Critique/Advice of the Week - April 2021

[deep diver]

Right now, I like what Molly has done the best because she left in the entire halal meat sign. It's subtle, but it's what makes this image stand out for me. That sign is what defines the story. Without that, it could be just any other butcher stall.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

This one falls into the; I have no idea why I shot it category. A windshield shot from Feb 2011. On the road near Sheridan, WY. Must also have been running out of card space as I shot it at 1600x1200 pixels. Not a huge deal as anything much beyond that on that Kodak Camera is interpolation. I know what my approach is, but will just include the base image and see what others do with it.

 

[mollyc]

So I chose to make the back of the meat cutter vertical. If I were willing to take a bit more time I would have skewed both of the upper corners in just a bit. Left just a bit of the girl in, then did an easy clone out to include a bit more of the counter. Auto levels, then pulled a bit more red, finally just a bit of playing with levels in PhotoShop Elements.
BTW I love seeing how different people approach the same problem.
View attachment 1755769

I’m curious why you chose to straighten to the vertical line? ?

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I’m curious why you chose to straighten to the vertical line? ?

Actually I started by making the column vertical, did all the other corrections and did not like the overall effect, so tried the back of the cutter and that seemed to strike a good balance. Would no doubt have been better had I started from scratch and done a bit of perspective squeeze at the top.

 

[Clix Pix]

This one falls into the; I have no idea why I shot it category. A windshield shot from Feb 2011. On the road near Sheridan, WY. Must also have been running out of card space as I shot it at 1600x1200 pixels. Not a huge deal as anything much beyond that on that Kodak Camera is interpolation. I know what my approach is, but will just include the base image and see what others do with it.

View attachment 1755940

No corrections to offer here, just want to say that this image is striking by the sheer vastness and emptiness of the land! Good grief! Amazing to think that anyone LIVES around there..... and more surprising that someone felt compelled to add another road when there were already two -- one to the left, one to the right -- pretty much parallel to the one that you were on. Fascinating.....

 

[deep diver]

This one falls into the; I have no idea why I shot it category. A windshield shot from Feb 2011. On the road near Sheridan, WY. Must also have been running out of card space as I shot it at 1600x1200 pixels. Not a huge deal as anything much beyond that on that Kodak Camera is interpolation. I know what my approach is, but will just include the base image and see what others do with it.

View attachment 1755940

This did not take a lot of work to pull out some decent images.

================

The first thing I did was adjust the levels. There is a lot of clipping on both ends.

================

I then cropped it to put your lane in the center. I think it gives a better sense of going down the road. I also cloned out the car on the left because it bugged me.

================

I am always interested in the story in the image. The above image takes in the vastness of the place.

I cropped the next one to emphasize the journey by focusing more on the road. The one after that emphasizes the vista.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

@ deep diver
All of your cropping ideas were much better than the one I originally came up with. You were also right about the levels, but I took a slightly more severe approach to deal with the very low contrast. In PhotoShop Elements:
First I did a slight bump in saturation levels, then created a duplicate soft light layer. Then adjusted levels on the soft light layer.

From there I cropped more or less along one of the lines you suggested. My thanks, as your ideas really helped me improve the final image.

Finally I applied enough sharpening to the softlight layer to get just a touch of graininess.

FWIW I think your approach to levels looks much more natural. However this is a part of a slide show. The reason I chose to make the colors pop a bit more, was to create a bit of a shock transitioning to the final slide which is in black and white.
Again thanks for your input.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

No corrections to offer here, just want to say that this image is striking by the sheer vastness and emptiness of the land! Good grief! Amazing to think that anyone LIVES around there..... and more surprising that someone felt compelled to add another road when there were already two -- one to the left, one to the right -- pretty much parallel to the one that you were on. Fascinating.....

This is actually a stretch of I-90. Judging by the time I took the picture I think it was just NW of Buffalo WY, traveling towards Sheridan WY. However it could also be north of Sheridan traveling towards Billings MT.

