On 5/10/2016 9:28 AM, DZDub wrote:
On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 6:26 PM, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A pretty flower, with lovely colours, well captured.
As usual, my personal preference would be for less diffuse, indirect
light. A brassier approach to rose photography, bright yellow in direct,
midday sun. <http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=20049>
I wondered why I like Brian's photo so much better than yours,
Perhaps, at least in part, because it's a prettier rose?
I'm not a rose grower; far too much trouble. I have a couple of ancient climbers, pink and white, because the came with
the place, 35 years ago, and continue to do well and look nice. And I have the two bright yellow Sunsprites for the
simple reason that they are so cheerful. It just makes me happy to see those blooms in our yard. And - they are hardy
and unfussy.
and it may
just be owing to the difficulty of dealing with yellow (and not being
certain of the actual conditions you were working with, even though I think
I know how direct, midday sun makes things look).
You got it.
I started to mistrust my
laptop's screen and checked it against my "serious" editing setup. I think
that I can see that yours is the result of painstaking work and skill, but
that could be an assumption overlaying my impression. Maybe it just came
out that way in RAW. It doesn't really matter. What I find more natural
in Brian's is the impression of light. I see shadows in your photo and I
just expect the rest of the lighting to look consistent with that fact, but
it doesn't to me. I have used this analogy before, but the best way I can
describe the effect I get in viewing your photo is that you've somewhat
made it look like the flower was taken during a partial solar eclipse or
under some kind of artificial lighting that is not meant to look
"natural." I am suspicious of too much highlight recovery, although simple
(no doubt deliberate) underexposure is another possibility.
Yup, "underexposure", or expose for the highlights, however you wish to put it, and skilled work. This is more important
than it may at first seem. It's not just about midtone brightness. Highlights clipped in one or two channels, or
unevenly clipped, inevitably, by definition, change the color.
Let me propose a different way to look at this. A flower, red-orange-yellow, most obviously, but also violets and some
dark blues, in direct sun, looks a certain way. Even given a perfect capture device, there is no way that light can be
reproduced on screen or in a print. So some sort of compromise must be made. One solution is shades, light filters,
overcast days, and so on.
That works in one way, reducing the contrast and the sheer brightness of some colors. In another way, it makes the
flower look like it was shot in shade. That's fine, in its way. It seems to also minimize, or mask, the effects of the
fact that our capture devices and display methods aren't perfect.
But I LIKE the look of brightly colored flowers in bright sun. It makes my heart sing. So that's what I work to
reproduce. I know my capture devices aren't perfect, nor are my skills, nor the means of display. I know it's impossible
to do perfectly, but personally prefer the compromises I have to make to the alternative, an entirely different subject
than the one I want to capture, reproduce.
My reaction to flowers (and much, most of what I photograph) is essentially, well, almost entirely, emotional, visceral.
So what I aim for in an image is some of that same feeling. How much may be a direct reaction to the image and how much
an evocation in seeing the image of the original affect, I don't, and can't, know.
And so, I persevere. And as long as I derive pleasure out of process and result, I imagine I will continue to do so.
This particular rose image is, of necessity, imperfect. And yet, it evokes in me something of the pleasure of seeing the
flower in person. Perhaps there's a better mix of compromises in contrast, curve, and so on, but this was what I could
do that day.
I do hope, when I post images, that I may invoke in others something of what it does for me, but know my success will
always be partial, and vary with different images and viewers.
It's all quite impossible. :-) A couple of weeks ago, we took family visiting from NY on a wander through back roads.
Among many wonderful things, we came to a place where I stopped by instinct and we all got out to marvel at the
unbelievably gorgeous display of many different wildflowers, a perfect tree growing on a wonderful rock, red winged
blackbirds singing their beautiful song and flashing their red shoulder patches in the sun - a perfect little piece of
Heaven on Earth.
Of course, I took many photos. But on the screen, they fall ever so far short of the actual experience. And yet, they
help bring back the experience. And once I stop trying to recreate all that, a few will likely find themselves in one of
my books and/or web galleries.
I hope this babble may in some way help in your struggle with yellow. ;-)
Yellows are very challenging for me, so I may be thinking via some kind of
gag reflex. This one is where I have tried very hard to match the light I
had:
http://jfwilcox.jalbum.net/April%20Flowers/#IMG_0276_editedw.jpg
-- but it still looks a little odd to me. Part of the reason is that the
center of this variety of daffodil is quite solid and non-translucent.
I just don't have such green daffys in my experience, so color that feels wrong to me overshadows other aspects, at
least at first.
This one seems more pleasing to me:
http://jfwilcox.jalbum.net/April%20Flowers/#IMG_0270_editedw.jpg
Looks good to me!
But again, I think it owes something to the variety of flower.
It may boil down to the old canard that sometimes you photograph things and
sometimes you photograph light. It's a false dichotomy, but I always veer
to the latter.
That seems to me to be like all attempts to describe the ineffable, true, but only partially so. The pinned and named
flutterby just isn't the same as the one flying around me in the sun.
I think it may be why I am goofing around more and more
with monochrome:
http://jfwilcox.jalbum.net/Fine%20Black%20and%20White/#_MG_7322-bww.jpg
B&W isolates and concentrates on selected aspects of the subject. That is only occasionally useful for me. I quite like
many forms of abstraction, but most involve other means of abstraction, and retain color, often abstracted in some way.
Moose De La Coeur
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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