Sarah's 52 for 2010 - Pt2 - THE END - Final reshoots added

I'm with Darren on this one Sarah.

The last two look like they are kissing. The first seems to fit so much better even though I'm sure it's the same figure :thinking:

Highlights on the arm are a touch blown but doesn't detract too much.

Andy
 
Another vote for #1 here Sarah. It conveys the theme more than the others. It looks as if it would be a difficult subject to light and you have handled the light well. My only critique is that it looks like the mans elbow has been clipped, but thats just minor.
Well done on keeping up....apart from rage :cautious: :LOL:
I hope things quieten down for you. Iain
 
I like the positioning of the subject best in the first, but I prefer your lighting and processing in the third. Well done for taking on such a tricky subject to light!

Phil
 
I, too, prefer the first one, Sarah. It took me a while to make out what exactly it was, but it very definitely fits the theme. I think I would have preferred a tiny bit more DOF. The hair on the top of her head does not look sharp and I think I would have preferred that bit to be completely in focus.

I know the lighting would have been really tricky and I think you have done a good job on it. I like the colours, too.

Well done with a lousy theme.

Jenny
 
Another vote for #1 Sarah, the others, as Darren said, says less Console, and more Snog...
 
justlooking said:
I like the first one best, I can make out the figures the best in that one.

I am finding the 52 really hard work at the moment too - glad you are managing to keep going.

Fingers crossed this weeks theme is a bit easier.
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Thanks JL - A lot going on at the moment, and I'm finding it hard to get inspired the recent themes. Onwards and upwards though!

dlh said:
I'm afraid the second (and therefore third) makes it look like they're snogging rather than consoling. Although I guess there might be some consoling in a good snog. I'm afraid the texture on the third isn't doing a lot for me either I'm afraid, it just seems out of place.

The first is the best of the bunch. The flash is a little harsh particularly on the arms though. A tripod and some natural diffused light might have helped control this a bit and allowed you to bring some crispness to the detail.
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Thanks Darren.
You're right about the flash, and I have no excuse other than laziness.
I could see that it needed softer lighting, but really didn't have the time or motivation to faff about with a tripod :confused::

daddy day care said:
I'm with Darren on this one Sarah.

The last two look like they are kissing. The first seems to fit so much better even though I'm sure it's the same figure :thinking:

Highlights on the arm are a touch blown but doesn't detract too much.

Andy
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Thanks Andy.
They are indeed the same figure from different angles.

blakester said:
Another vote for #1 here Sarah. It conveys the theme more than the others. It looks as if it would be a difficult subject to light and you have handled the light well. My only critique is that it looks like the mans elbow has been clipped, but thats just minor.
Well done on keeping up....apart from rage :cautious: :LOL:
I hope things quieten down for you. Iain
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Thanks Iain. Hoping not to have too many more weeks working away and then things will be back to normal . . . for a while anyway!
 
philthejuggler said:
I like the positioning of the subject best in the first, but I prefer your lighting and processing in the third. Well done for taking on such a tricky subject to light!

Phil
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Thanks Phil.
Unfortunately it wasn't a deliberate choice to choose something so tricky. I was short on time and I stupidly thought that this would be an easy option ! :LOL:

jennyb said:
I, too, prefer the first one, Sarah. It took me a while to make out what exactly it was, but it very definitely fits the theme. I think I would have preferred a tiny bit more DOF. The hair on the top of her head does not look sharp and I think I would have preferred that bit to be completely in focus.

I know the lighting would have been really tricky and I think you have done a good job on it. I like the colours, too.

Well done with a lousy theme.

