfully tight to the tree. It would benefit with a bit of space there.

Awesome, Gunnar! Color building blocks! The warmth of the oranges are perfectly balanced by the coolness of the cyan/blues. Markku noted the skilled separation of the light posts. I'd add that the positioning gives the image an almost jigsaw puzzle feel.

Gentlemen: I am grateful for your comments. I've held off responding because I wanted to get a look at the print before I did (and did not get to print until today). The out-of-focus foam bubbles work ok but not great. Print looks great from a distance, not so great close up. I do love the composition, though.

Good guess, Bulent, but no cigar! I'll attach the raw file. What I did was "stretch" scale the water and the sky to eliminate the spit of land and boat in the original shot. The blues and greens/aquas here are offbeat colors but actually true to nature.

Damn. That's a fine photograph.

 

Those wall smudges...

Hi Bulent:

 

This is not really high key but rather a step in that direction from "normal". Take a look at Howard Dion's portfolio here on Pnet. Howard's work is full spectrum but his portraits stand out with a signature look that I think of as adding by subtracting.

 

Annie is my sister and this came out of a shoot for her business' headshot. The version she will use is color and bit softer. (I'll attach.)

 

What I've found is that most people want their own portraits in color. In my view, color is often a distraction from the line and form of people's faces but portraits are rarely for the photographer. If your portrait work is intended for the subject, stick with color. If the work is for you, try B&W as an alternative.

Montgomery: I read your bio and see that you are just getting started with raw files and image post-processing. The friend who convinced you to go in this direction is right, in my opinion. You will be amazed by the possibilities.

 

This image has some real strengths. The vantage point of the camera adds definite drama by over-sizing the fallen tree and the sky is utterly beautiful. Had I not looked at your portfolio, I would have thought this was taken in the mountains, off of a high peak instead of a beach.

 

On the weakness side, the tones are dark and rather thin vis-a-vis conveying dimension. Global contrast is heavy and mid-tone contrast is weak. The horizon is severely tilted and the weight of the OOF foreground with the heavy black sky throws image balance out of whack. The focus point seems to be on the stones nearest to the tree and the DOF is short, with the limb that juts into the sky slightly out of focus. My "preference" would have been a sharp focus on the texture of the decaying wood with sufficient DOF to keep it all in focus.

 

Your raw file may allow for correction of some or all of this. Leveling and cropping for image balance would do a lot to emphasize what is strong and minimize what is weak.

Leo:

 

Wonderful composition. The combination of colors is exquisite.

 

One nit is that the intensity of the golden yellow hues seems to overwhelm the details and texture of the flowers themselves. While there is no clipping per se, the red channel is very nearly blown out. One thing you might consider is using PS's Channel Mixer to recapture the detail in the green channel instead of the more featureless red channel. Just set the adjustment panel to "monochrome" and the layer's blend mode to luminosity. Then toy with the channel weights to bring back the subtle details.

 

Notwithstanding the above, a lovely image.

Jack & Jim: I really am touched by your generous comments. I do dither a bit about how far to go when "editing" images since I do not want to fool anyone. OTOH, editing skills are at least 50% of my "photographer skills" so I need to be unapologetic about using them.

 

Jack, all of my raw shots look "bad" because I am always exposing to the right. If you read the EXIF data on the above, you'd see that this was taken at 1/60, f/5.6 at ISO 400 with a+ 1/3 exposure bias. That's a pretty dark scene transformed to a bright, albeit flat frame in the raw shot because of camera mechanics. The DNG/ACR adjusted frame is actually pretty close to what was really there.

 

Jim, growing up, my family had a bible that had some wonderful images on those glossy color plates that you find in old books. The light in all of those drawings was "celestial" if depicting something good and malevolent if depicting something bad. I thought they were all quite beautiful, would look at them for hours and came to understand that was so engaging about them was the character and quality of light. I was thinking about those illustrations while working on this image.

 

Finally, I really needed this image and necessity is the mother of invention. I've been putting together images of my community (the Landing) for a photo book to give to my 15 neighbors. To preserve everyone's privacy, these will be images of things (not people) that keep identity somewhat obscure. The egrets are prominent members of the neighborhood in all but the winter months so I really needed an egret shot suitable for inclusion. As I'd noted to Gunnar, I've tried many times in the past. This time, I decided in advance to use a composite that would whisk away any background houses and use only the sky as the backdrop against the reeds and I feel lucky that it worked.

