KristinLauman

As a blanket of snow falls over Chicago, I thought I would tweak someof my spring images. I shot this originally in 2012 and wanted to seeif I could improve it by adding some textures in Photoshop.

 

I guess I'm no longer allowed to link you to the original. Its in mygallery under the Florals folder. Sorry to make you do extra clicks.

 

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

That is one powerful gaze.  Very interesting POV.

Thanks everyone for the comment.  Starvy, You are correct.  The bird is not sharp.  I did not soften the bird with CS2, only the area around the bird.  The bird is soft because of a few newbie mistakes.  First, I was hand holding @ 400mm and the bird only filled half of the center sensor.  Second, I panned handheld at 400mm @ F5.6.

I typically try to crop in tightly as closely as my slender skills

will allow when photographing song birds on by 100-400mm. On this

day, I decided I'd pull the lens back and get a wider view. I

personally like the result. I used some filters in CS2 to soften the

foliage and create the sense of a summer afternoon glow on the marsh.

I'm curious to see what comments others might share.

 

Thanks for looking.

This is so beautifully done.  I've tried to capture that spiral quality within flowers many times.  You've got a great take on it!

Beautiful.  Really nice detail in the fur.  I like the way you can see how they blend into the environment.  Was this a young lion?

Thank you everyone for the kind remarks and the O'Keefe reference.  I often get those sorts of comments with regard to my abstracts and its a great compliment.

 

Dror, I love your portfolio, especially your abstracts. 

Absolutely stunning.  John put worded his critique well and I can't agree more with it.  I love the muted tones and the varied textures of the garments.  Very striking image.  Congratulations!

I saw this image in the front page ribbon.  I love it.  I hear so often about how you need to have the wings sharp edge to edge, but I really like the movement your image expresses.  The eye is nice and sharp and the color harmony is lovely.  Good feather detail around the face as well.  Congrats.

Abstract of a fresh Peony bloom.

A flower box at its peak.

I love the muted colors and the mirrors aspects of this. Its an interesting mix of negative and positive space.

Wow, cool shot with all the textures. Good feather detail.

My first Awwww moment of the day. Lovely composition.

I like the composition overall. The exposure and flow of the flower are very nice. I have the same thought here with regard to the wing being a bit out of focus. The out of focus petal in the foreground is distracting and clipping the bottom of the moth. I find the same challenges in my butterfly shots!

The edge of the wing is a bit soft. Try keeping the wings and body perfectly parallel to the lens to keep it fully sharp. But that's just a small knit pick. Its very good.

I love your composition and choice of textures. Print and hang!

The color and the clarity are terrific. And I like the choice of crop here. Perhaps a touch more DoF would be good.

Here is the final crop.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond to this image with a critique.  My experience in the past 2 year on this site has been that my images generally receive ratings in the 4.5 - 5.0 range, and very little critique comments are added.  So, naturally, I start to scratch my head and wonder if I am actually going backwards.  I am not afraid to receive constructive criticism and negative comments.  The ones that are valid I take in and learn from them. 

There were a couple of critiques on this image that I did not agree with.  For instance, I did not agree that this image was improperly exposed.  There are no blown out highlights in this image.  However, what I do see is that the bird visually appears a bit dark against that background, while perched on a white flower.  While the "exposure" is pretty good here, there is an optical illusion that makes the eye feel slightly underexposed.  Something I'll need to consider as I photograph birds against a sunlit background. 

I fully agree with the crop recommendation.  I'm trying to learn to crop properly on the camera so I am not throwing away quite so much in post processing.  Composition seems to be my weakest link.

For the poster who asked about the species, wondering if it were a Sparrow, here is how I identified this bird.  The female RWBB is a bit larger than a sparrow and less stocky--though in my image, she is fanning her breast plumage, making her look stockier.  RWBB females and young have an orange patch beneath the beak, and eye lines are redish-orange.  The RWBB has a longer pointier beak and their feathers are a bit darker than the Sparrow.  The other give away is the breast which is streaked throughout where as the Sparrow's breast is streaked above and buff below.  You can't tell from this image, but the tail shape is also different.  A Sparrow's tail has a distinctive V-shaped pattern.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to post.  This was a very useful conversation. 

Thanks for your response and perspective.  I appreciate hearing what for you and perhaps for most of this particular site, is what makes a strong image, being boldly colored action shots; but I take exception to the idea that this is the criteria for a "great" image.  That would be so limiting.  Now I appreciate that if this site is full of members who think similarly, then maybe its not the best place for someone outside of that genre.  I selected the muted, soft palette on purpose.

Point taken on the breast feathers, I could have benefited from a smaller av setting. 

I will challenge the statement that the flower and the breast is over exposed.  Here is the histogram for this image.

 

 

Thanks for the feedback, both of you.  Dennis, were you saying that the edit by Grayham with the darker exposure on the bird was an improvement?  I was thinking I had the exposure on the bird and the flower correct and was selectively darkening the background, which when it is as soft as this is pretty simple.  I use the wand selector to get the background, then contract by say, 40 pixels and then feather by 35.  At that point most adjustments will not be very apparent.  But did you like the bird darker?  I'm still training my eye to see proper exposure.

Thank you each for taking time to respond with such terrific comments.  Dennis, the feedback you gave is the sort of feedback that I am always interested in hearing--and your post was very funny.

The background was actually overblown in the original, which is here:  http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=15989452

I played around with the crop and I came up with something more square than rectangular.   Here:  http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=16010353&size=md

 

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/16010353-md.jpg

Wow.  The detail in the large size is just amazing and the lighting is really beautiful here.  Question though, exposure time 1/250?  How were you able to get this at such a slow shutter speed? 

A poetic idea creatively expressed and so beautifully captured.  I love everything that this image communicates.