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Author Topic: Flying Dinasaurs  (Read 4678 times)

Ray

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Flying Dinasaurs
« on: July 23, 2007, 07:41:55 am »

Have I got your attention?

I like to put a distance beteen the taking of the photo and the processing of the photo. I'm way behind in my processing as a result of this. I've still got shots taken 40 years ago which I haven't processed.

The following shots were taken about 4 years ago with my first DSLR, the D60. I'm revisiting them.

I think the following might make an interesting triptych. It was a sunset time of day in Karumba on the north Australian coast. The pelicans (descendants of the dinasaurs) were coming in to roost, or settle down for the night.

Here are the 3 shots.

[attachment=2866:attachment]  [attachment=2867:attachment]  [attachment=2868:attachment]

I received some criticism about the sunset shot. Too much yellow, someone said. I've never seen a sunset like that. It's not natural.
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jani

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« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2007, 12:53:43 pm »

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Have I got your attention?
Yes, the pedant within me awoke, yet again.  

[attachment=2866:attachment]
This one isn't very special, but apparently a good catch nonetheless! I know how difficult it can be to catch a bird on camera, and I seem to recall that the D60 wasn't quite as stellar as the 1D-series are.

[attachment=2867:attachment]
This image makes me dizzy. The people are standing straight compared to the camera, but the beach and the trees are all tilted, waaah! Is the world falling over?

I don't see what the shrubbery in the foreground is needed for, though I can see how it's hard to keep the people in the frame without it.  

But I keep returning to look at the flying dinosaurs. I wonder what makes me do that. There's an undefinable something with this photograph.

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[attachment=2868:attachment]

I received some criticism about the sunset shot. Too much yellow, someone said. I've never seen a sunset like that. It's not natural.

I like the wossnames in the foreground, which forms a warm and soothing image in its own right.

The sunset isn't too yellow, that person needs to get out more. But there is no smoothness to the gradients my eye expects to see there; it appears to be severely blown.
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Jan

Rob C

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Flying Dinasaurs
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2007, 06:53:57 pm »

Ray

I like the first shot of the single bird; the shot with the people I don´t think anything of and the sunset one would have pleased me more without the sky and just the birds with a touch of the ocean. All just personal opinion, mind, and not worth squat as criticism. But then, I don´t think criticism is ever worth anything - it´s just the critic´s way of feeling better/superior/smug within his ego.

Non-pro photography has the great advantage of allowing totally free choice, even if it does pose the greater problem of what to photograph!

Enjoy it.

Ciao - Rob C

AndyF2

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Flying Dinasaurs
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2007, 09:24:39 pm »

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Have I got your attention?
...
I think the following might make an interesting triptych. It was a sunset time of day in Karumba on the north Australian coast. The pelicans (descendants of the dinasaurs) were coming in to roost, or settle down for the night.
It would be quite hard to make a triptych; the sunset shot would be extremely difficult to work into the other two.  The first shot, I can only think of captioning it "if I hold my breath long enough, I can fly".

On to a more complex working of the beach shot.  

There's some potential for an unusual shot, and it would have to be hung near an archway or other curve in a room since it will not be a rectangular mat but could be in a rectangular frame.  Some curve nearby in the room will have to echo the mat's cut.  First cut an elliptical arch from halfway between the people and fronds, following the beach line, and elliminating the greenery.  That's about the only way to remove the fronds from the image.
A complimentary arch is now needed, so cut (mask) from the lower left corner steeply arcing up into the sky, then levelling off and ending just above the upper birds wingtip, or just before that.
The image may need to be cropped in from the right a bit, into the dark region between the evergreen and the yellow tree.
Finally, edit out the woman's satchel.
There would still be a problem with the right of the image ending square after the arcs on the left, for which I haven't figured out a solution.  Maybe an upwards curve to the image is masked upwards to a tip at the right edge.

The feeling from the image should be one person gazing at the prehistoric birds with a hestitation to approach further, the other person averting their eyes or bowing their head, and the birds soaring with an absurd aerodynamic strength that defies time and evolution.

Andy
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Ray

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« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2007, 11:58:22 pm »

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This image makes me dizzy. The people are standing straight compared to the camera, but the beach and the trees are all tilted, waaah! Is the world falling over?

That's a good point, Jani. I guess the reason I didn't re-orient this image in the cropping is because I felt that the feeling of dizziness was reflected in the stance of the lady who seems to be afraid to look up at the encroaching birds in case she gets dizzy, but in fact she's probably just looking down to make sure she's not treading on a sharp shell.

Is this better?  

[attachment=2871:attachment]

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The sunset isn't too yellow, that person needs to get out more. But there is no smoothness to the gradients my eye expects to see there; it appears to be severely blown.