Jenny
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Thanks Jenny.
It really was ANOTHER lousy theme. I'm not sure that more DoF would have helped much. The hair on top of her head is really doesn't have as much definition as the rest of the ornament. But at least we have something better out of the bag for this week.

clud17 said:
love the first shot Sarah, you have got the best angle here as pointed out by others on the second two. I like it against black but i feel it needs warming up a touch to give it a softer feel.
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Thanks Chris.
I may very well revisit this theme and if I use the same subject try for a warmer feel.

jgs001 said:
Another vote for #1 Sarah, the others, as Darren said, says less Console, and more Snog...
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Thank you John
BTW what have you all got against snogging? ;) :LOL:
 
I like the first one best as it is the clearest - you have controlled the reflections well here. I the second one it took me a long time to work out what was going on, maybe because the OOF hair on the girl attracts too much attention. The colours on the third are quite fun but for me the texture only confuses the image even more.
 
Your first shot for Console is the winner for me Sarah. I like the way you have lit this.
 
Been an absolute manic few weeks, so apologies to everyone for getting so behind with their threads.
Thank you to everyone whose comments I missed on console too - I've been deliberately staying out of this part of the forum until I got myself back on track.

Anyway, three this week to bring me almost up to date. I'm just missing rage - and would like to reshoot console with a bit more time to get the lighting right.

Please be patient with me. I think it's going to take me most of next week to get round everybody else's thread and catch up with commenting. Hopefully back to normal by next weekend though.


Week 41 - Distant


I don't have much to say about this one, but I hope the relationship to the theme speaks for itself.
It's a very simple shot, but there's something about it that I quite like.

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Week 42 - Secret


Secrets of the heart. I knew what I wanted to shoot as soon as I saw this theme.
This is my first proper attempt at shooting jewelery. I've always been put off in the past by people saying how difficult jewelery is to light and shoot . . . and they're not wrong!

I think it's OK for a first go, but I could do with some more practice and would change a few things next time.
Not sure whether the reflective surface was the right choice - I like it beneath the locket, but not really convinced by the reflections under the chain.
Positioning the chain was a nightmare in itself and it's probably still not quite right and the locket itself is a bit scratched and dusty which isn't ideal.

​


Week 43 : Urban

Absolutely hated this theme and I'm not much taken with the shot either :LOL:
But this was my third attempt at trying something and at least it came out better than the first 2 ideas.

Has anyone else noticed how computer circuit boards resemble cityscapes in miniature?
This was the idea behind it anyway. The b/g was a piece of red paper, backlit with a torch. The clouds / smoke were a bit of an accident. Some marks on the paper didn't show up until I'd loaded to the lappy, so I decided to enhance them in PP and make them a feature rather than reshoot.



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Hi Sarah - great to have you back! :wave: Hope your life will be less hectic for a bit.

Distant: Lovely simple composition and colours (y). I feel that the ?blackbird is a little oversharpened, though, as there are quite visible halos. I always sharpen on a duplicate layer, and if necessary add a layer mask, then tone down the halos with a small soft brush at about 50%.

The sky also shows up a dust bunny about 2cm down from the top, slightly left of centre. I plucked up courage a little while ago and cleaned my sensor with a blower and a Sensorklear pen - less scary than a wet swab and did the job beautifully.

Secret: A good interpretation of the theme and well done with the exposure! Like you I am not quite sure about positioning of the chain and the reflection, but generally I like the image a lot.

Urban: Clever - they do look like miniature cityscapes. The backdrop is quite clever but there are also some strange artefacts that I find quite disturbing.

It's a clever idea and worth pursuing - if you can bear to. :D
 
well done for catching up. Hope things have calmed down a bit.

Secret - not sure about the relection of the locket. I really like the gold against the black.

Urban - that's clever. It does look a bit like buildings. Factories and silos :)
 
Tracer said:
Hi Sarah - great to have you back! :wave: Hope your life will be less hectic for a bit.

Distant: Lovely simple composition and colours (y). I feel that the ?blackbird is a little oversharpened, though, as there are quite visible halos. I always sharpen on a duplicate layer, and if necessary add a layer mask, then tone down the halos with a small soft brush at about 50%.

The sky also shows up a dust bunny about 2cm down from the top, slightly left of centre. I plucked up courage a little while ago and cleaned my sensor with a blower and a Sensorklear pen - less scary than a wet swab and did the job beautifully.

