Dog's Photo52 - week 17

Dogmatix

Dogmatix

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Name
Martin
Edit My Images
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Hey, well heres the begining of my photo52.

Sorry I'm late haha.


Week 11: Candid (I think I understand what it is...)

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Taken while out for a walk in the woods, and this elderly couple decided to take a nose at the veiw...
 
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:wave: Martin and welcome to the 52.
Sunday evening onwards tends to be comment time . . . most people wait until they've got their shot in before looking at others, so I hope you haven't been feeling neglected !

That is a stunning view, so I can see why they stopped there.
Your shot definitely fits the candid theme and there are some interesting little details in there. I keep getting drawn to that absolutely hideous pair of purple tights that the lady is wearing :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

For me the couple are a little bit lost at the far LHS of the frame though. I certainly wouldn't want to see them central, but maybe just a touch closer in wold have worked better for me.
 
Welcome along Dog, glad you could make it.

Nice pic, but looks like the old boy is taking a pee haha
 
Welcome aboard Martin, it's a lovely candid image, with a wonderful view. I agree with Sarah about the positioning, they are a bit too tight against the LHS, but it fits the theme.
 
same as everyone else, its a great shot, lovely view but the couple could do with moving right a touch. great start to your 52!!
 
Well, here goes with week 12.

I thought long and hard about this one, and what I wanted to do, I found I couldn't :(
So improvised and went to try some "pro" shots.

First of all, the ones I thought didn't make the Photo52 Grade:

1,
gimpappleBW.jpg


Is it me, or does the BW version of an apple, look like a BW version of Jupiter?

2.
DSC_0035.jpg


Thought this came out too bright But gave me the idea I was getting there...


But the Final grade:

3.

AppleFinal.jpg


I've ran it through gimp to darken the blacks a bit, and slightly sharpened it up, and added a bored.

Shot:
D5000 - tamron 70-300 in Macro @180mm
ISO: 800
F/4.5


Overall, I'm pleased how the shoot went, not bad for just a cardboard box, painted black, a tea towel and a cooker hob light haha.

C&C welcome as per uswel! :)
 
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Nice Candid shot. Well composed, but the view looks a little washed out to me. Have you tried bumping the contrast?

Produce is nice too. The B&W version lacks impact, the second is a tad too bright (and soft to my monitor) but your final effort is much better. Sharper, and not too bright/saturated. This is a cracking final shot and I agree with your self crit on the others.

Ian.
 
I think your candid shot really works - I like the composition with the old couple over to one side it somehow gives the scene a 'timeless' feel.:)
Your third 'product' shot is spot on - good enough to eat:clap:
 
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Third produce shot works really well Martin. Sharp and spot on colours... as for the B&W... I hate to say it, but it doesn't really look like Jupiter... the banding is way to narrow and in the wrong direction... :D :LOL:
 
Harlequin565 said:
Nice Candid shot. Well composed, but the view looks a little washed out to me. Have you tried bumping the contrast?

Produce is nice too. The B&W version lacks impact, the second is a tad too bright (and soft to my monitor) but your final effort is much better. Sharper, and not too bright/saturated. This is a cracking final shot and I agree with your self crit on the others.

Ian.
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Thanks for the comments, glad myself Crit was correct, only makes me a better 'togger eventually.

lizbeth said:
I think your candid shot really works - I like the composition with the old couple over to one side it somehow gives the scene a 'timeless' feel.:)
Your third 'product' shot is spot on - good enough to eat:clap:
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Thanks, I wouldn't eat it though, I put some polish on it to make it "pop" a little.

jgs001 said:
Third produce shot works really well Martin. Sharp and spot on colours... as for the B&W... I hate to say it, but it doesn't really look like Jupiter... the banding is way to narrow and in the wrong direction... :D :LOL:
Click to expand...

Haha! It just reminded me of it, because of the spot thats on it. Still, my first B+W photo I've done, hope to experiment a little more with it too.

But thanks all for the comments :)
 
I agree that the final shot works well (y)

Nice contrast and texture, the lighting is good - I like the way that the colours fade into the darkness at the bottom. The colour looks spot on to me too.
Only one small complaint with it and that's the stalk of the apple. I think that by darkening the blacks in the background, you've made that a little too dark too.
 
