Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: petermacc on October 28, 2008, 10:28:49 am

Title: My first print
Post by: petermacc on October 28, 2008, 10:28:49 am: I just sold my first photograph and wanted to get opinions on it. How to improve from here.
Title: My first print
Post by: petermacc on October 31, 2008, 01:11:45 pm: Quote from: petermacc
I just sold my first photograph and wanted to get opinions on it. How to improve from here.

Is it possible to get some feedback on the photo? I would like to improve.
Title: My first print
Post by: joergen geerds on October 31, 2008, 02:09:38 pm: Quote from: petermacc
Is it possible to get some feedback on the photo? I would like to improve.

It is sometimes not easy to get feedback (here). This is a nice panorama, nice reflections.

What I would criticize are technicalities: the sky is too grey, as if you used highlight recovery to bring back those highlights. A sunset like this would never ever be grey. The other small thing that I would change are the purple halos around the lights, and the flares from the lights on the right.

other than that, congratulations for selling something.
Title: My first print
Post by: feppe on October 31, 2008, 02:38:56 pm: That is a beautiful shot, I love the colors. I also do quite a bit of low-light photography and appreciate how hard it is to get as gorgeous shots as what you posted!

I agree with Joergen on the highlights. Long exposures are very difficult to get right with just one exposure. I have had very good experience with some extreme bracketing (eg. 0.5 secs, 10 secs, 30 secs), and combining the results later with TuFuse. (I have a current example on my site under Panoramas, and another one coming soon.)

The key is to get at least two exposures: one exposed for the harsh highlights, another one for general exposure. I generally try to add another bracket, overexposed by four stops to get noise-free shadows. Guillermo Luijk has an excellent article (and a program) he posted on this forum and below:

http://www.guillermoluijk.com/article/nonoise/index_en.htm (http://www.guillermoluijk.com/article/nonoise/index_en.htm)

Yes, this is a lot of work when shooting and in post, but the results speak for themselves!
Title: My first print
Post by: petermacc on October 31, 2008, 04:55:00 pm: Quote from: feppe
That is a beautiful shot, I love the colors. I also do quite a bit of low-light photography and appreciate how hard it is to get as gorgeous shots as what you posted!

I agree with Joergen on the highlights. Long exposures are very difficult to get right with just one exposure. I have had very good experience with some extreme bracketing (eg. 0.5 secs, 10 secs, 30 secs), and combining the results later with TuFuse. (I have a current example on my site under Panoramas, and another one coming soon.)

Feppe. I know what you mean. If I could have gotten a monopod out I would! That evening was tough to get photos in the same place that long. This might give you a bit of info on the photograph. The photo was created from two photographs that were taken handheld, then stitched together with a manual focus in manual mode with a D300 with a ZF 35mm lens. I felt that the halos around the lights were permissible due to the amount of purple in that evening's sunset. I am not sure why he was saying the sky looked grey on his screen. The photo was taken facing into the west as clouds were rolling up behind us so that is what was keeping it darker as the sun had gone down behind those buildings. To verify on the color I re-calibrated my monitor with color-eyes and it has not deviated from the the last calibration. I did shrink the size of the image down and did a ProPhoto to sRGB conversion in Photoshop so I am not sure why the colors might not be the same on his screen
Title: My first print
Post by: feppe on October 31, 2008, 07:41:40 pm: I think the "grayness" he's seeing is in the highlights in the sky. It seems like there is a shift to the gray end of the spectrum in the highlights. The sky highlights do look a bit flatter in the sky than in the reflection, but that could be an optical illusion - I didn't open it up in PS.
Title: My first print
Post by: petermacc on October 31, 2008, 10:02:33 pm: Quote from: feppe
I think the "grayness" he's seeing is in the highlights in the sky. It seems like there is a shift to the gray end of the spectrum in the highlights. The sky highlights do look a bit flatter in the sky than in the reflection, but that could be an optical illusion - I didn't open it up in PS.
Feppe, be happy to send you a png file at full size for photoshop if you want.
Title: My first print
Post by: feppe on November 01, 2008, 06:52:19 am: Quote from: petermacc
Feppe, be happy to send you a png file at full size for photoshop if you want.

Don't think that's necessary. Play around with saturation until you get result that pleases you - you can't please all people all the time!
Title: My first print
Post by: joergen geerds on November 03, 2008, 10:06:45 am: Hi petermacc,

I was just trying to give you constructive critique on your nice photo, and I am sorry that I did see things in your photo that you didn't see.

good luck with your photography