Secret: A good interpretation of the theme and well done with the exposure! Like you I am not quite sure about positioning of the chain and the reflection, but generally I like the image a lot.

Urban: Clever - they do look like miniature cityscapes. The backdrop is quite clever but there are also some strange artefacts that I find quite disturbing.

It's a clever idea and worth pursuing - if you can bear to. :D
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Thanks for the catch up Tracer - it's good to be back. I'm surprised how much I've missed this the last couple of weeks.

Re: Distant. I think the issue here is with the noise reduction software. For some reason, blue skies always seem to show up quite a bit of noise, even at a low ISO and I noticed the haloing last time I used Noise Ninja too.
I always do the same as you with layers for sharpening & noise reduction, but this time it was a bit of a balance between reducing the haloes and keeping the noise down.

Out of interest, I notice that you used noise reduction in your distant shot - what software did you use, because it seems to have worked perfectly?

Thank you spotting the dust bunny too. I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out.
Will take a look at it this weekend - I'd like to hope that it was a speck on the lens not the sensor, but I doubt that I'll be that lucky :LOL:


justlooking said:
well done for catching up. Hope things have calmed down a bit.

Secret - not sure about the relection of the locket. I really like the gold against the black.

Urban - that's clever. It does look a bit like buildings. Factories and silos :)
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Thanks JL.
Things are a lot calmer now. I just hope that I can keep this up for the final 9 weeks!
 
SarahLee said:
Out of interest, I notice that you used noise reduction in your distant shot - what software did you use, because it seems to have worked perfectly?
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I used Noiseware Community Edition - it is free but has some limitations, e.g. it doesn't plug into PS and you can only save as a slightly less than full res. JPEG. The default settings were a bit too strong so I played around with the custom ones, though not really understanding it, until I was happy.

I'll probably buy the full version sometime as it is a fairly reasonable price, but I so rarely need NR that I haven't got around to it yet.

HTH
 
First, good to see you back, you were missed ;)

Second the images,
SECRET: Nice simple idea, only issue to my eye is the locket itself needs a touch more light, especially on the top of it.

URBAN: very clever thinking, kinda works - I wonder if the backdrop was a actual cityscape and you merged the two images?
 
Welcome back Sarah, and good job on catching up.

Distant... it's clearly distant, and love the colours in the clouds which sets of the birdy nicely.

Secret, well done, getting small shiny things right is a toughy, it looks good here. I think I agree with you about the chain, but I've no clue how to sort it.

Urban, clever, great idea, and well shot... I like the background you have here.
 
Well done on catching up Sarah.

Distant: Nice. I do like the silhouette of the bird on the tree. Reminds me of a (very) distant late summer evening.

Secret: Again, lovely shot. What did you photograph this on. I've used a mirror or a piece of thin glass with black material in the past. Both have worked quite well. Have you tried selective desaturation as well. Turn down the reds, blues and greens. It seems to come up more 'golden'

Urban: I've been meaning to try something like this - didn't even occur to me for Urban :bang: I'm not too convinced by the 'smoke' though.
 
dade_f said:
First, good to see you back, you were missed ;)

Second the images,
SECRET: Nice simple idea, only issue to my eye is the locket itself needs a touch more light, especially on the top of it.

URBAN: very clever thinking, kinda works - I wonder if the backdrop was a actual cityscape and you merged the two images?
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Thank you Dade!
Was a bit of a rush to get those in, but hopefully back on track now and I can always go back and revisit them later.

jgs001 said:
Welcome back Sarah, and good job on catching up.

Distant... it's clearly distant, and love the colours in the clouds which sets of the birdy nicely.

Secret, well done, getting small shiny things right is a toughy, it looks good here. I think I agree with you about the chain, but I've no clue how to sort it.

Urban, clever, great idea, and well shot... I like the background you have here.
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Thanks John.

holryn said:
Well done on catching up Sarah.

Distant: Nice. I do like the silhouette of the bird on the tree. Reminds me of a (very) distant late summer evening.