Well sorry for the no show for a few weeks, had too much going on to keeo up haha.

But I've gone out and shoot each week tonight.

Ok heres the list.

Week 13L Quad.

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A group of four Frogs. Captured a little unprepared, but its turned out not too badly.

Week 13: RESHOOT. I decided to reshoot week 4, Street.

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A little walk with camera in hand, taking lots of pictures of random things, this seems best of the bunch, lots of little bits of colour to draw you in.

Week 14: Shoot

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Taken at Ludlow Castle, nothing says shoot, more than a canon!

Week 15: Single.

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A single white Daff growing in a bed of Yellow Daff's, a little bit singled out if you tell me!


C&C very much welcome!
Least I've caught up now :D
 
:clap: Well done on the catch up.

Quad : I like froggies, and you've caught them well. The 2 central ones look like they're smiling.
It's a little bit heavy on reflections though, which is drawing my eye away from the subject.

Reshoot Street : Not something I would have chosen as a subject and it's interesting to see how everyday scenes can make a strong image.
The very low perspective, the colours and the strong lines make for a good composition.
In fact I've just noticed the bits of broken green glass in the foreground which pick up the tones in the garage doors (y)

However, it could do with a bit of a straighten and the angle of view isn't quite right for me. I'm finding that the end of the brick wall is a little too central in the frame and if you could have lined it up so that the wall didn't cut part way across the 3rd garage door it would be a huge improvement.

Shoot : I like this a lot.
Definitely on theme and I like the angle looking up at the canon.
It's another one that I feel needs a straighten and maybe a contrast boost, but there's definitely something about it that appeals.

Single : My favourite out of the 4.
I like the way that the white Daff is leaning forward toward the camera while the others are all standing upright.
It singles it out even more.

I hope none of that sounded overly critical. I think there's heaps of potential in all of these, I'd just like to see a few tweaks to improve them.
 
Thanks Sarah! (y)

Not at all over critical, infact, its people like yourself thats helping me improve my photogrphy, one of the reasons I decided to start doing Photo52 ;)

I can't improve on the frogs, I've not learnt how to take the reflections out, or tone them down in Gimp yet, maybe a nice filter might of helped?

Street, maybe a crop would help? If not, I'll go and reshoot it, after all its less than 50 yards from here.

Shoot, well I've had a quick revamp on gimp... little WB adjustment and a straighten, whats the verdict now?

Shoot.jpg


Single - Thanks! It took a long time to get the "right" picture. Bet people thought I was a bit mental sitting there with a tri-pod, taking picture after picture haha.
 
Quad, Excellent (y)
Street, a good low down viewpoint and it's picked up loads of details (y)
Shoot, The edit is better... but my eyes are drawn to the muzzle of the gun, and that's not in focus. The angle and viewpoint is very good though.
Single, a great idea and spot on composition, fitting the theme perfectly. It looks a little dark on my lappy though...
 
jgs001 said:
Quad, Excellent (y)
Street, a good low down viewpoint and it's picked up loads of details (y)
Shoot, The edit is better... but my eyes are drawn to the muzzle of the gun, and that's not in focus. The angle and viewpoint is very good though.
Single, a great idea and spot on composition, fitting the theme perfectly. It looks a little dark on my lappy though...
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Thats for the comments.

What would of Improved the canon picture? I know it needs to be in focus, but what would of brought everything into focus?

As for the daffs, they might be a little darker than hoped, I didn't shoot them til around 7-8pm, so the light was fading, and the pics with a flash on, just didn't look right :(
 
Excellent quad image. Frogs look great. I'd be tempted maybe to crop in quite a bit though.

Single is nicely thought out and composed. Just needs a touch more vibrance and brightness for me.
 
Out of the two, I prefer the portrait shot.

The castle shot has the problem of overexposing your mum combined with dark brickwork. It's difficult to make out any detail in the highlight, or the shadow.

The portrait though has a good range of tones. It looks a tad soft though, as though the AF has decided that your fringe should be in focus, not your eyes.

Not easy to do though...

Ian.
 
I agree with Ian on the castle shot.
It's got great potential, but looks like a tricky one to get exposed correctly.