Only reason I was driving on an interstate is that it was the dead of winter and I was trying to beat a snowstorm home. As I recall I traveled all the way from Colorado Springs to the Canadian border looking at a snow storm in my rear-view mirrors. Driving the Interstate meant crossing the border at the Coutts AB location and there my luck ran out. Coutts is a main border crossing where they train new border guards. The supervisor decided to give the trainees something to do, so I lost almost an hour at the border while they went through the car.

That lost hour meant white knuckle driving through a blizzard the rest of the way home, adding another hour to what shoulda/coulda been a 2+ hour final stretch.

 

[deep diver]

Only reason I was driving on an interstate is that it was the dead of winter and I was trying to beat a snowstorm home. As I recall I traveled all the way from Colorado Springs to the Canadian border looking at a snow storm in my rear-view mirrors. Driving the Interstate meant crossing the border at the Coutts AB location and there my luck ran out. Coutts is a main border crossing where they train new border guards. The supervisor decided to give the trainees something to do, so I lost almost an hour at the border while they went through the car.

Doesn't that aways happen?! Just when you think you're safe someone comes along and screws that up.
In 1976 or 1977 a couple of us went to Tobermory for a week of wreck diving. I got stopped at 3am in Wiarton, ONT for speeding. I was only about 15km over the limit. I was driving my friend's mother's car. He was asleep in the passenger seat. The cop could not make sense out of my license, Mike's license, and the registration all having different names. After about 15 minutes of scratching his head he let me go. I'm pretty sure he figured out that if he gave me a ticket there wouldn't be anyway to track me down in Pennsylvania when I didn't pay it. Mike was really angry because he cannot fall asleep in cars and he had just nodded off.

 

[Buck987]

Happy to see this thread...and I appreciate any help. I took several shots of this small statue and none of them came out clear. The left side was always blurry. When I stepped back it was a little better, but when up close it was a mess. I did have center weighted AF as the setting. I should have maybe changed this to spot or maybe something else?

 

[mollyc]

Happy to see this thread...and I appreciate any help. I took several shots of this small statue and none of them came out clear. The left side was always blurry. When I stepped back it was a little better, but when up close it was a mess. I did have center weighted AF as the setting. I should have maybe changed this to spot or maybe something else?
View attachment 1756374 View attachment 1756377

It’s a depth of field issue. Stop down to f/8 or f/11. The closer you are to your subject the less DOF. There are calculators you can use that you can plug in your lens, camera, and settings and it will tell you how many inches of focus you have. A wider angle lens may also help.

 

[Buck987]

It’s a depth of field issue. Stop down to f/8 or f/11. The closer you are to your subject the less DOF. There are calculators you can use that you can plug in your lens, camera, and settings and it will tell you how many inches of focus you have. A wider angle lens may also help.

thank you for the tip..much appreciated

 

[mollyc]

thank you for the dip..much appreciated

If you find that even stopping down all the way doesn't help (and if you are shooting miniature items, it might not), you could also look into focus stacking. If you use PS there is a built in focus stacking command where it will line up and blend all your images. It will take more time, and you'd ideally shoot on a tripod (although I have done it handheld, I don't recommend it), but sometimes that is the only way to ensure focus throughout the image when shooting small, close items.

 

[deep diver]

In addition to Molly's good advice........ You can step back as far as you need to get the right focus and then crop it down. The D7500 will give you more than enough pixels if you set the jpg image size to fine and large, or if you shoot RAW.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'd like some feedback on this one that I posted in POTD:

General technical info-shot with a D810 and 24-120mm f/4 VR at 24mm, ISO 3200, f/4.

Location information:

This was at a river museum I visited over the weekend, and one of several photos I liked that I look inside an historic steamboat(a former Army Corp of Engineers dredge paddlewheel). This scene caught my eye-a workbench in the corner of the engine room.

I had two different shots to work with, and liked this one the better of the two.

I will post the full, unedited photo(or both of them if it would help critique) but I'm interested in how else others might have approached this, and more importantly if this is even a compelling photo at all. The one thing now that catches my eye that MIGHT have improved it is having the wrench in the lower left actually lead out of the frame.

