Caledon Horse Trials C&C welcome

[HMW12]

My first attendance at an eventing competition. Was a good excuse to get out the camera which has been sitting on the shelf for far too long. This one is of my coach on her horse Milo - a police horse dropout. I will post a couple of more later. This was taken at mid-day so the lighting was not the best but nothing to be done about that. I am not sure if I have done a good job in post. Am rather rusty. Have I cropped to severely? Makes me wish for a longer and faster lens

And no pictures will try again:-) It's been awhile

[HMW12]

SOCC - just exported as a jpeg


and final version

[rpcrowe]

I do like the final version!

[Shadowman]

Nice capture and cropping.

[bnnrcn]

I like the crop

[dennybeall]

The timing is great and the crop is good considering what you had to work with. I prefer to see either the entire jump or just horse and rider in any jumping shot.

[Geoff F]

I did wonder about a 5 x 4 ratio crop but your main subject is quite close to the left edge so having excess space on the right makes being close look like a potential problem.

Possibly you could try going square and losing a bit from the bottom to make closeness to the left appear more like a deliberate zoom.

But there isn't really anything wrong with your current cropping.

[Manfred M]

The image metadata tells us a few interesting things. The first thing (assuming that your camera's clock is set correctly), you are shooting under less than ideal conditions, if the shot was taken at at 1:14 PM near the end of June. That certainly shows why the harsh shadows are there. The direction of the sun is not great either, throwing shadow's into the rider's face and horse's face and chest. Being a touch underexposed is not helping either.

The metadata also shows that you were using focal length of 68mm and your lens is a 35-105mm lens, so you could have gotten a lot closer with your shot (i.e. less of a need to crop).

I'm not a fan of the featureless sky either; but that is really a result of the processing; there really are some pleasing details in the sky. I've taken a quick crack fixing a few of the things I've pointed out.




The small image I got from the screen capture means there are definitely some artifacts from PP work, especially in the sky. I went with a square crop and I guess I could have done a bit tighter crop, but was trying to conceal some of the PP artifacts.

[HMW12]

Thanks everyone for the comments - all very helpful. Guilty of beginner thinking - "I can crop later"
I am not sure what is happening with the metadata in terms of the lens - its a Sigma 55-200 I will check in LR and see what was set in the Lens correction but i don't recall even going into that panel. But yes it was shot at 68mm.
Thank-you Manfred for pointing out the potential for improving the sky - I confess that I was concentrating on the horse and rider and did not even consider the sky

[Manfred M]

This is what the metadata file is saying.




If you were shooting with the 55-200mm lens, you had plenty of reach for the shot. Yes, you should leave a bit of space around the image to crop, as removing a bit of additional material is a lot easier than trying to reconstruct material that isn't there.

For featureless skies, in the Lightroom Develop module, go to the HSL / Color Tab / B&W tab and then click on the word "Luminance". Try moving the Blue and Aqua sliders to the left to see if you can recover any additional detail in the sky. Just be aware of any other changes in the image and be subtle about it. You still might have to go quite far to the left with one or both of the sliders.

[IzzieK]

I like Manfred's edit better...so if you go to Lightbox and click on the arrows you will definitely find the difference...and having to work on a smaller image is a mean feat by itself...

Don't worry about the taking the shot then thinking you can crop it later...We are all guilty of that thought at some stage of another...I call it snap-shot thinking... Now, let me see when I did really think of slowing down and using my tripod instead??? Oooopsssssss! not many times...