Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 12, 2009 at 11:04 AM
Alright, my camera acted a little funny that day, but this photo caught my eye. I used the tree to the right kind of as a frame, I used my wide angle/fish eye lens. I do not consider it my best shot, but I thought it was pretty descent, tell me what you think? Should I make it smaller for the web, I changed the quality and the size to between 700 and 800, and you can tell the leaves on the ground aren't in focus, the large rocks are probably the only thing in focus. Any comments are welcome, like I said I don't consider this a master peice.
Posted by Toni Lankerd on November 12, 2009 at 12:40 PM
Andrea...for starters, I would suggest you repost and downsize the image at no larger than 720 pixels at the longest side, according to the posting guidelines on this forum. At the size you posted this image, I'm sure you had to compress it quite a bit, which doesn't help image quality.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 12, 2009 at 2:33 PM
I noticed that, I'll see what will happen with it.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 12, 2009 at 2:36 PM
If this doesn't look better, I'm going to delete it from here.
Okay, I could probably make it smaller. But like I said, I wasn't having the best of luck with my camera (the lens I was using), it is the factory lens and the wide angle was bought off ebay for cheap so I can't garantee that they're superior. But it isn't all the lens' fault either, mine too. But for some reason I like this photo, the warm color draws me in even though the sun is right there in the top, I'm half tempted to crop it out, but you can see that weird looking flare right above the leaves were it starts going down hill. To me, it was a nice cozy little spot to just sit and think for a while, lots of places to hide (though I could show you thousands of those at Garden of the Gods). I'd like for the piece of tree you see framing there to be a little lighter, more detail but I've just begun figuring out my camera and it's quirks. There's much more I would've wished differently about this photo.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 12, 2009 at 2:58 PM
Alright, I cropped out the sun, in my opinion it looks a little better without that blinding ball of fire and in my photoshop I can see the detail of the tree (the first one). Take a look and if anyone has any thoughts or dislikes (other than the whole thing ) let me know what else I can do, I'll keep messing with it though.
First off, I really like the composition. It's not too crowded and it ties everything together pretty well. That said, for whatever reason the image is very soft. I'm not sure what the issue is...maybe posting some test shots in some neutral lighting so we can check things out would be helpful, but that's up to you.
The other key issue with this shot is the huge contrast in it. Shooting scenes in the forest when its sunny is very difficult, especially if you're shooting into the sun while it's still fairly high like you are here. The result is you lose a lot of detail, especially compared to what you saw. My advice for that would be to come back at different times and under different conditions. A few hours and a few clouds can make a world of difference.
Don't let any of my suggestions bother you or anything. From my humble point of view you have a great eye for composition- there's just a couple of issues impacting the quality that I think you can pretty easily fix
Posted by Philip Schwarz on November 12, 2009 at 5:34 PM
Andrea
IMO you picked a hard shot to work with. It is definitely a shot I would have tried to take. I would have probably tried some of the things noted below and would have ended up with a lot of shots to work with.
If you were going to try to get the sun and the suns rays you would need to use a high f-stop and try to block out more of the sun with some object.
You have a high dynamic range in the photo with shade and bright light. You could have tried multiple photos with different exposures and then blend them or use a HDR program. In this case the sky doesn’t look all that interesting but it is hard to tell.
Assuming the ski wasn’t worth keeping I would have probably taken the shot but excluded the sky in the photo. You probably could have gotten everything in focus and it might have reduced the dynamic range of the photo. This is a shot
I recently took in a somewhat similar situation. I would have liked to include the sky but it was too bland and didn’t add enough to the photo so I didn’t include it in the composition.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 12, 2009 at 5:52 PM
You both have said a lot, I completely agree which is why I want to go back there as soon as possible, I probably would have thought of those thing if I hadn't been with 3 other people and being distracted but there are no room for excuses. Some of my photos do show some softness from that day, for the past week I've been taking action shots of my dog and other dogs at the dog park and have been using the auto focus (helps a lot when they're running towards you) and the sharpness is great. Maybe I could upload one for example. Or maybe I'll try and copy the link and see if you can go from here to there.
This first one is my dog Molly.
There's always room for excuses, especially if you're creative I know what you mean about photographing with other people. Normally I find it very hard to do on more than a documentary level, so I tend to just relax and enjoy the company when I'm with others and just put photography on the back burner. Otherwise I just get frustrated, and that's never a good thing...
Did you use manual focus for the shot? If the AF is fine it might just be an issue with your manual focusing.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see any of your Facebook photos- might be a privacy setting issue. Other photo hosting sites that don't include personal information are Flickr and Photobucket, if you don't feel like changing your Facebook privacy settings.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 13, 2009 at 10:26 AM
I thought I had it public view? Well my flickr page has a few of them, but they're in sets; I use Facebook because I want to advertise my best photos to the public, I'll see what's going on and if I can change it and then let you know......................okay I fixed it, so you should be able to go on there now.
For this photo I used manual focus, while during action and even the past week I have been using auto focus now that I know how wonderful it can be. I'm better off trying to take photos alone than have people with me, except my husband is of great use, he certainly has an eye for things and usually points them out when I can see them.