I'm not very good with the technical side of things, but I wouldn't have thought an ND filter would improve the situation here.
Although it would help with the exposure on the brighter areas it would also darken the shadows by an equivalent amount. HDR could be a solution, as long as you kept it very subtle so as not to detract from the original too much.

The second shot works much better for me.
And I actually quite like the bit of softness.
With your slightly tousled hair and partially lowered eyelids it's got that bleary just woken up feel to it.
 
I like the castle shot, but I agree it's got issues with the exposures... HDR would be a good choice for that (I'm sure I'll get shot for saying that :D...). Did you shoot in jpg or raw ? If raw, take the original image, and you can adjust the exposure +/-2 and save the settings, then open all three and make an HDR from it... that may do it.

The SP is good, and it's damned hard to do... I agree it looks like it's a little soft.

As for the Canon... Focus on the muzzle, maybe go for something like f/11 to get more DOF... that might being the entire canon into focus... I'm not very good at estimating what the effects of the different apertures on the DOF is likely to be.
 
Thanks to feedback.
What do you think would of improved the "mum" shot? A ND Filter?
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There's no need to go full HDR to fix the image and it might be fixable with jpegs. Nothing is too blown or too dark. However I know nothing about GIMP, so here's the process...

1. Open your shot (version1). Save it again with a different name (e.g. version2)
2. Open version1. Adjust exposure/levels/brightness depending on which slider is in GIMP so that the brickwork and darker areas are exposed correctly. Don't worry about blowing out the lighter areas.
3. Open version2. Do exactly the same, this time getting the bright areas exposed correctly. Don't worry about the dark areas.
4. Do a "Select all" type function (might just be a "copy" command) of version2
5. Switch to version1 and paste version2 over the top of it.
6. I'm pretty sure GIMP has a layer masking capability so if you know how to do that, use that. If not, use the Eraser tool on a LOW opacity (around 10-20%) to erase the overly dark areas of version2 and reveal the nicely exposed areas of version1. Just gently brush out your image to reveal things and blend the two images together.

The good think about masks is that if you cock it up, you can just paint with white, whereas the eraser method means using the Undo button a lot.

A bit of care should have a nice image at the end of it, but it might take you a while. I did download GIMP for my LINUX machine, but I haven't got anywhere with it yet because the UI makes me cry.

Ian.
 
That's definitely one of the most unusual takes on peace that I've seen this week.
But it works - there is something very peaceful about it for some reason :shrug:

Have you used selective colouring on the ivy? I can't quite work it out.
It's very effective anyway - I love the limited palette of greens and whites, and it really contributed to the feeling of peace and calm.

Very nicely composed and beautiful contrasty lighting. There are some great textures in this too.

I guess you were probably limited to the lighting you had available here, but the only thing I would have changed if you could have, would be to get a little bit of light into the inside of the cup. Nothing strong enough to take away the beautiful natural light, but maybe a torch beam or something directed at the middle of it to pick out a bit more detail.
 
I will be honest, I didn't really shoot it for peace, I was sorting the weekends photos out and it seemed to suit nicely, if you twist it slightly haha.

Limited on everything to be honest, I could of used a flash, but I think that would of ruined it. Tourch painting would of been awesome, but we forgot a tourch haha.

I've done no, real processing on it, other than converting to JPG, from shooting in RAW(NEF), so if the greens too stong, thats how they were at the time of shooting.

Thanks for th crit though, Sarah.
 
Dogmatix said:
Admittingly, I think it could of done with being a bit sharper, I might have a play with some PP and see what can be done.
QUOTE]

As Sarah said, it's an unusual take on the theme, and I think it could do with a sharpen as you've suggested above.

Other than that, I get where you're coming from, and think this is a good shot for the week.

Nicely done!

Ian.
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I've noticed a consistancy in my shots, they aren't "just" that be sharper, they all seem soft and slightly blured. I tried uping the shutter speed, and uping the iso to around 500 to help speed up the frame. But they still end up being slightly blured :(

Any tips, anyone?

Ian, thanks for the crit. I like making the themes a little unusual, makes them more interesting imho. Most of the time, I take pictures that suit the themes, by accident haha,
 
It's a very unusual take, but it does fit. I like it. As for the slight bluriness, is the lens you are using equipped with VR ? If not, then 1/10s is very slow for handholding. Equally, shooting raw you will need to sharpen your images
 
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