Reflections

[Wirefox]

Well it was another typical UK summers day today. Sticky hot and lashings of rain. Trying not to be too dispirited I dragged a black shiny shelf out of the garage (it had fallen off the wall), set up my tripod, flash and reflector and had a bash. Varying results so C&C most welcome.

No 1. I have also created blue and green tint versions but I quite liked the gold.


No2


No3. Not sure I should give the kids their dinner money back...they dont seem to have missed it


No4.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steve,

Another series to put me to shame for not getting the camera out today.

Sticky warm and cloudy here (Windsor), no rain.
Firstly, let me say these are all good shots and I'm only picking on the small things because a) that's all that's wrong with them and b) because I know you want to improve and if we don't give feedback, that probably won't happen.

I think No.1 is my favourite, also technically the best; I don't think I can fault it.
I had to think what it was - a tent 'peg' or ground anchor for something, am I right?

No.2 leaves one wondering how it is supported, this is probably deliberate.
There's a few surface dust spots visible.

No.3 has a few more dust spots on the surface and also looks like the flash has caught some airborne dust leading to pale, de-focussed spots in some places - either that or the healing/clone tool was used with a different colour donor reference to what it was covering.

No.4, the apple, has similar problems to No.3 but not so bad, although there also seems to be more blotchiness in the background above the apple.

I know the PP side isn't what you find most rewarding, but it seems to be the limiting factor in some of your images, especially if you turn them round quickly like these, I'm you could do better with more time.
Having said that, I can't help feeling you get more out of photography from having done something, than do I, having not even tried, so on that basis, maybe I should keep quiet.

Hope that helps,

[Wirefox]

Dave

As usual a really useful set of comments. To be honest I was most pleased with No 1. It required very little processing. In fact apart from temperature change and some sharpening that was it. It is some kind of ground anchor I had hanging in the garage. I cannot remember for the life of me what it was for. No2 (as with all these images) was taken on a very shiny black surface to get the reflections. Being black and made from some kind of plastic it attracts dust like a dyson. It took a fair bit of messing about with the lighting set up so as not to get glare. Eventually did it with hand held flash with -1 stop flash exposure compensation and a silver reflector sited to the right of the subject and pointing slightly toward the subject. I am going to use white reflector next time since everything ended up with a blue hue.

No 4 did need some cloning as there was a lighter strip at the top of the image. This was caused by stray light fron a window I think. I am not a dab hand at cloning and always end up a little blotchy. I just need to be more patient I guess. I can only see the blotches on the original at full size so your eyesight is much better than mine. I always seem to be in a hurry with the processing. There is little time to sit and take time over it. I agree that it is a limiting factor but I also need to get much better at exposing the images better and composing them in camera.

Cheers

Steve

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steve,

I can understand the problems - and I'm dying to say "blue hue to you too", I dunno why

On a more productive front; have you got any anti-static solution, or one of those vinyl LP zapper guns for the plastic sheet? (for next time)

On the cloning front, it's easy to get a mindset that the brush size should only be 'so' big, one trick I've learnt recently is that if you have a large area to tackle, start it with a huge brush size (e.g. 30-50% picture size); a few click of the ] soon makes it big, do the majority, with a feathered edge if need be. Then reduce the size, with a few [, and get between any bits you need to. Again, doing it at less than 100% opacity and building up with several passes, possibly from different donor Alt-click points can help with avoiding visible repeat patterns.

Not sure my eyes are that good, I just found viewing the laptop LCD slightly above perpendicular (which normally lifts the perceived black point), accentuated the defects in No.4.

Cheers,