Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 24, 2013, 10:32:14 am

Title: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 24, 2013, 10:32:14 am
This is my first ever post on LuLa, having discovered this site just a few days ago. The Antarctic expedition video is what led me here.
The attached photo has some blur, as it was shot at 1/30 sec, handheld with a quite heavy Sigma 100-300 f/4 in a low light environment.
It was shot and processed way before I bought and watched the C2PS video. I might re-do the editing at some point now that I've learned a huge deal about "camera to screen".

Cheers
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: walter.sk on September 24, 2013, 01:05:52 pm
While it may simply have been a result of the low lighting, your picture has light qualities of Rembrandt's paintings.  The composition is good, as well.  I would try dodging the head and neck of the tallest bird and toning down a bit the lighter parts of the other two birds, but in a subtle manner.  That would lead the eye to the taller bird making it the center of attention by size and brightness.

The new radial filter, reversed and with a fairly large degree of feathering, would be an ideal tool to accomplish that.  Congratulations, though: the picture is quite good.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on September 24, 2013, 01:21:36 pm
While it may simply have been a result of the low lighting, your picture has light qualities of Rembrandt's paintings...

Damn, Walter, you beat me to it!

Lars, welcome to LuLa! Excellent start. I agree with Walter's assessment about subtle dodging/burning improvements.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on September 24, 2013, 02:23:35 pm
Another vote. I too was thinking "it looks like old Flemish paintings" even before I saw any of the other posts.
Delicious.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Harald L on September 24, 2013, 04:18:25 pm
Another vote. I too was thinking "it looks like old Flemish paintings" even before I saw any of the other posts.
Delicious.


+1

Welcome!
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: fike on September 24, 2013, 04:22:03 pm
It looks more like a photo of a painting than a photo.  That could be good or could be bad depending on what you wanted. 

What was the light source?  very warm. 
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 24, 2013, 04:53:26 pm
Thank you, everyone.

It looks more like a photo of a painting than a photo.  That could be good or could be bad depending on what you wanted. 

What was the light source?  very warm. 

Not initially what I was going for. It was more of a "snapshot" situation, which produced the blur and the "painterly" look. This blur was something I decided to preserve when post-processing.

There was a large large window on the left side of them. So it was indirect light from an afternoon sun. This produced a nice soft spot of light on them. The warm tone was further enhanced when I realized that the photo started to look like a painting. The background was blurred slightly and contrast was increased quite a lot, to frame them.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 24, 2013, 04:58:39 pm
While it may simply have been a result of the low lighting, your picture has light qualities of Rembrandt's paintings.  The composition is good, as well.  I would try dodging the head and neck of the tallest bird and toning down a bit the lighter parts of the other two birds, but in a subtle manner.  That would lead the eye to the taller bird making it the center of attention by size and brightness.

The new radial filter, reversed and with a fairly large degree of feathering, would be an ideal tool to accomplish that.  Congratulations, though: the picture is quite good.

I will keep that in mind if I decide to re-edit the photo. Thank you :)

BTW: The photo was selected to be included in the new 1x.com tutorial book, which is going to be published sometime next year. Quite pleased with that! :)
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on September 24, 2013, 05:32:09 pm
Is there a way to have the discussion board software automatically post that response every time someone posts a photo?

We have you instead. ;)
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on September 24, 2013, 05:33:00 pm
... BTW: The photo was selected to be included in the new 1x.com tutorial book, which is going to be published sometime next year. Quite pleased with that! :)

Quite an accomplishment. Congrats!
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: louoates on September 24, 2013, 05:45:36 pm
If you wanted to selectively sharpen some details, use a small hard brush and make some of the fine lines more distinct. Tedious, at 200%, but this great image is well worth the effort.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 24, 2013, 07:46:00 pm
Thanks for the tip, I will give it a shot!!
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: AFairley on September 24, 2013, 08:19:49 pm
This just shows how the most sublime art can be found in the completely mundane (not that chickens are so mundane here in L.A., but you know what I mean).  Plus the OP had the vision to see what good PP could bring out of the initial image.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Michael West on September 24, 2013, 09:58:25 pm
"...your picture has light qualities of Rembrandt's paintings...."

My first perception. prior to reading the quote here above.

Lovely image
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Jeremy Roussak on September 25, 2013, 04:07:59 pm
That's a superb start to your postings here! Welcome: you've set yourself a high bar for the future.

Jeremy
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 25, 2013, 06:36:51 pm
you've set yourself a high bar for the future.

Jeremy

That is indeed true. No point in setting the bar low, right? Hehe
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: graeme on September 25, 2013, 08:26:37 pm
That's a great photo - nice work Lars.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Chris Calohan on September 28, 2013, 08:32:37 am
A day late and a dollar short of the familiarity of late Flemish painters to your image interpretation. A little more PP and while it is a quite nice image even if itmay not yet be an award winner, you'll learn tons more about post production work. See, "The new radial filter, reversed and with a fairly large degree of feathering, would be an ideal tool to accomplish that," has just sparked my interest into seeing how that works. Hmmmmmmmm, does anyone care to elaborate on its usage?

This is a great forum. Welcome!
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Lars Anker-Rasch on September 28, 2013, 09:51:06 am
A day late and a dollar short of the familiarity of late Flemish painters to your image interpretation. A little more PP and while it is a quite nice image even if itmay not yet be an award winner, you'll learn tons more about post production work. See, "The new radial filter, reversed and with a fairly large degree of feathering, would be an ideal tool to accomplish that," has just sparked my interest into seeing how that works. Hmmmmmmmm, does anyone care to elaborate on its usage?

This is a great forum. Welcome!

I'm working on a new version of this. It turns out that parts of the editing was done in 8-bit. Don't know when this conversion happened, but I'll include the tips here and post when the new and improved version is finished.

I don't know of a better way to explain the radial filter than that it is just like the graduated filter in LR, only as a circle. This way you get more control over individual parts of the photo, with feathering. Let's say you have a portrait where you'd like to slightly increase the exposure on one of the eyes.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: wolfnowl on September 29, 2013, 01:38:58 am
Nicely done.  And welcome to the forums!

Mike.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: cjogo on September 29, 2013, 01:48:46 am
Great image LARS ~!! 
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: Riaan van Wyk on September 29, 2013, 03:44:25 pm
10/10 Lars. Welcome to Lula.
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: John R on September 29, 2013, 07:18:35 pm
Rembrandt all the way. And congratulations on 1X. It has the finest images on the net and is difficult to get accepted.

JMR
Title: Re: Chickens
Post by: RSL on September 30, 2013, 12:28:32 pm
It's a fine piece of work, Lars. And welcome to LuLa.