PROJECT 52 Bunty Plumchip

[Bunty Plumchip]

Canada geese at sunset



Robin in the afternoon

[JohnnyG]

A bit heavy-handed on the sharpening, me thinks. Keep trying, you are indeed getting better all the time.

[Wendy Stanford]

Hi Carolyn, Lovely colours and cloud formation with the geese, however something with the compositon of the shot, perhaps the geese more over to the left with more space for them to fly into, or more foreground, not sure,
The Robin, very nice framing of the branches around the bird, the shadow across the back distracts a little, could be over sharpened also, was this a fairly heavy crop of a larger image perhaps

[Bunty Plumchip]

Hi Carolyn, Lovely colours and cloud formation with the geese, however something with the compositon of the shot, perhaps the geese more over to the left with more space for them to fly into, or more foreground, not sure,
The Robin, very nice framing of the branches around the bird, the shadow across the back distracts a little, could be over sharpened also, was this a fairly heavy crop of a larger image perhaps

Thanks Johnny and Wendy-

The geese zoomed over my head unexpectedly while I was walking the dog hoping fr some good sunset shots and it was a case of scramble and shoot. I kicked myself that I wasn't 'ready' sooner. The robin is a heavy crop- I agree with you both- I prefered it softer.

[FrankMi]

It takes practice to get better and you are certainly getting better!

I am just starting to learn to be prepared to quickly change settings when the unexpected action shot occurs, but I have missed a number of great shots because I had to stop and think about my camera settings before I could shoot. I have since learned to practice switching quickly between static and action settings to try and make the change more automatic.

When my Dual Harness arrives in a day or so, I'll change over to carrying two cameras and having one camera configured for static shots and the other configured for action shots when I'm in the woods.

[Bunty Plumchip]

Trying to experiment with camera settings taking the evening sky just prior to sunset.
Used the Fuji finepix .

There is something wrong with the Nikon 90S - it doesnot seem to want to take photos in NEF or NEF &JPEG settings. It will take one and then will not work again. I am trying to figure out if t is something I am doing wrong or if it is the camera itself as it seemed to work for shot after shot before. I was tryng for shots of a still life of some beach finds.

Bomb and ammonite

[Geoff F]

You are certainly 'pushing the easy life zone' with the first two, Carolyn.

But they do work; although I wonder about a little crop of the bottom and left side for the first one.

And would the last image take a tiny bit more highlight brightness? It is a good shot but I feel there is a little bit more wow factor to be had here.

[Bunty Plumchip]

You are certainly 'pushing the easy life zone' with the first two, Carolyn.

But they do work; although I wonder about a little crop of the bottom and left side for the first one.

And would the last image take a tiny bit more highlight brightness? It is a good shot but I feel there is a little bit more wow factor to be had here.

Thanks Geoff- The Bomb and Ammonite study is as sooc - I hope to work on the studies I did keep at some pont soon.


I waited ages for the sun to sink in between two banks of cloud, to reveal itself but it was rewarding to see in the end, and all the practice wth the dozens of shots I took of the various stages must be good practice!

[Bunty Plumchip]

I have cropped the bottom of this pictuure, because it contained some interesting but distracting old machinery and tools, and I wanted the attention to be on the arrangemnet of the trees, especially where the branch of the knarled tree has actuually grown around the extended branch of its neighbour. This is the only reason that the knarled tree is still upright. I did take photos of the conjoined part alone, but out of the context it was not all that interesting, felt it needed to include the place in the landscape as much as possible, in order to tell the story, but with as few distractions as possible. The upturned boat in the bottom right could be lost perhaps, but somehow at present it helps my eye on the scene. I am sure others will think differently being impartial to the scene.

I am never sure about B/W for nature and landscape photographs, but that is probably because I am old enouugh to remember when one could only afford to buy black and white film for a Brownie Box camera.

[Bunty Plumchip]

Experimenting for a painting. Distorted the colours in curves for expressionist -typ effect and then desaturated for the hell of it .

[Bunty Plumchip]

I find the angle interesting- the 2 dimensional cut out reflects the workmanlike simplicity of this particular village church, which is something I have been trying to capture.

[Geoff F]

Experimenting for a painting. Distorted the colours in curves for expressionist -type effect and then desaturated for the hell of it.

Distorting the colours before desaturation is a much used form of increasing contrast etc in B&W conversion.

The method, which has been attributed to a number of people, goes roughly like this.

Starting from the original colour base level. Create a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer, but don't make any adjustments yet.

Then create a Colour Mixer adjustment layer (above the HSL layer) and select Monochrome. Enter the RGB values as required. For example R30% G60% B10% as a basic starting point. Just make sure the numbers add up to 100%.

Green usually has most information while blue often produces most 'noise' in an image.

Then open the HSL layer and move the hue slider around until you get a pleasing effect. Sometimes it only takes a little bit of adjustment while some images require quite a lot. And quite often, it doesn't work at all.

But this method can produce good results, particularly with regard to darkening skies, etc.

Then, a Curves layer can be used for a final tweak.

