Project 52 by Ron (ronlane)

[Geoff F]

That is a lot better, Ron.

Just one other thought. Would a crop, say 5 x 4 ratio help with removing some of the out of focus foreground.

[ronlane]

That is a lot better, Ron.

Just one other thought. Would a crop, say 5 x 4 ratio help with removing some of the out of focus foreground.

It most likely would. I played with the crop placement to move the bike up and down in the fram and like this one best of all, because it shows more of a leading line of where he is headed with the bike.

[ronlane]

This weekend we had a Toys for Tots poker run with my local jeep club, so I thought I would drag my camera along and get a few pictures. One of the items that was auctioned off was an autographed football. I thought this turned out really good. Any C&C on these?

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2.

[Lon Howard]

Hi Ron,

I've just started looking at your project, so I'm a Lon-come-lately! On #1, what I'm missing is being able to read all or most of what's written on the ball; most of it doesn't show up in the frame, creating some frustration at not seeing what's there. Maybe you could have asked the gentleman to pose it for you. Part of his head and hair is at the bottom right; that part could probably be cloned out ok. The blue sliver at the left bottom draws attention away from the ball; since there's almost no texture in the black background you could probably just paint black over it. Now you've got all the attention on the football.

#2 Is nice and sharp with the main issue being that the Marine is looking askance and not directly at the gentleman with the football. Outside of asking for a pose, my solution would have been to use continuous shooting to fire off multiple clicks for the duration of the interaction between the two men. Blurring the background would have been a good thing, preferably in-camera with an f/1.4 lens or at least an f/2.8.

Congratulations on persevering with your project!

[Geoff F]

Unless you are the official photographer and are able to fully control the people and backgrounds, this sort of shot is fraught with problems. I find the only hope is to quickly shoot from various angles and zoom lengths in the chance that a few will work out OK.

But too often, you are hemmed in by a crowd and unable to move.

I agree with what Lon has said about the ball shot. But if you couldn't get the ball arranged to the perfect angle, what you have is acceptable. I can accept the change of colour in that stripe on the bottom left corner, but what worries me more is the bottom right corner where there appears to be a tiny part of someones head just visible. I would clone that out.

With the second one, there is a lot of conflict with the background items. Chiefly, the man directly behind the soldier (which probably can't be altered) and the part of an arm on the right side.

Also, as Lon mentioned, we can only see the back of the person presenting the ball.

I think I would try to crop tighter so as to concentrate more on the main subjects, the soldier and the ball.

So I would try a mixture of crop and clone on the right side to remove the arm.

There is little of importance to the left of the presenter's head, so I think a large portion of his back can be cropped out without losing anything important. This should concentrate the view on those important items.

Possibly a 4 x 5 ratio crop might work. Otherwise I would try 5 x 4 and lose a bit from the bottom as required. The tips of the white gloves are missing so I expect you could crop as close as the presenter's waist without losing anything important.

It is a scene where I would like to try a few crops before deciding which works best.

Exposure and focus are perfect.

[ronlane]

Thank Lon and Geoff. I really appreciate your input on these. I wasn't the main shooter at this, I was one of about 3-4 that were taking pictures. These two shots were posted because I think they were some of the best when looking at exposure, wb and focus. The ball seems to pop out in #1, I really wished I could have read it too, but I was at a low angle trying not to get anything in the background. On #2, my subject is the Marine in his dress uniform. I think it popped out as well.

I've taken pictures in a group setting like this a few times since I got my dslr in April and I can really see these are a BIG improvement.

Again, thank you for your help.

[ronlane]

This week it is portraits. It's holiday time, so I took pictures of the Kids for cards and the family.

[Geoff F]

Sharp colourful photo, Ron. Just enough decorated tree to show the season; but not too much, which would have dominated the scene.

The only slight problem which I can see is that when viewed at full screen size the girl seems to have a very slight touch of red eye, particularly with her right eye. You do have to look closely though, and uploading the image may have made it worse.

[ronlane]

Sharp colourful photo, Ron. Just enough decorated tree to show the season; but not too much, which would have dominated the scene.

The only slight problem which I can see is that when viewed at full screen size the girl seems to have a very slight touch of red eye, particularly with her right eye. You do have to look closely though, and uploading the image may have made it worse.

Thanks Geoff. I had a little bit of a hot spot in both of their eyes that I couldn't get out in lightroom. I guess the download brought it out more.

[Geoff F]

I've tried a number of auto red eye corrections in different software, Ron, but never had much success with it.

The exception being CS5 where I've only tried it twice, but each time it worked perfectly.

Looking back at my notes, but can't find the original source, this is what has worked for me previously.

Method 1. Zoom in close, draw a selection around the problem. I find the freehand selection tool works better than drawing out a circle. Feather the selection slightly, one pixel is often sufficient. Go to Hue & Saturation control and set for Reds. Desaturate to around 70 or 80%. Adjust overall lightness levels, of the selected area if necessary. Occasionally, Curves or Colour Balance adjustment may be needed.

Method 2. Zoom in. Use the colour selection eye dropper to set the natural colour required. If you can't find that try a dark brown. Create a new layer and paint over the red eye problem with a small soft low opacity brush. Air brush effect can work well. Try setting the layer blend mode to Saturation or Colour.

You may need to additionally draw selections around any remaining bright areas and change the lightness etc to suit.

The second method is a bit more tricky to apply but can be effective when more conventional methods have failed. It is possible to work directly without layers but these do allow a bit of 'cancel and start again' options without any problems and the blend mode options may prove useful.

But since shooting with an external flash (Speedlite 580) which is reasonably tall and using a little flash output negative compensation, I rarely get problems now. Or use any of the other options to avoid direct flash.

[ronlane]

Found me at the local out door ice rink with the kids for the first time. They took to it very easily, me, I went three times around and was done.

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IMG_7241 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

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IMG_7258 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

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IMG_7300 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

[Donald]

A very, very good set of images, Ron. I think you convey a lovely atmosphere in them.

[ronlane]

Thanks Donald.

[Geoff F]

I'm not a great fan of using vignette in most situations; but putting a 'spotlight' on the first image has worked very well.

All sharp and well exposed.

[ronlane]

I'm not a great fan of using vignette in most situations; but putting a 'spotlight' on the first image has worked very well.

All sharp and well exposed.

I wouldn't have normally done it either Geoff, but I was learning more about lightroom 4 and these seemed like good ones to try it on. Thanks for the input.

[ronlane]

I was playing with the vinegetting some more and I think I like these better.

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IMG_7242 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

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IMG_7272 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

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IMG_7241 by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

Geoff, do these work better?

[Geoff F]

I don't normally place a frame around images which are shown here; but I think something like that is necessary here to 'constrain' the actual image size.

Probably need suitable cropping to fit a border to the image. Should work well if you get it right though.

I still like the idea of the spotlight on your star performer; that will be hard to beat.

[ronlane]

I'll take a picture and process it for this week, but today, I got my monitor calibrated and decided to reprocess the Christmas pictures of my kids. Wow, what a difference it makes, who would have thought.

[Donald]

It does indeed, Ron. The skin tones in particular are now much better.

[ronlane]

It does indeed, Ron. The skin tones in particular are now much better.

Thanks Donald. It's seems really bright now, but I have to say I really like it.