In any case, I'm receptive to any and all feedback, including "there's nothing here worth saving"

 

[deep diver]

I'd like some feedback on this one that I posted in POTD:

View attachment 1756516

General technical info-shot with a D810 and 24-120mm f/4 VR at 24mm, ISO 3200, f/4.

Location information:

This was at a river museum I visited over the weekend, and one of several photos I liked that I look inside an historic steamboat(a former Army Corp of Engineers dredge paddlewheel). This scene caught my eye-a workbench in the corner of the engine room.

I had two different shots to work with, and liked this one the better of the two.

I will post the full, unedited photo(or both of them if it would help critique) but I'm interested in how else others might have approached this, and more importantly if this is even a compelling photo at all. The one thing now that catches my eye that MIGHT have improved it is having the wrench in the lower left actually lead out of the frame.

In any case, I'm receptive to any and all feedback, including "there's nothing here worth saving"

Are you saying that this is already edited? Please show us both unedited images.

 

[bunnspecial]

Are you saying that this is already edited? Please show us both unedited images.

Yes, this is the "final" version I came up with

For the sake of comparison, here's side by side original(Lightroom import, .NEF to .DNG, then exported with no edits as JPEG other than resizing to long edge of 2500 pixels, my standard size for posting on MR) and the version posted above(same export settings)

As can be seen, before editing this one had some nasty problems, including my wife's arm in the bottom right, something for which I can offer no excuse.

Here's the "alternate" image I was working with of the same scene, again unedited followed by where I ended before I decided to play with the other

 

[deep diver]

I won't have time to play with this until the end of the week but I have 2 thoughts right now.

I like the perspective of the"alternate" image much better. It gives better context and tells us something about the space. The first looks to me like it's just some tools on a bench. I'm not getting a story.

I'm curious what you did with color adjustments. I'm looking at this on my phone so the colors I'm seeing might be off. Having said that, the colors in the processed imagine don't look right to me. They seem to be a little too orange and a bit over saturated.

I do like the scene a lot and am looking forward to playing with it.

 

[bunnspecial]

I won't have time to play with this until the end of the week but I have 2 thoughts right now.

I like the perspective of the"alternate" image much better. It gives better context and tells us something about the space. The first looks to me like it's just some tools on a bench. I'm not getting a story.

I'm curious what you did with color adjustments. I'm looking at this on my phone so the colors I'm seeing might be off. Having said that, the colors in the processed imagine don't look right to me. They seem to be a little too orange and a bit over saturated.

I do like the scene a lot and am looking forward to playing with it.

Thanks for your thoughts, and I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I go back and forth on the alternate image, and I understand your point about the context. I rejected it because I felt like the perspective was wonky and I lost too much of the scene really fixing it, but sometimes I can get caught up in the weeds of technicalities. This scene definitely stuck out to me as having potential when I saw it, and I'm glad I had two alternate takes on it.

As for color-there are two things, or really maybe three, going on there. The first is that even though it's in front of a window, it was a dreary day(so not a ton of natural light) and the space was mostly lit by incandescent lighting. I warmed it up a bit because I thought that better represented the "feel" of the incandecent/daylight interplay when I was standing there, but I realize I could have gotten a bit heavy handed on doing that. The bench really did "pop" bright red when I was there-a lot of the wood all over was this color red-and I upped the saturation a bit(or maybe a bit too much) to get that across. The third is that I'm still flying a bit blind on my M1 MBP since I don't have a colorimeter that works on it yet, and I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't have True Tone turned with the default profile.

Again, I'm interested to see what you do with it. If you want the raw files, I can try to get them to you.

Thanks again for your comments.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

So my best advice would be to shoot from a lower angle, perhaps at a time of day when the windows weren't so bright. However starting from where you're at. I used PhotoShop Elements, but apps such as Affinity Photo or Graphic Converter and several others all have similar functions.
Wanting to soften the downward angle, I played with skew control. Top left slightly in, top right in quite a bit, and bottom right out by the same amount. That took me to here:

Cropped it down to here:

Used the magic wand to select the upper right corner, expanded the selection slightly, then used the cloning tool to fill in the white area. Then used the shadow and highlight control, lightened shadows 25% and darkened highlights 10% which left me with this. Might benefit by lightening shadows a little bit more.

