Daily Beth's 366

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528
Name
Beth
Edit My Images
Yes
"Do or do not. There is no try!". So I'll do a picture a day till I stop.

Please be gentle with the critique, helpful rather than shoot me down in flames. It's meant to be fun, but learn along the way.

Day 1:
Very dull grey sky, but pulled out some form with luminance-hdr and then overlayed in gimp the original to bring some sanity back.


Tree by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
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Heya! The shot itself is very nice, composition is good, but the HDR hasn't been done too great IMHO, and I'm an HDR fan, tone it down a bit and I reckon you've got a cracking shot!
 
It was a bit marmite wasn't it! I've quickly toned down the garish saturation, and uploaded it to flickr again. Given some more time, must get supper finished!, I think I'd now brighten it a bit.
 
2.
Jessie. I was looking to take a shot of the reeds backlit by the sun, but noticed Jessie sitting beside me. She doesn't like the camera pointed at her but I caught this. I like it a lot, I guess I'm biased!

It's a little soft, not really surprising at f10/iso200 and the bit of reed sticking up from underneath her is slightly distracting. With the thought of keeping it soft I used the raw (ufraw/gimp) only tweaking the curves very slightly to fill the shadow areas without blowing the highlights, and applying very little sharpening. I've tried darkening the stick but I've never really found a good technique that doesn't end up looking odd, so any tips would be welcome.


Jessie by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
Umm, no I don't want to darken the whole shot, just the distracting stick.

I cropped the left hand side a little as I thought there was too much!

I shoot both raw+jpg, so can I choose to take it straight out the camera or play with it in ufraw and gimp (both linux tools - I don't have Windows here).
 
Umm, no I don't want to darken the whole shot, just the distracting stick.

I cropped the left hand side a little as I thought there was too much!

I shoot both raw+jpg, so can I choose to take it straight out the camera or play with it in ufraw and gimp (both linux tools - I don't have Windows here).

I'm not familiar with Gimp, but i assume is has a selection tool akin to a lasso or magic wand: in that case, just use the levels to take the stick down and I'd be tempted to lower the vibrance as well.
 
I quite like the HDR in the first (y) and the colours on the Dog image are very nice but with that one it's a real shame that you've chopped the tail off a little :shrug:

Best of luck in the challenge and I look forward to following your progress (y)

Matt
MWHCVT
 
Damn, I was hoping no-one was going to notice that little bit of tail. I need to remember stuff like that at the time!
 
Thanks Alex. I left the earth in front of the shroom because it seemed to give it some kind of context.

Thanks Tony.
 
4.

Hungry by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr

Really struggled to find something colourful whilst out on my bike that wasn't just a desperate snap. Even deleted this morning's attempts whilst out with the dog as they were just dire. Argh! what have I got myself in to!
 
Thanks Matt! Cropping in closer would, I think, show how mank the IQ is! It wasn't a great snap but I liked the contrast of the horses and the junk closing the gaps in the fencing. I think I know what you mean tho.
 
6. Big walk, and a big image. There's a 10mile loop I do over the local fens, and this is often a picturesque sort of place in good light. So I stopped and played with one of xmas pressies - a Pano-Maxx head.

It's 5 stacks of 3 exposures, stitched and merged in hugin, tonemapped in luminance-hdr, and then tweaked a little in gimp. Final image was just over 10k pixels wide before scaling it for display!


Bottisham lock panorama by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
It's been one of those days. I really should have gone back to bed. I wasn't ready for the world, or the world wasn't ready for me. None of my plans or ideas for the day, or photos, worked out the way I wanted. Then sunday got in the way. So this is it, the best of today.

8.

Swan by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
I've got a thing for autum colours at the moment so I'm really liking shot 7 and also the panoramic. :)
 
Love the swan and wings almost at full stretch. Quite like the shutter speed to show a degree of movement. I'm always hearing about swans capable of breaking a mans arm. Is that a myth? Everybody I have ever spoken too in the birding world has never been able to give me any examples or known any such injury to occur...

Anyway, Keep up the good work and look forward to your images throughout the coming year.
 
Wow! thanks guys. The swan wasn't going to wait for me to faff about with the camera and get the right settings so this was a point-and-shoot from the hip! Someone had left some grain on the bank, so a couple of flaps of those wings and it was up and out.
I don't know about they would break bones, but I wouldn't get in the way that's for sure.
 
I've always been disappointed with my photos of this bridge, from either direction and where ever I stood. So playing with my other photo-related xmas pressie today, I'm rather pleased with this!

It's a little dark, the scaled image came out fractionally darker than my full sized original, but I don't want to lift it as the sky detail then gets lost.


Railway Bridge by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
Thanks Matt. The 10stop certainly makes interesting images so I can see myself playing with it some more soon.
 
From 6 stacks of 3 exposures, but I cropped my shadow from the left hand edge as it was just wrong! and left in the amusing junk on the right hand side. Tried to also process in luminance-hdr but kept getting strange results with lots of noise so gave up. Need to look again at other tools.


Clayhithe Bridge by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr
 
From 6 stacks of 3 exposures, but I cropped my shadow from the left hand edge as it was just wrong! and left in the amusing junk on the right hand side. Tried to also process in luminance-hdr but kept getting strange results with lots of noise so gave up. Need to look again at other tools.


Clayhithe Bridge by Beth at The Hug, on Flickr

I like this, but to me the colors dont seem natural:thinking:, try Dynamic HDR for your tone mapping i find it by far the best software i have used(y)
 
Thanks Darrell. I had a look at Dynamic, but I should have said Linux tools! It might run under wine but that's for another day.

Thanks al! Yeah, currently got a fair number of ideas which I should write down at some point else I'll forget them!
 
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