Ming Dynasty Chinese Garden

[Brownbear]

The following images were photographed at Dr. Sun Yet-Sun Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver's Chinatown. It's a beautiful place! The garden is representative of a Ming Scholars residence, an exact replica of a Chinese Garden during the Ming Dynasty from 1368-1644. The elements of the garden being weathered rocks, jade green water, mystical plants and beautiful architecture.

Hand held using a wide angle lens and aperture priority (except for my beautiful fish)

I would especially appreciate feedback on the composition of the garden shots because even though the scene itself is breathtakingly beautiful it is a busy scene with lots going on, and people in the scene also limited my choice of composition.

I would also like to know if they look over processed. I suspect that they may be because I had to lighten a lot of shadows.



1.

f/11 SS 1/40 ISO 140 focal length 100 mm





2.
f/16 SS 1/40 ISO 100 focal length 100 mm





3.

f/16 SS 1/40 ISO 100 focal length 10 mm






4.

f/13 SS 1/40 ISO 140 focal length 10 mm



My beautiful fish! A Koi (a few of these guys can live up to 200 years) If it is not a great fish shot please do let me know. It could just be that I'm in love with his face.

f/10 SS 1/400 ISO 280 Focal Length 300 mm

[purplehaze]

Christina,

Thanks for introducing me to this lovely place! I will have to put it on the list for the next time I get to Vancouver.

#3 is my favourite of the bunch. I think it is a terrific perspective and composition.

Your fish is wonderful, but if he were mine, I think I would play with the colour of the water, to see if I could make it less muddy looking.

[Brownbear]

Hi Janis,

This was my first visit, too. Definitely worth a visit, likely several. I would move in if they let me.

Thanks for letting me know your preference for #3... I almost didn't post that one thinking that it was rather odd and/or possible crooked or something.

Yes, the water is rather unattractive especially when compared to the beauty of my fish. I will try playing with the colour and see if that helps. If anyone has any tips on how I can make the water prettier I would be most appreciative.

Thank you.

Christina,

Thanks for introducing me to this lovely place! I will have to put it on the list for the next time I get to Vancouver.

#3 is my favourite of the bunch. I think it is a terrific perspective and composition.

Your fish is wonderful, but if he were mine, I think I would play with the colour of the water, to see if I could make it less muddy looking.

[purplehaze]

I almost didn't post that one

But it has so much going for it, with those strong diagonals! And I like the contrast of the yellow and orange stones in the foreground with the blue sky in the rear.

I have limited experience with wide angle, but the wide angle lens naturally distorts, and the trick, it seems to me, is to use that distortion to good effect, which in my opinion, you have done here. More effectively, I would say, than in #1, but someone else might disagree.

[Rita]

Hi Christina,

Nice series here. I grew up in Vancouver and have lived between there and the Fraser Valley my whole life and I have never visited this place yet.

I had a very quick attempt at your fish. The edit is not well done but just to give you an idea. In photoshop, which I am also just learning, I did a quick selection of the fish, inverted the selection, played with hue & saturation until I got some blue in the water. Reselected the fish and added just a bit of local contrast to it.
Hope you don't mind and that this helps even just a bit

[Brownbear]

Janis, Thank you for noticing the lines. Appreciated. I haven't used this lens very much so I'm still getting used to it. I did use the auto distortion correction tool in Lightroom. Perhaps it is just a crooked scene.

Rita... It is well worth a visit. It's in an iffy area of the city but so beautiful behind those walls. I visited because it was rated by National Geographic as a top city garden. I waited for a day with nice clouds because it doesn't open until 9am

Thank you so much for taking the time to show me your edit. Truly appreciated as I do like this fish and I'm still of the mind that I can do something with it. I see that darkening the background helps the water a lot and/or cleaning up the little bits of silt in the water. I will give that a try later this week. The challenge for me will be selecting nicely around the fish. It might be easier to find out when the pond is cleaned and visit the day after.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

[John 2]

Hi Christina. Spent a week in Vancouver a few years ago and didn't know this place existed. Wish we had. Nice set of images. Like Janis, I particularly like no.3. It's a good use of wide angle to add something to the comp. IMHO, all that's missing is a small contrast boost in all of them. As for the fish, I would do no more than extend the dynamic range either with an increase in contrast (a bit heavy) or using Unsharp Mask. To use USM, just reverse the first two sliders. Set the "Amount" to about 10 and the "Radius" to about 190. Do it as many times as suites your taste. I've applied it three times to the version below. Finally , I've added a slight levels adjustment to the mid tones. Just makes the fish pop a bit more. Hope that helps.

[Shadowman]

I've been to this garden, you did far better with your images than I did. When I was there the day was overcast so I didn't get any spectacular cloud formations like you. You've used a variety of compositional techniques (rule of thirds, leading lines, layering), plus the use of an UWA lens; so your images have a unique perspective on the subject. All are quite good, but #4 although very different lacks enough appeal, I think the problem is the colors aren't exciting and the cropped pagoda doesn't really work. Perhaps if you crop out most of the pond and dodge and burn around the pagoda you might increase the interest in the shot.

Keep the fish.

[Otavio]

Hi, Christina. Very nice shots. Cant pick a favourite here, but if I had to, it would be 3 or 4. Thanks for sharing!

[Mike Buckley]

Your compositions look fine to me, though in the first one I would either add space to the right or crop that side more to the left. Well done in a very difficult type of scene to photograph!