I think I could do quite a bit more with the dual plane perspective filter in Affinity, but I really need to take the time to learn to use it properly.

 

[deep diver]

Thanks for your thoughts, and I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I go back and forth on the alternate image, and I understand your point about the context. I rejected it because I felt like the perspective was wonky and I lost too much of the scene really fixing it, but sometimes I can get caught up in the weeds of technicalities. This scene definitely stuck out to me as having potential when I saw it, and I'm glad I had two alternate takes on it.

As for color-there are two things, or really maybe three, going on there. The first is that even though it's in front of a window, it was a dreary day(so not a ton of natural light) and the space was mostly lit by incandescent lighting. I warmed it up a bit because I thought that better represented the "feel" of the incandecent/daylight interplay when I was standing there, but I realize I could have gotten a bit heavy handed on doing that. The bench really did "pop" bright red when I was there-a lot of the wood all over was this color red-and I upped the saturation a bit(or maybe a bit too much) to get that across. The third is that I'm still flying a bit blind on my M1 MBP since I don't have a colorimeter that works on it yet, and I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't have True Tone turned with the default profile.

Again, I'm interested to see what you do with it. If you want the raw files, I can try to get them to you.

Thanks again for your comments.

Here's my take on these images. There are certainly other ways of seeing them.

The one shot from the front of the bench doesn't really do anything for me, and I couldn't see anything there.

I think the one shot from the end of the bench had much more potential.
I probably would have crouched down a bit when taking the shot. I think that would have given a better perspective and more appealing sense of depth.
The story in this image is the tools. There is a lot of space in the right and top of the frame that does not add anything.

============

Using PSE, first I straightened and cropped. I used the vertical shelf standard on the back wall. This exactly corresponds to using the edge of the bench.

======================

Using PSE, I adjusted the lighting: lighten shadows 5%, darken highlights 50%, increase mid-tone contrast 25%.

======================

In LR, I increased red saturation by 50%. I might not have done that, but I was keeping in mind what you had said about the color of the bench.

 

[bunnspecial]

Here's my take on these images. There are certainly other ways of seeing them.

The one shot from the front of the bench doesn't really do anything for me, and I couldn't see anything there.

I think the one shot from the end of the bench had much more potential.
I probably would have crouched down a bit when taking the shot. I think that would have given a better perspective and more appealing sense of depth.
The story in this image is the tools. There is a lot of space in the right and top of the frame that does not add anything.

============

Using PSE, first I straightened and cropped. I used the vertical shelf standard on the back wall. This exactly corresponds to using the edge of the bench.

View attachment 1759253



======================

Using PSE, I adjusted the lighting: lighten shadows 5%, darken highlights 50%, increase mid-tone contrast 25%.

View attachment 1759254


======================

In LR, I increased red saturation by 50%. I might not have done that, but I was keeping in mind what you had said about the color of the bench.

Thank you for your thorough analysis and general feedback.

I agree that I really should have used a lower perspective on this. In retrospect, as much as it caught my eye when walking through, I should have made more than two attempts.

In any case, I can also see and agree that the top right space is a distraction, and I think your take works much better with it not there. I think yours shows as well that it can still be an interesting/compelling photo without going overboard with the saturation.

With that in mind, here's my take on it-not following your same parameters but using your same general guidance.

So, there again, following your general suggestions, here's a potential alternate take on it. I got a fair bit more aggressive than you did with pulling out the highlights, but also tamed down the saturation as compared to the other photo. I also cropped in the shelf at the top right a bit more tightly I think I prefer this exposure adjustment, but again I'm here for advice so I'd like some feedback on if you(or others) like this edit.

Ultimately, yes, I agree that this would have benefited from a more eye level view, but here it is such that it is.

 

[StrollerEd]

This is one of my first ventures into close-up photography- I’ve yet to learn all of the initials

 

[MBAir2010]

Looks fine!
Maybe crop the top and bottom