Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on March 16, 2015, 11:30:41 am
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Wow. Wonderful image of a beautiful bird.
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Lovely photo - the wing feathers are excellent! What was your gear?
BTW, what or where is Geprge?
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Nicely done, Russ. Not much ambiguity, though. ;)
Jeremy
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Thanks all. "George'" is the name I give to the great blues. I was lucky to grab this guy on the river when the river was very calm. That kind of thing is unusual.
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Beautiful shot, Russ, even if your spelling is a little rough.
This one is good enough to make Chris-the-heron-guy jealous.
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"George'" is the name...
George, yes, Geprge isn't :)
You do know you can correct a thread title after the fact, right?
Nice catch, btw.
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Hi,
Really nice, if I may say so.
Best regards
Erik
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George, yes, Geprge isn't :)
You do know you can correct a thread title after the fact, right?
Nice catch, btw.
All I can say is "oops," Slobodan. I always re-read the body of what I write (in this case ".") but I forget to recheck the title.
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It's still a very fine image, and now it's easier to pronounce. ;)
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Beautiful, Russ! A wonderful moment. Great reflection, sharpness and contrast with the background.
As it is posted in User Critiques...
- I find the blue just a bit too saturated;
- I'd suggest a more letterbox crop (e.g. 16:9) to better accentuate the horizontal movement of the heron;
- I find the background a tad distracting - blurred to suggest movement, but not blurred enough to be less distracting (maybe I'm easily distracted). I don't know how open you are to manipulation, but adding a bit of a PS blur to the background would, in my opinion anyway, strengthen the presentation. It won't be exactly what you "saw" but...
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Hi Terry,
Thanks for the thoughtful review. I think the blue is a bit much too, but I didn't push the saturation slider. The river was mostly dark. The sun, on my left, was just beginning to pop over the tallest trees. George took off upriver and flew down the center of the stream in my direction. I snapped off two frames as he went by. In the first one he was in the dark. In the second one -- this one -- he popped into a shaft of sunlight while everything else remained dark. When I took the frame off the D3 I was afraid that because of the wild dynamic range I'd blown him out, but by pulling the highs down I discovered that all the detail was still there. Reducing brightness brought up the blue. I yet may pull it down a bit.
Frankly, I'm not sure a crop is going to change anything. On the other hand, my one beef about the picture is the tree on the right and its reflection. It almost looks like light-struck film, though nowadays nobody knows what that looks like. I'm tempted to crop the tree, and if I do I'm probably going to end up pretty close to a letterbox crop.
If I brought extra lens blur to the background it wouldn't be the first time. Here's an extreme example from nine years ago. The lens was at f/6.3 and the background was very distracting. In George's case I'm not sure the background is that distracting. It makes clear the fact that I was tracking the bird down the river.
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Russ,
I would like to see a little less blue, but I wouldn't crop. Instead, I think judicious use of content-aware fill could remove the ghost tree, keeping the present format. The background blur is just right as is, IMHO.
I hate to disagree ever so slightly with Terry, since his commentaries are clear, well-thought-out, and pretty much right at least 99% of the time.
-Eric
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... I find the background a tad distracting - blurred to suggest movement, but not blurred enough to be less distracting...
+1
It is about the quality of blur - a.k.a. bokeh - as right now it is jittery, or as someone described it as "nervous." Nothing wold be lost if the background is slightly more blurred and softer. You can even enhance the tracking movement as you are doing it (I think there is a even PS filter or brush for it).
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I don't actually disagree with you, Slobodan. But the problem with adding blur in this case is selecting the bird and his reflection accurately enough that neither ends up blurred. I have a friend who'd much rather dork around with stuff like that on his computer than go out and shoot new photographs, but that's not what I do. In the picture of the kids the selection wasn't that difficult, but in this one it looks like an all day job. Uh uh.
Here's a redo with the blue cut as much as I reasonably can. Remember, this guy is in the middle of a sunbeam while everything else is dark.
Oh. . . Instead of cropping or filling I simply broke up the vertical on the right with the spot healing brush.
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That works nicely for me,
with an appropriate amount of time and effort in the post-processing.
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I like George II better, nice catch Russ and well done on the extra processing. Regards, Sander
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I think the blur of the background is appropriate. The blur from panning with the subject is an accurate representation of the flight speed of the bird. He's not an F16.
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That works nicely for me,
with an appropriate amount of time and effort in the post-processing.
+1
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Thanks all. This was the kind of lucky grab that illustrates once again why it's not reasonable to go out your door without a camera.
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Thanks all. This was the kind of lucky grab that illustrates once again why it's not reasonable to go out your door without a camera.
Lesson learned. Again. Too often I'll go for a walk without my camera because "the light's not great" Frequently, I regret my sloth.
Nice work on the tree at right. It was the only distraction in an otherwise-perfect image.