#3 is most definitely crooked. That's proven by the little bridge in the center of the image that is leaning a lot, which isn't caused by distortion. The tilt is so extreme I assumed you intended it. (I like the tilt and I rarely like tilted images.) The first one is tilted a little to the left, making it seem like a mistake rather than by design.

When post-processing to correct tilt, look for strong vertical or horizontal lines in the center of the image. (It helps to pray that you have at least one.) That's because a wide-angle focal length doesn't distort the center of the image. Image #1 has a nice one that you can use and making that correction results in a crop mentioned above that works for me.

Your and my camera have an electronic level called a Virtual Horizon and I use it on almost every shot I make. Check out page 269 of your User's Manual as well as the other pages mentioned on that one. I've configured the Preview Button to display the level in the viewfinder when hand holding the camera. (See page 255 for that.) When I'm using a tripod, I display the level in Live View.

Your post-processing seems to have created some halos in the sky where it meets the pagoda's roof. (These are not sharpening halos.)

In the first one, try lowering the left side of the curve a bit, as the image looks a little flat to me. You regularly mention that you have post-processed an image to increase detail in the shadows. I think you might be confusing increased detail with increased brightness. A shadow area that is quite dark can display the same detail as when it is brightened.

When reworking the image of the fish, it's best that you not create banding in the water.

[Brownbear]

Thank you to all for your helpful feedback and suggestions. I'm finding it challenging to look at a series of landscape images and decide which ones work or not, so your feedback is immensely helpful as it lets me know what to look for.

The next few days are very busy for me but as soon as I find time I will do a re-post of a couple of the images. (edited or another shot of the same scene) Later this summer I will visit this place again and I expect that I will be more prepared for the scene at hand.

John 2...

If you visit again it is worth a visit. They offer very informative tours. (history, architecture and the art) Thank you for the letting me know that the images need some more contrast, and a special thank you for the tips on processing the fish with an USM. Truly appreciated.

John (Shadowman)...

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the compositions, and especially #4. I have another shot that might work better. I was delighted with the clouds on that day. Yes, I intend to keep my fish.

Otavio...

Thank you for your comments and feedback. It is very encouraging to hear that you like these images, as I'm working hard to improve my landscape images.

Mike...

Thank you so much for your feedback, advice and tips. As always, truly appreciated.

As soon as I have time I will post a few images with the suggested improvements (if it is possible to do)

Indeed, I suspected the image was crooked. The tilt in #3 was not intentional. I suspect that I tilted the camera to avoid including people in the shot, or just to fit in the line of rocks - forgetting about keeping the camera level. I've never used the virtual horizon and it sounds like a very handy tool, so I will check it out.

The halos in the first image were created by using a layer for shadows, and another for curves, and another for sharpening. I could see the effect in the image but I couldn't find my way back to erase them. I will start from scratch the next time around.

Thank you for advising on shadows versus brightness with respect to details. I will read up on this and try that out. And also for the tip on banding.

Thank you to all. Truly appreciated!

[bnnrcn]

Sorry for being a bit late Christina. Although #3 seems the best for most of the commentators I would like to say that #2 is very nice besides #3. For lens distortions, there is a 'lens corrections' part in ACR which you can use easily , just choose 'manual' and try the sliders.It might give better results than auto corrections. This place looks like heaven and your fish looks a kind of cute

[Brownbear]

Following are a few edits and/or substituted images based on the feedback and suggestions I received.

I've learned that when I'm taking images with a wide angle lens I need to allow room for the cropping that lens corrections result in. I intend to start using the horizon meter in my camera as my attempt at straightening the images destroyed the lines in the composition I created. Also this building is not truly straight.

I also learned that I lightened the shadows in the first images too much, so the edits are darker. Fortunately the gardens are easy for me to visit for another try.

Much to my surprise (because my wide angle lens is a quality lens) I've learned that I have chromatic aberrations along the sides of the rooftop in these images. (not fixed in these images because I usually fix CA in Lightroom, and by the time I noticed it I was in Photoshop CC and I haven't yet learned how to fix it in Photoshop )

#3 The straightened image



For John (Shadowman)

Weeping Willow... (in hindsight the lighting here was a little flat but I think this composition works better)



Substitute

1A

Substituted for #1 because straightening and cropping the image didn't work...




The Fish

(Binnur, indeed my fish is very cute!)

The next time I try photographing fish I will visit the aquarium which has cleaner water. I was able to darken the background using Rita's and John's suggested techniques but I couldn't manage to erase around the fish with any finesse. So instead I used a hue adjustment to make the water a darker green and lowered the exposure of the image.




Thank you to all. Truly appreciated!

[bnnrcn]

These are all better Christina For the lens corrections in PS CC, just choose 'filter>lens correction' and then you can use the 'automatic options' or make your adjustments manually by choosing 'custom' .

[Kaye Leggett]

I love them - for me, I often ask, do the pictures invite me to go there ? they do, so well captured. I don't think they are over processed because a chinese garden is a processed place, if that makes sense. Your pictures do not detract from the garden feel at all

[Mike Buckley]

These are all better

Agreed.

[Otavio]

Agreed.

+1!

[nkpliangjk58]

agreed anymore!

[Rita]

I think these are much better

[Shadowman]

Love the alternate version of #4.