Plenty of good advice, particularly discussion of the light on the scene.
As far as the softness goes...was this handheld or shot off a tripod? If the former, what was the shutter speed?
I completely agree with what's been said about doing anything more than snapshooting when accompanied by others--particularly if they're not serious about photographing. Sometimes, even if they are serious about photography, if their workflow in the field is sufficiently different than yours (e.g. they work much faster or slower than you do, etc.), it's difficult to accomplish much.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM
With this one I believe the shutter speed was......wow I think it basically was f/9.0 and 1/80 and the ISO was 100. Maybe that was why it seemed so bright? I just wish I had more time to spend with my camera than I do.
Posted by Tim Mulholland on November 14, 2009 at 7:45 PM
Andrea,
I've looked at your photograph several times over the past couple of days or so, as I wanted to feel how this photograph felt with some krausening... (figuratively, not literally) ;)
Frankly, I don't feel that you have to apologize or feel badly about this shot. As others have said, the composition is very good - the photograph screams fall, sunlight, warmth, wilderness, outdoors, etc. Technically, yeah, the lighting is not that good, but that's life.
Photography, like a lot of things in life, is an issue of trade-offs. In this setting you chose composition as a primary attribute, some colors, etc., and then let the lighting fall where it may. And, that's what happens with a lot of nature photography - you don't have a lot of choice or flexibility with the light. You're there, in this particular moment, and you either have to press the shutter or not. Yes, you may be able to pull more detail out of the shadows with an HDR technique and some other tools, but I don't know that you're going to make the photograph a whole lot better. If you put too much detail into the shadows of this photograph, then I feel that you'll lose some of the primary "feeling" in this photograph - I feel that I'd be drawn into the shadow detail and I want to be enjoying the sun.
Basically, this photograph makes me want to go outdoors, hear the crunching of dry, fall leaves under my feet, and soak up some of the last nice sun of the calendar year, and that's a pretty good thing!!! A well-executed photograph either tells a story, helps to emote a feeling or both. And, this one does both for me - it tells me that you went out for a hike, likely had a great time yourself, and that I'd like to be in a similar place (particularly in about eight more weeks)...
I think--and this is certainly a matter of opinion and should be treated as such--that the relevant question is:
Are you, Andrea, satisfied with the image you posted, in emotional, aesthetic and technical terms? Is it conveying what you want it to convey? If so, I submit, it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, because we're basically imposing our own sense of what we like or don't like on your image.
If you're not satisfied, I think the relevant initial question is, why not? What about the image is unsatisfactory from your perspective? Underlying questions related to all of this include, what about the scene moved you to take the image in the first place? What are you trying to convey to the viewer?
If you can answer those questions, we can each, I think, tell you whether you succeeded, in our opinion. Doesn't make us right, or wrong. And, depending on what your final goal is with the image, I still think it's worth asking whether it really matters whether each one of us thinks you succeeded or not. I suspect that the best we can do is--with our own endemic biases guiding the way as always--tell you what we think you could do to better fulfill your goal. When it comes to matters of dissatisfaction with technical aspects of the image, we can probably help--perhaps a great deal. As any discussion meanders into emotional/aesthetic matters...well, I'm far less sanguine that a natural lapse into the subjective can be all that useful in your discovery of your personal vision.
As you can probably tell, I'm struggling these days with the notion of the perceived worth of image critique in the context it typically exists on the Web. And, as always, take all of what I've written here with a huge grain of salt.
Posted by Andrea Hadley on November 15, 2009 at 1:52 PM
Thank you both for your opinions and advice, this photo does speak to me, the sight of it hollered at me the moment I turned my head and saw down that little...ravine or "passageway" between large ancient rocks, and my body or soul demanded to freeze it in time and have it with me as a memory in a photo. Looking back at the photo, it still says the same as the actual image did when I saw it, the cropped one without the sun speaks a little more, the sun makes me feel like I'm out in the open, or I can be seen by others, while this passageway spoke more of privacy and a safe haven to people and animals who needed it. So yes, I'd say that I do enjoy this photo, and besides the slight dissatisfaction of the light, I am quite proud of the composition and that the photo did come out pretty close to the way I saw this image through my own eyes and it still makes me feel the same looking at it as I did when I was there myself.
Discussion
14 repliesposting guidelines on this forum. At the size you posted this image, I'm sure you had to compress it quite a bit, which doesn't help image quality.
Okay, I could probably make it smaller. But like I said, I wasn't having the best of luck with my camera (the lens I was using), it is the factory lens and the wide angle was bought off ebay for cheap so I can't garantee that they're superior. But it isn't all the lens' fault either, mine too. But for some reason I like this photo, the warm color draws me in even though the sun is right there in the top, I'm half tempted to crop it out, but you can see that weird looking flare right above the leaves were it starts going down hill. To me, it was a nice cozy little spot to just sit and think for a while, lots of places to hide (though I could show you thousands of those at Garden of the Gods). I'd like for the piece of tree you see framing there to be a little lighter, more detail but I've just begun figuring out my camera and it's quirks. There's much more I would've wished differently about this photo.