There's nothing blown that I can see. Here's the ACR window showing the values of the brightest spot where the sun has just dipped below the horizon.  The most saturated yellows have similar red and green values of 234, 244 but the blue channel is typically lower, around 45 to 50.

[attachment=2872:attachment]

I took the trouble to remove the shrub in the foreground because I thought it was a distraction, but I saw no good reason to remove the mangroves in the foreground of the 2 flying pelicans. It sort of complements the line of trees behind the birds doesn't it?
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Ray

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Flying Dinasaurs
« Reply #5 on: July 24, 2007, 12:29:20 am »

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It would be quite hard to make a triptych; the sunset shot would be extremely difficult to work into the other two.  The first shot, I can only think of captioning it "if I hold my breath long enough, I can fly".

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=129628\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Andy,
That's too complicated for me to follow, with the arches and fancy cropping. I don't bother with frames and mattes. It's too much work. My preferred method is to get the photos mounted on a piece of foam core and then brace the foam core by sticking lightweight aluminium angle on the back with superglue.

If I hang these 3 photos on the wall in the form of a loose triptych, I'd place them from left to right starting with the single pelican and stagger down the other 2 shots, the sunset being at the lowest point.
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jani

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« Reply #6 on: July 24, 2007, 07:26:20 am »

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That's a good point, Jani. I guess the reason I didn't re-orient this image in the cropping is because I felt that the feeling of dizziness was reflected in the stance of the lady who seems to be afraid to look up at the encroaching birds in case she gets dizzy, but in fact she's probably just looking down to make sure she's not treading on a sharp shell.
Hard to say without interviewing the lady in question.

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Is this better?   

[attachment=2871:attachment]
In many ways, yes, but I miss the curve of the beach. Hmm.

But what you did to the contrast makes it go a bit more "pow", and I think it works.

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There's nothing blown that I can see. Here's the ACR window showing the values of the brightest spot where the sun has just dipped below the horizon.  The most saturated yellows have similar red and green values of 234, 244 but the blue channel is typically lower, around 45 to 50.
In that case, there's something else causing the effect.

It's possible that the sunset had these not-so-smooth gradients, I've seen stranger things, but the problem is that there's a slight loss of perceived realism. While this doesn't retract from the beauty of the photograph (for it is beautiful!), I can see where the other person's comment may have been coming from, even though it's not about being "too yellow".

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I took the trouble to remove the shrub in the foreground because I thought it was a distraction, but I saw no good reason to remove the mangroves in the foreground of the 2 flying pelicans. It sort of complements the line of trees behind the birds doesn't it?
That it does.
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Jan

Ray

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« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2007, 01:24:08 am »

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It's possible that the sunset had these not-so-smooth gradients, I've seen stranger things, but the problem is that there's a slight loss of perceived realism. While this doesn't retract from the beauty of the photograph (for it is beautiful!), I can see where the other person's comment may have been coming from, even though it's not about being "too yellow".
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=129673\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This sunset shot was the normal exposure of 3 hand-held bracketed shots. The underexposed shot was at a 500th sec, although when I say underexposed, I'm referring to the sequence of bracketed shots. In fact, all 3 are probably overexposed since an adjustment of -2.6 or -2.7 EC to remove all traces of highlight clipping is fairly drastic.

My suspicion is that what we are seeing here in this excessively bland area of yellow is ACR's attempt to reconstruct highlight detail. These values on the info palette are not real values of yellow but 'guessed' values.

This is the ACR window of the shot with 2 stops less exposure.

[attachment=2887:attachment]

Below is a composite of the sky in the less exposed shot and the rest of the image in the 'normally' exposed shot.

[attachment=2888:attachment]

For the final touch, in conformance with the 'rule of thirds'.....

[attachment=2891:attachment]

I can see no further improvement for the sunset shot.
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Ray

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« Reply #8 on: July 25, 2007, 10:02:10 am »

On the other hand, I recall from my school physics days that the temperature of the surface of the sun is 10,000 degrees C.

Here's a conversion at a temperature of 10,000 degrees   .

[attachment=2892:attachment]
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AndyF2

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Flying Dinasaurs
« Reply #9 on: July 25, 2007, 06:37:32 pm »

Quote
Andy,
That's too complicated for me to follow, with the arches and fancy cropping. I don't bother with frames and mattes. It's too much work. My preferred method is to get the photos mounted on a piece of foam core and then brace the foam core by sticking lightweight aluminium angle on the back with superglue.

If I hang these 3 photos on the wall in the form of a loose triptych, I'd place them from left to right starting with the single pelican and stagger down the other 2 shots, the sunset being at the lowest point.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=129645\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I was getting a bit carried away with a different kind of image!  The image has a good feeling of depth to it, from the size and sharpness of focus on the pelicans and the slightly beyond focus sand behind them.

Andy
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