Secret: Again, lovely shot. What did you photograph this on. I've used a mirror or a piece of thin glass with black material in the past. Both have worked quite well. Have you tried selective desaturation as well. Turn down the reds, blues and greens. It seems to come up more 'golden'

Urban: I've been meaning to try something like this - didn't even occur to me for Urban :bang: I'm not too convinced by the 'smoke' though.
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Thanks Paul. Secret was shot on a piece of black perspex - I really like the idea of selective desaturation. I'll have to give that a go.

:LOL: Maybe I'll have to try that "smoke" again.
Not surprising it wasn't convincing. It started out life as a smudge on the paper.
 
Well I thought this one would be easy. Our village station is just 5 mins walk up the road and if I couldn't get anything interesting there, I thought I'd walk up through the woodland, where you can get pretty close to the track.

Two things I didn't bargain for though :

- I forgot that yesterday was Sunday and we only get a train every few hours :bonk:
- They've increased the height of the fence in the woods to 8 foot - so no peering of the top of it for the view of the track sweeping up to the bridge that I'd planned. I had to get right up to the mesh and "poke" the lens through for the shot I did get.

Making the best of a bad situation, I took the chance to try out something I've been wanting to do for a while and have a go at "aging" a photograph.

On the positive side, I reckon that this particular vantage point has got some mileage in it if I go back on a day when trains are running to get a shot of the wheels whizzing past . . . but for now this will have to do.



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Its interesting to hear the story behind this one. Sometimes things just dont work out. At least you have managed to age the photo nicely and it is a picture of a train that didnt arrive- so no crowbar needed.:)
 
I like the aging .. it isn't over done. I know what you mean about trying to get a vantage point it is suprisingly difficult.
 
Seems like an age since i commented on one of your shots Sarah:LOL: you have done well to catch up. :clap:

I think urban is a fantastic idea the circuit you chose is perfect and it looks amazingly like a city. Although it was an accident the backdrop fits in well.
Secret, good idea, great composition although id be tempted with a closer crop.
Distant, great capture, i can almost hear him chirping away now.
Train, the best of the catch up for me despite you thinking it was a bad situation, the ageing works very well with this shot.
 
Hi Sarah, catching up on your catch-up!

Distant: Good take on the theme and very frustrating that birds usually stay distant when you are trying to take photos of them.

Secret: Excellent take on the theme and I quite like the image but I think a bit of rearranging and some slightly better lighting would improve it a lot. Definitely worth another try at that one.

Urban: Another clever idea but I would have preferred the "bits" (for want of a better word) at the front to be more sharply in focus.

Trains: I really like this one and the aging treatment works very well. It looks so old, in fact, it could be one of Dr Beeching's, but you are too young to remember that!

Jenny
 
Bad luck about missing the train but you have got an appealing shot out of it. Your ageing treatment is really good and makes for a poignant image.
 
Shame about missing the train, but you know, that aged shot works really well... nice bit of PP.
 
I like the 'ageing' PP on this Sarah, but I'm afraid the composition doesn't do anything for me.
 
This week I'm going to share with you my reason for taking up an interest in photography. It was a desire to get a decent enough shot from one of my other hobbies.


Life in a shoal

This is a a shoal of Tiger Barbs (Puntius tetrazona) or technically only part of the shoal.
A very misunderstood fish with a reputation for aggression and in particular for nipping at the fins of other fish. It's one of my favourite species in the big tank. They are very social fish with a strict hierarchy within the shoal, which makes for fascinating viewing.
Generally the aggression to other fish only occurs if they're kept in insufficient numbers to be able to form a proper social group and their behaviour spills over to other fish in the tank . . . who obviously don't conform to the Tiger Barbs' social rules.

So where does "share" come in?
Life for a shoaling fish is all about sharing. Part of the reason for shoaling behaviour is safety in numbers, by sharing the risk from predators across the group, each individual has a greater chance of survival than if they were singled out and alone.
The downside to this is that they also have to share food sources, territories and mates. This is where the social hierarchy is important. To stop it becoming a free for all, there's a distinct pecking order within the shoal with the dominant fish having first choice of food and breeding rights.