In effect, all you are doing is distorting the colours.

This method has now, with some software, been replaced by an improved system of making more controlled distortions using selective colours.

[Bunty Plumchip]

taken through glass (the kitchen window.)
Cropped.

[Bunty Plumchip]

I finally discovered how to make an adjustment to part of a picture using layers in PP . I will get to grips with it yet.
The light today when taking photos at Elvington Aerodrome (Yorkshire Air ,Museum) was glaring to say the least. I upped the ISO setting to 250. Most compositions proved too busy and messy - always the proverbial 'blue anorak' strolled across the scene just at the wrong moment. At events like this it is inevitable- I am sure they do it deliberately. As we were not displaying this time, we were not at the event before the public were allowed in, so opportunities were limited.

I quite liked this snap, but am not sure what to do about the buldings in the background. They are part of the old aerodrome, and in one way I quite like the utilitarian ugliness of them in contrast to the ladies in their dresses and hats, and they give a palin enough backdrop which does add to the story. In another way I find they jar, but I can't crop anymore without losing too much of the propeller which I think is necessary to the drama. To blur the buildings seems to make that part of the composition too bland altgether.

I shot n in JPEG fine as the NEF setting on my camera seems to be temperamental. Sometimes it refuses to work.

The shot is a trifle hurried as one group of people in modern dress had just wandered out of shot and I saw a 'blue anorak' approaching, which I managed to crop out of the left hand side.

Altogether though, I found it the most interesting shot I took this week and decided on it for this week's exercise in finding my way around the PP software a customer in my shop , taking pity on me, kindly gave to me (Serif photoplus X3).

[FrankMi]

Hi Carolyn! Great to hear that you are starting to get the hang of masking and layers! This is the type of shooting situation where you can really make use of layers. All you need to do is to set the camera on a tripod for the composition you really want, then take as many pictures as it takes to get all of the parts of the aircraft in one or another image as people move about.

You can then use layers to merge several images, cloning out the folks you don't want in the image and replacing those locations in the image with parts of another image where the folks weren't in front of that part of the aircraft. In the end, if you want, you could include one or two folks that most appropriately complement the scene.

Moreover, if you don't like the building, just move left or right enough to get a background you like and grab a snap of that for a replacement background. Just keep the sun in the same relative position to the camera angle so that the shadows and lighting remain consistent with the original image.

I hope I'm making sense! If not, let me know and I can point you to videos and tutorials that may help make the process more clear.

[Bunty Plumchip]

Thanks Frank- I think it will take a lot of practice before I can achieve that, but hey, life is nothing without challenges.
Thanks for looking and for all your help. Much appreciated.

[Geoff F]

I found that Serif Photo Plus X3 to be an excellent programme in many ways, in fact I preferred it to the later X4.

The only downside I found was that some of the 'special options' only work with Jpeg and some features, like their auto masking just didn't come up to what I required.

Also, I was never really happy with their Raw converter so, eventually, I started converting my Raw shots with Raw Therapy then finishing with X3.

But overall, I found it to be a more 'user friendly' editor than Photoshop. And their Help files are quite comprehensive.

I know what you mean about 'out of character' people wandering into a shot; I get the same problem at my local vintage machinery show.

This photo has worked though.

[Bunty Plumchip]

This is the same object taken from different angles because I can't decide whether the story is more mpactful with the fields or with the sea. I decided to apply a grungy overlay for a couple of reasons. One, because the story is quite a cynical one. Some low-lifes fly tipped a load of stuff on the cliff top in our village. The Council cleared it up and took it away, but I found ut later that this bin was actually part of that rubbish and someone must have taken it along the clifftop, or dragged it back up from the beach, presumably as a statement for people to put their litter in it or take it home. There it stood, in the middle of a beautiful nowhere with our 360 degree horizons, with the pile of **** beside it. I just found it a cynical image, especially being extra aware because of Donald's project on here. I felt the grungy overlay made the statement of despoilation. The other reason I decided to use the tool was because although I tried the image in B&W , I felt it didn't work because there is not enough there tonewise to tell the story or set the mood - I felt it needed a bit more dramatic help.

Not sure about the cropping either, I wanted to show the space, yet still maintain the dominance of the bin.

I know using these overlays is not to everyone's taste, but as part of a rubbish portfolio Donald has inspired me to make it may just help to appeal to people's consciences around my area.

Other than that, I did have some other week 23 material I took a lot of trouble over shooting and composing on the Nikon this morning, but the memory card did something strange and everything got lost. So I decided to use these taken with the Finepix bridge instead.


This was the original picture. I straightened the horizon, even though it always looks as if it slopes, but is otherwiase unedited.

[Bunty Plumchip]

original


Messing about with the unsatisfactory snapshot, not in the village church, I hasten to add!

[Donald]

Messing about with the unsatisfactory snapshot, not in the village church, I hasten to add!

Carolyn - I have to confess to liking the original. I think there is a lovely tonal range across the image and a serenity and calmness about it that imparts a nice atmosphere. The heavily processed versions are, what I would call, more in-your-face and less in keeping with the subject.