Project 52 by Ron (ronlane)

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Originally Posted by Geoff F

Those work OK, Ron. Shooting faces under peaked hats is always troublesome but you have avoided any strong shadows here.

If you do manage to reshoot some of the previous images, I would suggest leaving the originals here and posting the reworkings alongside them.

That creates a useful learning experience for anybody else reading this thread.

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Thanks Geoff. I will leave all pictures on this thread, if nothing else, just so I can see how I got better. These pictures today were harder than the others because you are in a store of photographers. I was really wanting to get some new glass but they did not have the one I was going to look at and I can't afford the ones I want.

Ended up coming home from the photo store with a speedlight. I thought that I would test it out and also capture the last of the blooming flowers of the year before fall and winter sets in.

Please help me with how I could make them better. Used PSE 10 for post and brought the brightness and blown out areas down.

#1
http://i47.tinypic.com/wbcs3m.jpg

#2
http://i45.tinypic.com/zv6eev.jpg

As a personal opinion, Ron, I'm never keen on working strictly to thirds with portraits. And I include people, animals and flowers equally as portraits.

So I would crop tighter to remove more of what is a potentially distracting background. Possibly something around 5 x 4 ratio.

You have a good focus depth and sharpness here. But, for me, the mix of natural and artificial light has caused a few blocks of different brightness levels which doesn't quite appear easy on the eye.

And a very minor point. There is a little blemish on the lower petal which I would clone out.

Shooting flowers to a high quality is actually far more difficult than it would appear, so you have done well for a first experiment.

Thanks for the great feedback Geoff. I see what you are saying about the portraits and the different lighting. I tried to post the lighting by adding an adjustment layer and darkening it. I didn't feel that I could go darker than #2 without really hurting the overall effect.

I see the spot that you are mentioning, actually had an ant on it in some other pictures that I took. I will go fix that.

Okay got it back to PSE 10 and cropped it, fixed the spots, and dodged the natural light in the background.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2zqrmmu.jpg

Hi Ron,

Could I ask whether this was shot as a jpg original?

The reason I ask is because of the thin, but very bright, halo, particularly notable at 100% in full screen mode.

I wondered if this was applied in camera, then subsequently enhanced by sharpening in PSE10.

Apart from the halo, I prefer the last image to the previous versions.

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Originally Posted by Dave Humphries

Hi Ron,

Could I ask whether this was shot as a jpg original?

The reason I ask is because of the thin, but very bright, halo, particularly notable at 100% in full screen mode.

I wondered if this was applied in camera, then subsequently enhanced by sharpening in PSE10.

Apart from the halo, I prefer the last image to the previous versions.

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Thanks for the questions and pointing out the halo. It was originally shot in raw but this last edit was from the jpeg. I will rework it and remove that halo. It was from the sharpening and probably brought out by the dodging.

Okay, so back to PSE10 and maybe I have it now.

http://i45.tinypic.com/5kfvvc.jpg

Hi Ron! Lovely colors and sun patterns on the pedals. Nice and sharp with beautiful Bokeh as well. I like it!

I haven't started playing with artificial light yet so I may not know what I'm talking about but I see a kind of double image, particularly on the leaves at the top and wondered of there was a breeze blowing the flower around and if so, could the double image be caused by the flash?

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Originally Posted by FrankMi

Hi Ron! Lovely colors and sun patterns on the pedals. Nice and sharp with beautiful Bokeh as well. I like it!

I haven't started playing with artificial light yet so I may not know what I'm talking about but I see a kind of double image, particularly on the leaves at the top and wondered of there was a breeze blowing the flower around and if so, could the double image be caused by the flash?

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The wind was blowing a little. Part of that could be from the burning in PSE10.

Thank you for the comments and looking at my photos.

There is a very slight rather dark halo in the original posted images. I suspect the reworkings have exaggerated the effect.

A common problem with this sort of shot. Probably due to the mixture of lighting and mostly coming from the backlighting effect around a fairly soft flower edge.

I think I may try making any edits with adjustment layers and sharpen on a duplicate layer set to Luminosity mode with an edited mask to vary the sharpening and avoid adding too much to the petal edge.

Geoff. I think I did what you are saying. Did it help?

http://i48.tinypic.com/x0zb68.jpg

Field trip with the boy today. Used Lightroom 4 for editing. C C please.

#1

http://i50.tinypic.com/hurtwz.jpg

#2

http://i46.tinypic.com/2i7mvew.jpg

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Originally Posted by ronlane

Field trip with the boy today. Used Lightroom 4 for editing. C C please.

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I would want to get close to either of these guys! It looks like you got good detail in both though!

If you can, try to tone down the right hand tree in #1 to get better separation from the cat's face.

Although not a big deal, you might want to lose the brown clump behind the bear in #2.

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Originally Posted by FrankMi

I would want to get close to either of these guys! It looks like you got good detail in both though!

If you can, try to tone down the right hand tree in #1 to get better separation from the cat's face.

Although not a big deal, you might want to lose the brown clump behind the bear in #2.

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Thanks Frank. I was close enough to them, but wished I had a bigger zoom lens though. I will give it a try on #1 and the crop on #2 is easy. Thanks for pointing that out.

It doesn't matter how big a zoom you have for wildlife, Ron. You will always want more. :D

A couple of good and interesting photos.

And with regard to the flower, you have reduced the halo problem with your last edit; although possibly a fraction high in saturation.

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Originally Posted by Geoff F

It doesn't matter how big a zoom you have for wildlife, Ron. You will always want more. :D

A couple of good and interesting photos.

And with regard to the flower, you have reduced the halo problem with your last edit; although possibly a fraction high in saturation.

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Thanks Geoff, I just have to convince the wife to let me spent $20,000 on a single lens and then......

I probably did over saturate on the flower.

Question for you guys, what do you prefer to post process with? I am trying out Lightroom 4 for 30 days and I really think that I like it much better than PSE 10.

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Originally Posted by ronlane

Question for you guys, what do you prefer to post process with?

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You may get as many different answers to that question as there are ways to accomplish the goal!

I have both Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 and have become comfortable with the tools available in Photoshop so I do 95% of my post processing there. Lightroom is simpler to use but to me it feels too confining.

If I am going to take the time and effort required to learn a product, I want to use one that has any feature that I might decide to explore at any point in the future. As layers and masking are reportedly the most useful of all the photographer's post processing tools, that is where I started so that is where I'm likely to remain.

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Originally Posted by FrankMi

Lightroom is simpler to use but to me it feels too confining.

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I think that is where I was/am with PSE 10. It's like LR will let me do somethings that PSE won't and vise versa.

Week 11 has been tough, I was on vacation part of it and when I got back to work, I was too busy to take photos.

Here is one that I edited during my vacation. I was using lightroom to adjust the colors, cropped and straightened it.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2he9ers.jpg