Sunflower and Sky

Hello all...I haven't really had anything to post lately. Here's a shot I took the other day when the sky was so clear and blue. We went to check out a sunflower field at Ed Gordon WMA, but the field was kind of weedy and past it's prime. There were, however, a few stragglers that made for some nice individual shots.

Nikon d200...ISO160, f16 ,1/60sec, Hoya Pro Circular Polarizer

Hi Karla. I hesitate to base a critique on what may just be a difference in monitors, but what I'm seeing could use a boost in brightness and contrast. So I've taken the liberty of downloading your image and applying some curves adjustments and sharpening and a little possibly extraneous housekeeping.

Randy..I appreciate the time you took to do that! I checked the image out on 2 different monitors at work, one an older CRT monitor and one a new digital monitor. The CRT monitor did look dark and a little less sharp. The newer monitor, which I work on quite a bit to process images at work looked spot on on my image and looked very light and over sharpened on your image. Basically, it's all relative...If we were all calibrated the same, it would be easier to do these forums, huh? I appreciate your input. It looked great on my computer at home. I value any and all opinions...I would appreciate any input from others if this looks dark or unsharp on the original image on your monitors. It would help me to process for this forum better.

I do see some jpeg artifacting on the image I posted, but I think that may be due to the fact that in the course of processing it I saved it as a jpeg more than once, which is of course a processing no-no. I think you're right, though, that I overdid the sharpening some, now that you've brought my attention to it and I've had a chance to look closer.

I also view CSNP on two monitors, and they also do not display the images posted here identically. They are close enough, however, that this image looks dark and lacking in contrast on both. And by the way, one is a CRT monitor and the other is an LCD monitor.

But I think you've confirmed that it was right to be hesitant about basing a critique on what may be just a difference in monitors, and that perhaps I should have been hesitant enough that I didn't.

Still, as others comment, maybe we can get some insight into what everyone is seeing when they look at images here. If there were a way to separate out personal preferences, we might find that we're all over the place in terms of how our montitors display these photos.

Ah, it's probably just that I wanted the picture to look like what I expect a sunflower to look like, and your photo looks like what you saw at that time and place. So, the approach I took no doubt wasn't a legitimate way to critique the image.

If you could split the difference between the two, it would work for me. Randy's is to bright on my LCD and Karla's (sorry dear) is a little muddy. The pic turned out pretty good for what we had to go thru to get the image. This field was to be plowed under the next day, and the field was full of weeds. This was about the only perfect single stem of flowers left in the field. Our dream of the perfect sunflower field goes on!

Here at home Randy's looks better but maybe a little to bright. I like Randy's but the stem looks to bright. Karla I checked yours and your histogram is loaded up on the left side. I did some stem work on Randy's image and slightly darkened it. Very slightly. You will have to ignore artifacts at this point web to jpeg then back to web then back to jpeg and back to web again.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2556/3866167778_a041a46aa3_o.jpg

Mike we had a wonderful field of sunflowers at our place in De Witt a few years back. All planted for dove hunting. I could probably talk my dad into planting again next year for photographic purposes.

I like your version Matthew. All makers of monitors have different black levels and the color is always off a bit. I have broadcast monitors in my satellite truck and even the same brand differ a bit.

I plan to hunt this one at Ed Gordon on opening day. DeWitt is a little too far unless we were too shoot the golden heads in the rice fields too. If he does, let us know.

Hi Karla it a lovely sunflower image, it's a very summer fun kinda shot to me. Thanks for posting.

Her sunflower picture looks great on her computer. Her screen matches her printer screen at work. We compared my Toshiba against her HP and hers looked just fine. Mine seemd muddy.

well even without the sunflowers there is still a lot to shoot down in De Witt. Lots of rice fields and tons of old buildings and broken down farm equipment. The stars are pretty good too with everything being so flat and open. The swamps are pretty nice in the fall too.

I do not have a high end monitor, but I just calibrated...I think the version Matthew worked up looks the best. Karla, I like the perspective you used in the capture.

Karla, do you do printing? Could you contact me at janbullard@yahoo.com. Thanks Janet

Thanks to everyone for the comments. My screen is calibrated and I checked it to make sure. I am going to try some different things with it and see what I can come up with. For those of you interested, here is a great test for your screen from Dry Creek Photo:

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm