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Author Topic: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park  (Read 2749 times)

Praki

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Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« on: January 29, 2013, 01:47:46 pm »

From last fall
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mvsoske

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2013, 03:57:56 pm »

Lovely tones and depth.

Mark

Larry Heath

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2013, 06:26:04 pm »

Very nice.

You might do a B&W treatment, it will look great as well, I think even better.

Later Larry
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francois

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2013, 04:12:21 am »

Great shot, I really love the different pattern of the ferns and other leaves. Lush plants are luminous.

Well done!
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Francois

Andy Ilachinski

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2013, 09:09:36 am »

Wonderful shot, though I second Larry's suggestion for a B&W. With the right tonal conversion, this would make for a great B&W image.

If I might also suggest, just to try, cropping a bit on the top and right; as the initial attention on the central "clump" in the lower left wavers a bit as the eye is drawn to what is essentially empty space on top and right and then comes back again to the lower left. The composition of that "clump" is so strong already, that anything extraneous dilutes the attention it warrants.

But all in all, just wonderful.

Praki

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2013, 03:04:34 pm »

Thanks to all for your comments and suggestions. The B&W thought had occurred to me but I am in the process of learning Photoshop and not progressed to B&W other than taking saturation to 0! But I will get there and when I do, I'll post the same image again in B&W.
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rgs

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2013, 03:50:06 pm »

What a glorious, lush green. Very nice.

Very nice.

You might do a B&W treatment, it will look great as well, I think even better.


As an old B&W 4x5 Zone System type, there are two things that puzzle me.

First is the attempt of some photographers to introduce grain into a digital image. We worked so hard to get rid of it and now we want it back?

Second, and to the point here, is the penchant for removing color. Wet B&W, printed well, is just magnificent. The image seems to want to pull you down into the paper with it. I have rarely seen ink printed images match good monochrome that started life as a silver neg and ended in a wet silver print. Most of the digital B&W I have seen just looks like color with the color removed. On the other hand, I find digital color to be much more flexible than wet color ever was. While I know some photos look good or even best in in mono, the readiness to print digital B&W seems an odd retrogression.

But then maybe I like the faint orange glow...

I'll probably get a good deal of disagreement here but I'm not saying I'm right, just offering food for thought.

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Larry Heath

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2013, 06:08:21 pm »

What a glorious, lush green. Very nice.

As an old B&W 4x5 Zone System type, there are two things that puzzle me.

First is the attempt of some photographers to introduce grain into a digital image. We worked so hard to get rid of it and now we want it back?

Second, and to the point here, is the penchant for removing color. Wet B&W, printed well, is just magnificent. The image seems to want to pull you down into the paper with it. I have rarely seen ink printed images match good monochrome that started life as a silver neg and ended in a wet silver print. Most of the digital B&W I have seen just looks like color with the color removed. On the other hand, I find digital color to be much more flexible than wet color ever was. While I know some photos look good or even best in in mono, the readiness to print digital B&W seems an odd retrogression.

But then maybe I like the faint orange glow...

I'll probably get a good deal of disagreement here but I'm not saying I'm right, just offering food for thought.



OH hell no, no grain for me If you please!

All the years and pains I went through trying to minimize grain, I’d rather cut my index finger off than hit that damn grain button in PS/LR. Shooting Kodak’s SO-115 tech pan back in the late 70’s was a dream come true. It was as close to grainless B&W as I ever got, and I loved it.

I really don’t think of it as a regression but a progression to a different methodology. I really loved the darkroom and if money and time allowed I likely would go that route today. The problem is I no longer have a whole lifetime, or unlimited wealth, available to get anywhere near the perfection that I know can be achieved in silver or other types of wet prints; yet the nostalgia and or desire to produce the gorgeous B&W prints of times gone by simply never goes away once the bug has bitten.

We simply use the tools we have at our disposal, to produce the images that please us. B&W still pleases me greatly, many times more so than color, but I must admit that color now a day holds a very strong allure that it didn’t thirty year ago, the cost and technology was beyond my reach then, and not even a consideration.

Digital technologies allows us to print images that were simply beyond the grasp of all but a relatively select few in days gone by. The past should always inform the future and the future will always reinterpret the past. In a way it almost seems wasteful not to use the technologies of today to try and reinterpret the B&W past of photography, simply because color is so easily accessible today.

I’ve played with Praki’s thumb nail of his image and in B&W and I do believe, for me at least, it has a lot of what you speak of in the wet print B&W photos of yore. I haven’t decided if it’s a good thing or a bad thing just yet, in that it took me all of 10 minutes to produce something that 30 years ago, I likely never could have achieved in the darkroom.

Later Larry
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Praki

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2013, 06:48:34 pm »

Hi Larry:
Please feel free to send me your B&W image of the skunk cabbage or post it in this thread ... I would love to see how it looks. May accelerate my learning to do B&W images digitally!
Thanks,
Praki.
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Larry Heath

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2013, 07:19:46 pm »

I think it looses a bit in the compression, but I love this image.



Ferns-and-Skunk-cabbageB&W3

Later Larry
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Praki

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2013, 07:32:29 pm »

Thanks. It gives me some ideas ... may be increasing the dynamic range a bit by making the fern leaves a little brighter. One of the areas I am still learning is to figure out the different zones that the different greens fall into. I'll work on this and post in the future.
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davidh202

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2013, 10:02:04 pm »

I’ve played with Praki’s thumb nail of his image and in B&W and I do believe, for me at least, it has a lot of what you speak of in the wet print B&W photos of yore. I haven’t decided if it’s a good thing or a bad thing just yet, in that it took me all of 10 minutes to produce something that 30 years ago, I likely never could have achieved in the darkroom. Later Larry

Nice work there Larry!
The image is very nice in color, but is a very great candidate for B&W since it is very monochromatic .
Praki might even experiment with duotone ;-)
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francois

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2013, 07:07:47 am »

Yes, both versions are very fine!
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Francois

Les Sparks

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Re: Ferns and Skunk Cabbage - Olympic National Park
« Reply #13 on: February 03, 2013, 05:56:04 pm »

Love both versions.
Les
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