This is the only shot I managed to get of some TBs swimming together. All my other attempts either had them facing the wrong way or so jumbled on top of one another that it looked a mess.
I quite liked the almost 3D feeling of depth in this one, despite all the obvious flaws.

:muted: I know that this is a bit of a crowbar, but I've spent most of the weekend overhauling the fish tank and then faffing about with photos of the fish. There are some more in "General Photo Sharing" if anyone's interested.

I'm not going to apologise for it though. I really wanted to get a fish photograph into this year's 52.
I had a shot in mind for share that I didn't get around to -so I'll probably add that next week and given the TB's reputation I'll rename one of the fish shots to "rage".


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Interesting backgound to the photo - thank you for sharing ! Your fish do look three D . I like the way the tip of fins and nose(?) are really bright against the dark background.
 
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Great picture Sarah and no need to get out the crow bar as it fits the theme perfectly. The write up is facinating, as i said in the other post i had some of these myself but never knew of the shoals functioning within the environment. This explains a few things now. Is the Alpha male(???) in this shot.

I like the dof you have created here and puts the breadth of the tank in perspective. This also works well with the darkness of the water in the distance which makes me think they could almost be in their natural inhabitance. Great colours on the fish and nice sharpness makes this an excellent picture(y):clap::clap::clap:
 
Its really interesting to hear about your other hobby Sarah and I'm glad you have been able to show us a picture of your fish.The lighting is lovely- the way the plant is lit up and the orange bits on the fish. The story of them having to share links it in with the theme nicly.
 
justlooking said:
Interesting backgound to the photo - thank you for sharing ! Your fish do look three D . I like the way the tip of fins and nose(?) are really bright against the dark background.
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Thanks JL. That's the thing I most love about Tiger Barbs - the bright red fins and noses.

clud17 said:
Great picture Sarah and no need to get out the crow bar as it fits the theme perfectly. The write up is facinating, as i said in the other post i had some of these myself but never knew of the shoals functioning within the environment. This explains a few things now. Is the Alpha male(???) in this shot.

I like the dof you have created here and puts the breadth of the tank in perspective. This also works well with the darkness of the water in the distance which makes me think they could almost be in their natural inhabitance. Great colours on the fish and nice sharpness makes this an excellent picture(y):clap::clap::clap:
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Thank you Chris.
Just seen your reply in the other thread. Much appreciated (y)
I'm glad that you like them so much. I think that black backdrops really do work well in fish tanks, but the feeling of depth and space is also helped by the fact that the tank is a 6 footer :LOL:

The fish at the top of the shot is the alpha female. Not as colourful as the males and she's ready to drop eggs any time soon as you can see by her bloated abdomen. That's also the reason that the males are really coloured up and displaying so nicely at the moment. They all want her attention, but won't go up against the alpha male. He's the fish at the bottom with his back to us. Shame I didn't get him facing camera because his colours are a bit more intense than the others.
 
Sarah - I fell off with my 52 (though i'm gonna start again next year) so havent been checking these threads - I saw you on a different thread, and remembered how much I loved your 52 and how much it inspired me - so came to have a look, and am very glad I did! I've looked through from the beginning of this thread - and all i can say is wow! I loved the tutorial you linked to for the Matrix background - so have had a play with that. Thanks :)

I love your insect photographs - and can't believe they've been done with a kit lens - will have to have a go myself!

I will comment on the barbs - cos that was the last one you did - and again 'wow'! I love the colours here against the black background!

I think you should be very proud of yourself this year - some outstanding photography!
 
Lovely photograph Sarah, interesting background story too, TP just isn't for learning about photography;).
As has been said above, the image has a 3D feel to it, the fish being at different depths and distance in the tank give depth to the photograph. I have never photographed fish before but can imagine what difficulties this may bring. I think you have done a fantastic job. I don't have any critique to add, I like this image a lot, there's nothing I would change. Iain
 
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