The other key issue with this shot is the huge contrast in it. Shooting scenes in the forest when its sunny is very difficult, especially if you're shooting into the sun while it's still fairly high like you are here. The result is you lose a lot of detail, especially compared to what you saw. My advice for that would be to come back at different times and under different conditions. A few hours and a few clouds can make a world of difference.
Don't let any of my suggestions bother you or anything. From my humble point of view you have a great eye for composition- there's just a couple of issues impacting the quality that I think you can pretty easily fix
IMO you picked a hard shot to work with. It is definitely a shot I would have tried to take. I would have probably tried some of the things noted below and would have ended up with a lot of shots to work with.
If you were going to try to get the sun and the suns rays you would need to use a high f-stop and try to block out more of the sun with some object.
You have a high dynamic range in the photo with shade and bright light. You could have tried multiple photos with different exposures and then blend them or use a HDR program. In this case the sky doesn’t look all that interesting but it is hard to tell.
Assuming the ski wasn’t worth keeping I would have probably taken the shot but excluded the sky in the photo. You probably could have gotten everything in focus and it might have reduced the dynamic range of the photo. This is a shot
I recently took in a somewhat similar situation. I would have liked to include the sky but it was too bland and didn’t add enough to the photo so I didn’t include it in the composition.
This first one is my dog Molly.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=486808&id=1631280978
Another one of her, I did crop the photos, she was about 300mm from me (my lens were at the farthest they could go) in each photo.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=486807&id=1631280978&fbid=1190098805901
This one isn't of a dog, it is of two daddy long legs fighting or mating and was at Indian Point.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=493724&id=1631280978
Did you use manual focus for the shot? If the AF is fine it might just be an issue with your manual focusing.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't see any of your Facebook photos- might be a privacy setting issue. Other photo hosting sites that don't include personal information are Flickr and Photobucket, if you don't feel like changing your Facebook privacy settings.
For this photo I used manual focus, while during action and even the past week I have been using auto focus now that I know how wonderful it can be. I'm better off trying to take photos alone than have people with me, except my husband is of great use, he certainly has an eye for things and usually points them out when I can see them.
As far as the softness goes...was this handheld or shot off a tripod? If the former, what was the shutter speed?
I completely agree with what's been said about doing anything more than snapshooting when accompanied by others--particularly if they're not serious about photographing. Sometimes, even if they are serious about photography, if their workflow in the field is sufficiently different than yours (e.g. they work much faster or slower than you do, etc.), it's difficult to accomplish much.
I've looked at your photograph several times over the past couple of days or so, as I wanted to feel how this photograph felt with some krausening... (figuratively, not literally) ;)
Frankly, I don't feel that you have to apologize or feel badly about this shot. As others have said, the composition is very good - the photograph screams fall, sunlight, warmth, wilderness, outdoors, etc. Technically, yeah, the lighting is not that good, but that's life.
Photography, like a lot of things in life, is an issue of trade-offs. In this setting you chose composition as a primary attribute, some colors, etc., and then let the lighting fall where it may. And, that's what happens with a lot of nature photography - you don't have a lot of choice or flexibility with the light. You're there, in this particular moment, and you either have to press the shutter or not. Yes, you may be able to pull more detail out of the shadows with an HDR technique and some other tools, but I don't know that you're going to make the photograph a whole lot better. If you put too much detail into the shadows of this photograph, then I feel that you'll lose some of the primary "feeling" in this photograph - I feel that I'd be drawn into the shadow detail and I want to be enjoying the sun.
Basically, this photograph makes me want to go outdoors, hear the crunching of dry, fall leaves under my feet, and soak up some of the last nice sun of the calendar year, and that's a pretty good thing!!! A well-executed photograph either tells a story, helps to emote a feeling or both. And, this one does both for me - it tells me that you went out for a hike, likely had a great time yourself, and that I'd like to be in a similar place (particularly in about eight more weeks)...
my $0.02 worth...
Tim!
I think--and this is certainly a matter of opinion and should be treated as such--that the relevant question is:
Are you, Andrea, satisfied with the image you posted, in emotional, aesthetic and technical terms? Is it conveying what you want it to convey? If so, I submit, it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, because we're basically imposing our own sense of what we like or don't like on your image.
If you're not satisfied, I think the relevant initial question is, why not? What about the image is unsatisfactory from your perspective? Underlying questions related to all of this include, what about the scene moved you to take the image in the first place? What are you trying to convey to the viewer?
If you can answer those questions, we can each, I think, tell you whether you succeeded, in our opinion. Doesn't make us right, or wrong. And, depending on what your final goal is with the image, I still think it's worth asking whether it really matters whether each one of us thinks you succeeded or not. I suspect that the best we can do is--with our own endemic biases guiding the way as always--tell you what we think you could do to better fulfill your goal. When it comes to matters of dissatisfaction with technical aspects of the image, we can probably help--perhaps a great deal. As any discussion meanders into emotional/aesthetic matters...well, I'm far less sanguine that a natural lapse into the subjective can be all that useful in your discovery of your personal vision.
As you can probably tell, I'm struggling these days with the notion of the perceived worth of image critique in the context it typically exists on the Web.