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Author Topic: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers  (Read 7162 times)

Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« on: July 07, 2013, 08:54:16 pm »

;D

Dave
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RSL

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2013, 09:07:05 pm »

Dave, I think you need to check your lens. Is it auto-focusing properly? If you're Claude Monet you can get away with slap-dash fuzzyness, but with a camera, uh uh. The color's nice, but. . .
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RFPhotography

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2013, 09:18:47 pm »

There are a number of well-known photographers who've made very good livings using techniques such as this.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2013, 11:38:45 pm »

It looks even better when I take my glasses off.   ;D
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2013, 12:06:57 am »

Not my cup of (herbal) tea. ;)

amolitor

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2013, 12:12:11 pm »

I very much like the look, and I suspect that it does nicely capture some impression of the summer wildflowers.

However, it's much more a texture than a picture. There's no hierarchy of elements, no composition to speak of at all, mainly on account of there being no actual objects of masses to arrange. I think you can do much much better than this, without losing the impressionistic flavor.
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ahbnyc

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2013, 02:16:10 pm »

I like the shapelessness of the image -- I am curious as to how you achieved it.
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fike

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2013, 03:05:50 pm »

This image makes me smile.  As a consumer of beautiful things, I love it.  As a photographer, I am trying to figure out what it is? photo, painting, motion blur....etc....

...but it doesn't matter. It made me smile and that is enough.
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2013, 05:58:28 pm »

Thanks everyone, I know I will always get a good well balanced critique from you guys (except for the herbal tea drinkers of course :D) - the missus likes it BTW and wants me to print it, but don't know if I will  :)

Dave, I think you need to check your lens. Is it auto-focusing properly? If you're Claude Monet you can get away with slap-dash fuzzyness, but with a camera, uh uh. The color's nice, but. . .

I don't use auto-focus Russ, or auto anything for that matter, just setup through LV and the detail was sharply focussed, but the wind on that day was very strong indeed. So I thought, as I can't get a sharp shot without going silly with the ISO and as I wanted to keep the DoF, I would try doing the opposite and try a 1/4 second exposure. Let the flowers paint them selves onto the sensor kind of thing.

There are a number of well-known photographers who've made very good livings using techniques such as this.

That would be nice, as it is a really easy technique to do - I will be rich!!!

I very much like the look, and I suspect that it does nicely capture some impression of the summer wildflowers.

However, it's much more a texture than a picture. There's no hierarchy of elements, no composition to speak of at all, mainly on account of there being no actual objects of masses to arrange. I think you can do much better than this, without losing the impressionistic flavor.

Yes Andrew, I do intend to go back for yet another go at these flowers on a much less windy day - leave it with me.

This image makes me smile.  As a consumer of beautiful things, I love it.  As a photographer, I am trying to figure out what it is? photo, painting, motion blur....etc....

...but it doesn't matter. It made me smile and that is enough.

Thank you, that is exactly the response I think I was hoping for  ;D

I like the shapelessness of the image -- I am curious as to how you achieved it.

OK, in the spirit of sharing, it is an idea I have been tinkering with for a while in various forms. But for this particular instance, if you want to have a go yourself, then select your subject (for this I chose colourful wildflowers obviously), I then setup the shot with a long(ish) lens, I used a 70/200 with a 1.4x converter. Using the usual 1/3 in hyperfocal distancing, I then stopped right down (f/45 I think it was for this shot) or you can use an ND filter or whatever you need until you get an exposure of between 1/8 to 1/4 second, then wait for the wind to blow a little. Fire off around 10 shots by just keeping your finger pressed on the remote release until the buffer fills up.

Now highlight all the ten images in Bridge and select to load them into Photoshop layers - they will now load straight into PS without going through the ACR edit screen and also be stacked into a single file in PS. Highlight all the layers again and select a blend mode, for this image I think I used 'lighten' but just experiment until you get a blending effect you like for your start image - you will need a fast machine with lots of RAM to do this if your RAWs are large. Then having got what you want on screen, flatten the file and tweak to your hearts desire.

One last tip, you still need to make the image from a good composition to begin with, in fact possibly more so, as there will not be anything other than colour and a sensation of the detail behind it appearing in the final shot, so take a fast single shot first to make sure you would be happy with it as a stand alone shot/composition, then set up as mentioned above and fire away for the Monet effect  ;D

Dave
« Last Edit: July 08, 2013, 07:22:02 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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RFPhotography

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2013, 06:26:51 pm »


That would be nice, as it is a really easy technique to do - I will be rich!!!

Dave


Yeah, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing?  ;)  Then you're gonna have to get creative.  ;D
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2013, 07:16:31 pm »

Yeah, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing?  ;)  Then you're gonna have to get creative.  ;D

Don't know about you Bob, but it seems that whenever I want to take shots of things such as flowers etc, the wind always seems to be blowing  ::)

Oh and I forgot, you will also need to do this using a tripod, because even though the end result is a sort of dreamy blended image type of thing, there are elements of sharp edges within it that perhaps you can't see in this small version. I have tried this idea hand holding, or moving the lens about and zooming in and out etc, but the image generally turns to colourful mush, not always but mostly. But I must admit this time the wind really was blowing hard and so perhaps it was a little too much, but maybe it will kinder to me next time.

Dave
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RFPhotography

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2013, 07:36:22 pm »

Don't know about you Bob, but it seems that whenever I want to take shots of things such as flowers etc, the wind always seems to be blowing  ::)

Oh and I forgot, you will also need to do this using a tripod, because even though the end result is a sort of dreamy blended image type of thing, there are elements of sharp edges within it that perhaps you can't see in this small version. I have tried this idea hand holding, or moving the lens about and zooming in and out etc, but the image generally turns to colourful mush, not always but mostly. But I must admit this time the wind really was blowing hard and so perhaps it was a little too much, but maybe it will kinder to me next time.

