On 5/19/2014 6:51 PM, DZDub wrote:
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:38 PM, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
On 5/19/2014 5:18 PM, Moose wrote:
There have been several posts and threads recently about bird shots,
IBIS, long teles, telephoto speed, vacation lenses and so on. I'm
responding to the first here, and will likely be nattering on in specific
reply to others.
Here are the images for all so far. All taken with the Oly 75-300, on GX7:
California Jay <http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Oly75-300/
CaliforniaJay.htm>
Probable first winter Golden Crowned Sparrow. <
http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Oly75-300/GoldenCrowned.htm>
Fern fiddle head I <http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Oly75-300/
FiddleHead1.htm>
Fern fiddle head II <http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/tech/Oly75-300/
FiddleHead2.htm>
Thanks for posting your images, Moose. I enjoy seeing the effect you
achieve with sharpening, probably more than any other PP technique that
marks your style.
I have a style? Whoopee! I can go on the road. :-)
I think I'd prefer the jay about halfway between the original and what you
end up with. The sharpening seems overdone. The blue feathers at the back
of the neck look unreal at 100% and stair-steppy in the crop.
Yes ... and no. I agree it might look better in some ways a little softer. OTOH, I wanted to show clearly to those with
less visual acuity than us the amount of fine detail.
Can I plead that my most recent extensive processing was for a book, where printing on semi gloss paper eats up those
edges? :-)
As to the stair steps, it looks to me like that is exactly what's there, individual feathers standing up slightly on the
head, then going smooth on the neck. Might my processing have over emphasized them? Obviously so for you, which is
useful to know.
I think the
removal of the shadow might have been successful if I hadn't seen where the
shadow was. What you patched it with doesn't look quite right to me.
Yeah, wadda'ya gonna do? I can't seem to avoid trying new stuff out. :-) Maybe that's what keeps the fun in it for
me. What I tried out at first was patching it with itself, lightening a copy layer with opaque mask and painting in the
lighter parts over the shadow. Worked a treat on the head, less successfully on the body, where it looks a little
smeary. I'm still not sure just why.
Anyway, it was fun to try. And as you say, without the comparison, I suspect no one would notice the liberties taken.
Did you notice the disappearing twig? In front of the head.
But I also actually like the shadow, and I like the original quite a lot. A
lot of your PP work on this image, at least, seems like gilding the lily to
me, but it is your vision and your style, I realize, and there is a wow
factor to it.
At least in part, it's what I see in my head when I take the image. I literally didn't 'see' the shadows when I took the
shot. Maybe that's why I'm so unfussy about viewfinders. It's quite a nice image with the shadows, but not what I 'saw'.
It sets your images apart from others' in way which may or
may not be photographic -- I can't really decide.
Well, I might argue that there should be another word than 'photographic' there. If you look at what famous
photographers have been doing to images from the beginning, I'm certainly not outside that term. Karsh's retouching, St.
Ansel's* darkroom 'performances' of his "negative scores" and so on and on ... There are things being done by
commercially and/or artistically successful photographers today that are farther from what came out of the camera than
pretty much anything I do.
The sparrow is very sharp but I don't find the photo as a whole very
interesting, whereas the ferns are very nice. Again, the effect of the
sharpening is excellent to my eyes and doesn't go as far as the jay
sharpening.
Yeah, the sparrow wouldn't have seen the light of the web, if not for it's illustrative purpose, a hand held grab shot
of a bird busily moving about and edgy from my presence. It was interesting, though, in that, once I looked at it more
closely, it went from "just another sparrow" to an interesting sparrow species I see, or at least notice, infrequently.
I think, too, that the balanced DOF in front and behind shows how the AF nailed it.
Maybe I was atoning for the Jay? ;-)
I'm not sure what you're up to in altering the backgrounds.
Ya got me stumped. I didn't mess with any of the backgrounds but for one thing. The fern heads were moving. I spent some
time waiting for them to stop and/or reach the end of a sweep. So the (nice bokeh!) backgrounds didn't quite match
between shots. I did a slight amount of adjustment so they wouldn't be too obviously mismatched.
I don't find one background much more interesting than another, though none
is displeasing to me. I guess that's an aspect of PP that just doesn't
interest me.
As I say, I didn't mess with what nature provided. In fact, the subjects are masked so my PP only modifies them, not the
background. I will mess with backgrounds sometimes, when they have ugly, bright, edgy bokeh.
Anyway, thanks again for sharing your work.
My pleasure, and thanks for your thoughtful, helpful comments.
P. P. Moose
* And of course, St. Phillippe's Phillitones, Phillichromes, etc. Many of which
I like a great deal. ;-)
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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