@Whitebeard, the zebra image is highly entertaining .
I can see where you want to go with the edit of Asa's image, but to my eyes it has an over processed look and I think if you dialed the effect back quite a bit it would be much better

Interesting. In Asa's photo I see the fern (?) unfolding with flowers looking on. In the second I see only the rock.

I rather enjoy the challenge of trying to photograph fireworks because of the harsh lighting contrast and timing. They usually turn out terrible, but every once in a while I get one that I like.


Some more random landscapes:

I love the ocean one, James!

Nice going, James. It is particularly tough to catch the fireworks well!
@William and Dirt... agreed! I was certainly a bit heavy handed on dialing things up. But as an excuse, I will not that I was in a dark room at night, post-dinner and after a couple of glasses of wine, and the changes looked striking to me then. Of course, the daylight read was another! And I did tweak the calibration on my monitor, so thanks for that, too. Smiles all around.

Deb that weird looking not-fern is Sedum tortuosum.

Fireworks

This is my favorite of Asa's shots--maybe he will divulge his secret--I can tell you it was 5 sec exposure, ISO 100, f/10 with our old, lowest pixel camera and 35mm lens
My brother is a pyro and this was from a fantastic show he did last summer--he has the best blues!

Here are a few more

Spectacular!

Awesome!!

evermorelawnless said:

Better very late than never, this is my take



All adjustments on individual layers using my old copy of CS4. The aim wasn't to make a faithful representation of the scene or making anything that was appropriate for the database or a photo contest, just wanted to give it a bit more pop.

Contrast and warming the colors with levels.
Contrast with Curves.
Color Balance tool for warmer highlights.
Increased saturation with 3%. Most of the saturation increase seen is simply from contrast adjustment.

While I really liked the wider view, I decided on a crop to remove some out of focus foreground, the leaf on the left and the purple spot on the right. Also decided to burn (using curves, meaning I made those areas darker) most of the out of focus areas. Those burned areas are still brighter than Asa's original.

Very light sharpening (mostly to combat jpg compression).

That's pretty awesome!
I so wish that we had such editing tools-- and skills

Asa's wrapped up in some heavy-duty business right now--but I'm sure he'll check-in here eventually and admire your handiwork--or not as the case may be--

I'd hire you, though, if that were a thing I could do

William, that's really fantastic. Just so far beyond my current skillset and it's very frustrating to me. I'd love to see what would happen if you started from scratch on the RAW file (assuming that I shot that one RAW which I probably did not).

Also, thank you for taking the time to describe the process. While I don't have time this morning to try to replicate (read learn from the process) what you've done, I'm going to work through it several times, I'm sure, following the steps that you outlined.

Again, thank you.

Ugh. Misfire on the acorns. Dirt, those were meant for William ;)

I'm so happy you both liked it and thank you for the acorns .
Asa, not to worry as I'm sure Dirt appreciated those acorns just as much as I did .

I don't think having access to the RAW image would have made any difference (at this size) as the base material was already very good - it was low contrast and as such very easy to work with .

This is Asa's photo--
He grabbed my camera and took this, volunteer grapies growing in the crack between the neighbor's sidewalk and retaining wall
It was on my card as a result, and I think it's fantastic!!

Full frame/no crop. I did a minor edit, but I don't know how to do that very well so I mostly let it be...
I love the framing, the lines--hard vertical with the gap and real grapevine, vanishing diagonal with the grapies (muscari) and their arching crappy leaves
Hard to appreciate with the square chop crop of the thumbnail and then again with the scrolling when you open it, but anyway--I think it's a really neat shot

What do you all think?

I really quite like that shot in that I "saw" it the day before and managed to shoot what I thought I saw. That doesn't happen very often with me...and it's something that I've been working on. I shot it with different aperture settings, but the first (cannot recall which it was) worked out the best by far.

Thanks for posting that, Dirt.

edit: 95pct of the time I shoot in landscape rather than portrait...so if you want to see the whole thing without scrolling (and you kind of need to for the effect), drag it onto your desktop and open it with your regular photo editor

Dirt, processing overall looks good on my monitor, just a bit dark, but I don't think that is a major issue for web as most monitors are too bright anyway and being a little darker suits the mood of the image well, as I suspect that mood perhaps shouldn't be too bright and cheerful here.

Asa, I like the contrast between hard concrete and the lovely Muscari. They really pop! It's a good portrait of how nature eventually conquers manmade constructions, little by little, step by step. The selective focus works well, but here is the only weak spot I found as in almost all situations you ideally would like to have the foremost flower(s) in sharp focus. You do have the grapewine? in excellent focus and had you shifted focus you wouldn't achieve that, so overall I'm not sure if shifting focus would be better or not. I can however say that I'd theoretically prefer to have both the front Muscari blooms as well as the grapewine in focus. But it's not a major issue and it doesn't break the image.

Otherwise it all looks very good to me. There is a simplicity(simple is good when it comes to photography) to the composition, with the strong use of a diagonal and the repetition of the muscari throughout the frame against the almost monochrome concrete canvas being particularly appealing to the eye. A very nice image indeed!!!

Hi everyone, I'm new to photography and this forum. I'm not good to putting word together, so please excuse my English, but I enjoyed with going through everyone ' s pictures and share experiences. Here are some photos that I took last weekend, after editing, please let me know how I'm doing. Thank you!

Hi Yan!


Beautiful girl and beautiful portrait!
Makes me wonder if she might have a special little spring bug in her hands and I want to see what she is looking at too
I like the directional light you have there, adds to the mood. Seems to have worked well for you here. (I try tricky light sometimes with disastrous results )
I like the framing of the monument--cherry trees? people in boats? they almost look like water lilies--and ants crawling all over the monument
I feel like I can't see that one very well because it is kinda small
The first pink flower is my favorite--very interesting with the buds and fuzzy stems and I find it an appealing arrangement. I'd like to see more focus on the front petals...it almost looks like a ceiling and wall angle behind it with a window below in the lower right-hand corner--or something. I can't really tell, but that's what my mind it making up for me. I really like the bright yellow above the flower and I think this would be really neat if the yellow tone came all the way down for the background rather the the darker blueish shape with the line.
Backgrounds can be very challenging. I am trying to learn to see them when I'm taking the picture so I can adjust, but most of the time I don't see them until long after the shot has passed and any opportunity for change is over!
I like the angle of the last pink one, but the color is too much for me --seems unreal and overwhelms my capacity to 'see' it (that probably doesn't make sense and I don't know how to explain it-- maybe pink disturbs me as is ) and the focus is so very narrow--looks like just the edge of one petal across the back of the 'eye' of the flower. I'd suggest to increase the depth of field more and try and get the whole 'eye'.

Overall, I'd say you're doing well--keep clicking

Hi Yan

Very nice photo of the girl - you caught a good moment, the selective focus works well and I like the framing!

The flower images are also all well composed. There is a good "feel" to them and I like the way you "see" the images - good eye!

Overall I like shallow depth of field for images that are a bit more on the artistic side of things, but still I agree with Dirt's suggestions regarding focus - this however doesn't mean that I'd like to loose the shallow depth of field here, this is more about fine tuning it to perfection.

Thanks for sharing these nice and fun images. I like them!

Thank you!!! I forgot that I posted pictures from my phone so it looks kinda small, sorry! Here are the pictures before editing (I know I go a little overboard with editing)