Dave

Check out Michael Orton's latest work.  Also Tony Sweet, Freeman Patterson, Stephen Patterson (no relation), Andre Gallant and Bill Neill's Impressions of Light series.  Lots of handheld stuff in there.  Depends on the look you want, of course.  The Impressionism galleries on my site also have examples.
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Peter McLennan

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2013, 07:46:58 pm »

I love it.  My wife didn't.  She's not always right.  : )

Thanks, Dave, for your info on how you made this image.
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #13 on: July 09, 2013, 09:37:35 am »

Check out Michael Orton's latest work.  Also Tony Sweet, Freeman Patterson, Stephen Patterson (no relation), Andre Gallant and Bill Neill's Impressions of Light series.  Lots of handheld stuff in there.  Depends on the look you want, of course.  The Impressionism galleries on my site also have examples.

Yes Bob, I can see from your web gallery, that Tony Sweet has definitely had an effect on your work  ;D

Here is another one, from a few days earlier than the first one I posted above and with a little less wind to affect the outcome - the almost perfectly in focus flower in the foreground has not been 'shopped in, it just came out like that in one of the stacked shots, which is quite odd really, because if they were all moving about, then why not that one so much? Who knows.

I have saved this image a little larger in size, so you can see that there is in fact quite a lot of sharp detail within the image.

Dave
« Last Edit: July 09, 2013, 09:46:06 am by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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fike

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #14 on: July 09, 2013, 09:40:21 am »

That shot is very effective. Unfortunately, people won't believe that your single in-focus flower wasn't photoshopped-in.  Funny how we can make honest image captures that are so amazingly unlikely that our jaded modern sensibility automatically believes it to be a fantasy.
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Harald L

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #15 on: July 09, 2013, 09:55:16 am »

Yes Bob, I can see from your web gallery, that Tony Sweet has definitely had an effect on your work  ;D

Here is another one, from a few days earlier than the first one I posted above and with a little less wind to affect the outcome - the almost perfectly in focus flower in the foreground has not been 'shopped in, it just came out like that in one of the stacked shots, which is quite odd really, because if they were all moving about, then why not that one so much? Who knows.

I have saved this image a little larger in size, so you can see that there is in fact quite a lot of sharp detail within the image.

Dave


I was already fine with the first crop. The sharp flower ruins it.

Harald
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #16 on: July 09, 2013, 10:07:06 am »

That shot is very effective. Unfortunately, people won't believe that your single in-focus flower wasn't photoshopped-in.  Funny how we can make honest image captures that are so amazingly unlikely that our jaded modern sensibility automatically believes it to be a fantasy.

Fike, that is so true. I had a gallery show/sale the other week (sold 12 pieces as I am apparently now supposed to call them and I am very chuffed with that  ;D) and that was a constant question, mostly by photographers I have to say and saying things like - That dawn shot looks too good to be true, you must have photoshopped it. Yes I replied, every image I take goes through PS to sharpen and tweak etc, so I cannot deny that PS plays a big part in all my work, but that doesn't mean I have made up the shot, it is not a figment of my imagination. What I did do however, was get up two hours before dawn around 6 times over a two week period, go to the same place and stand in the cold waiting and praying for the light to give me what I was hoping for and trying to get - but yes I freely admit I have tweaked the shot to bring out the best I can from it.

I think some people think, that if they can't easily get something similar to it and the fact that it is much harder to get than they are willing to put the effort into, then that means that you can't have put the effort into it either and so you must have 'cheated' and made the whole thing up. They are tarring you with their brush in other words.

But on the whole people really, really loved the show  ;D

Dave
« Last Edit: July 09, 2013, 10:14:03 am by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #17 on: July 09, 2013, 10:09:26 am »

I was already fine with the first crop. The sharp flower ruins it.

Harald

They are different images Harald, so not cropped from one file.

Isn't it odd how what one person likes another dislikes?

But Hey, that's what makes the world go round I suppose  ;D

Dave
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RFPhotography

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #18 on: July 09, 2013, 10:13:56 am »

Yes Bob, I can see from your web gallery, that Tony Sweet has definitely had an effect on your work  ;D

Here is another one, from a few days earlier than the first one I posted above and with a little less wind to affect the outcome - the almost perfectly in focus flower in the foreground has not been 'shopped in, it just came out like that in one of the stacked shots, which is quite odd really, because if they were all moving about, then why not that one so much? Who knows.

I have saved this image a little larger in size, so you can see that there is in fact quite a lot of sharp detail within the image.

Dave


I was doing this kind of stuff long before I knew who Tony Sweet was.   ;D  Actually, my original inspirations for this type of imagery were Freeman Patterson and AndrĂ© Gallant (2 fellow Canadians).

Of the two, I prefer the second.  The first is too, overall, green.  The second is more balanced in colour.  
« Last Edit: July 09, 2013, 10:15:47 am by BobFisher »
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Impressions of Summer Wild Flowers
« Reply #19 on: July 09, 2013, 10:17:34 am »

I was doing this kind of stuff long before I knew who Tony Sweet was.   ;D  Actually, my original inspirations for this type of imagery were Freeman Patterson and AndrĂ© Gallant (2 fellow Canadians).

Sorry Bob, no disrespect meant, perhaps this is where Tony got his ideas from  :)

Dave
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