Jack: Here tis. All edits were done in Adobe Camera Raw.

I love this shot. Palm trees, shorts and flip-flops meet fleece, jackets and empty picnic grounds. The very definition of a cold, cold summer's day. Not surprised to find that Angel Island is next to San Francisco whose idea of summer can be a bit warped.

Jack: I agree with you on all counts. The composition is worth the work and the version above does not handle the dynamic range of tones as well as it might. (That's not a fish, right? Something else? It seems to be attached to the bridge.)

 

The diagonal of humans, all looking down but all looking down in individual ways, is the real frame of this image. I especially love the soul at the bottom right, busy creating his/her own water vortex.

 

Any raw converter (assuming you shot raw) should allow you to compress the range for better tonality. As a test, I downloaded and gave it a run through Camera Raw and had no trouble with the range.

Francisco: Yes, Minicucci is very Italian. And not common. Must be a distant branch of the family?

Sriram: It is a very nice scene. However, in my opinion, the composition leaves the eye to wander about looking for a rhythm and failing to find one. It's a bit sky heavy (and a little noisy up there). The large rock on the right is truncated by the presented crop and leads the eye out of frame because its size and darkness is among the more commanding of the visual elements. On the left, the small ridge pinnacle also pulls at the eye, so the viewer gets into a bit of a visual tennis match.

 

If you crop out these elements and reduce the sky's footprint by a third or so, you do get a nice rhythm repeating from the two foreground rocks to the two distant peaks and out into the mist. The eye follows the path implied by your title. (An example crop is attached.) I'd also emphasize the yellows in the foreground to balance the blues of the misty distance and rich sky. Just another sort of color rhythm.

 

My opinion about composition aside, this is the kind of shot that does make me wish I was there. My compliments.

Naftali: An utterly charming image. Shades of Claude Monet's impressionism. The movement and reflections in the water are just terrific.

 

I'd be tempted to add a bit more vibrance to the colors, to emphasize the liveliness of the light. Not to bludgeon with saturation but just to put an edge on the light. (Although, if memory serves, Monet always used a pretty restrained palette.)

Carsten & Tim: As always, I am grateful for your comments.

 

Carsten, in answer to your question, I just used a mask to blend the two shots, supplemented by some cloning of the top reeds using a grasses brush. I've attached the bottom, base shot. The CR2 version is without any adjustment and looks awful because it was taken with a +1/3 exposure bias to keep the gamma curve to the right. You can see the base of the intervening house here. The DNG is the output of DxO after optics corrections and after adjustments in Camera Raw to adjust blacks, highlights and color. This became the BG layer for the above. The sky shot (third in the series) had its own, different exposure.

Francisco: A very charming capture! I do think it need a warmer color temperature, some burn & dodge around the eyes to make their sparkle come alive and darkening of the non-essential BG, similar to many of your excellent macro shots. Still, the soul of this dog is well caught here.

Gunnar: I agree with Doug re the darkening of the upper right (I'd actually slightly darken the upper 1/4 of the water) but that aside, this is a terrific shot.

 

The composition should be awkward but it is not. The content should be boring, but it is not. Instead, here's an apt photographic metaphor for swift passage of time, the resolve and steadfastness of age and the glimpse of new youth.

 

Technically, the color separations in the water are just killer as is the detail of the tree and moss and/or lichen growth.

 

I'm putting this one into my favorites, where a lot of your others also reside.

The play between the yellows and cyan/blues really makes this image sing. The mostly but not all of the way silhouette of the foreground adds just the right amount of intrigue. What really is striking is how well balance the shot is, aided by the diagonal line between the lamppost and the vanishing point of the distant tower.

 

Two nits. I'd rather that the distant tower be really straight versus the slight lean to the left, and, I'd clone out what is that small black object on the edge of the right side. (Well, I said they were nits.)

Gunnar: thank you for your kind comment!

 

A quick story. The above really is in my backyard. I've taken dozens (if not more) of shots of the egrets that come to feed in the cove and I've never been happy with any of them. The stark whiteness of the birds and the invariably dark backgrounds made for an exposure nightmare. Get one right and the other would be wrong. Bracketing was usually defeated by movement of the water, the reeds and the birds themselves. The above, shot at 6:00 am on a stormy morning, finally worked and it came as a happy surprise especially after not shooting anything for a few months due to an illness in the family. So, I finally have my egret shot!