2018 Project 52, First Quarter, by Joe Small (Joebranko)

[Shadowman]

Nice melt series.

[joebranko]

Nice reflections shots in post #14.

Thanks John.

[joebranko]

Nice melt series.

Thank you.

[Wavelength]

Excellent images!!!

[skitterbug]

Hi Joe ~ The snow scenes are well done. I always have favorites when I look at pics. The one that stands out to me is the lone tree keeping its place against all odds while living next to a raging water fall. Amazing!

[CormacD]

[QUOTE=joebranko;706133]After all the snow fall in Hamilton, the temperature rose two days ago and left large puddles in the park. I decided to utilize the puddles for some reflections and here are some of my efforts:

I really like your tree reflections work, reminds me of some of Monet's garden works.

[joebranko]

Wow! Thanks!

[joebranko]

Taken in Hamilton Harbour with the Skyway Bridge in the background. The sun was setting to the left of the frame. ISO 400, 17mm, f 9.0,
1/320 sec.

[Wavelength]

Nice; i feel a comfort, looking at this

[joebranko]

Nice; i feel a comfort, looking at this

Thanks Nandakumar. I appreciate that.

[skitterbug]

+1 to Nandakumar's comment.... But I'm waiting for the fish to jump and splash!

[Geoff F]

Works for me. A nice graduation between strong colours and subtle tints. Good sense of perspective as well.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured post #28.

[CormacD]

Beautiful, Joe, the Golden Hour with the sun from the side, the way to go.

[billtils]

Joe

I'm a late-comer to your Project 52 series, so apologies for the time-shifted comments.

I like your trees+snow shots a lot. I've tried a few similar ones (and also some trees+mist) but the results always end up as not very interesting shots of a group of trees, whereas yours are superb.

The Niagara+tree shot also appealed a lot, classic framing and lovely colours in the water - but having said that about the colour, did you look at it as a B&W by any chance?

[joebranko]

Learning Photoshop:
My first attempt at using this software. Most of the processing was done in Lightroom; then switched to Photoshop and experimented with an adjustment layer. Then following up on Bills suggestion for a B&W version of the tree at Niagara falls, I chose a B&W adjustment layer for this first attempt. I am thinking of cropping some more from left and top as there is too much white...

[skitterbug]

I hesitate to make any suggestions. I know nothing about what B/W should be. I do know that I like the picture the way it is. I'd say that if you really felt the need to crop any more from it, don't take very much at all. The way it is now shows me how much expanse there is. How small the tree is to its location. But that's just my take on your photo. Yep I like it as is.

[Manfred M]

It's nice to see that you are learning Photoshop. The basics are not that hard, but there are so many different ways of tackling things, that there are always several ways to use it and get similar results.

The Canadian / Horseshoe Falls are tough to photography because of the amount of mist that is kicked up by the water.

In Lightroom (or in Photoshop, the Camera Raw Filter in the filters menu) have the dehaze tool. Gentle application of it should pull out a bit more detail for you and will bring out some features that are there but not visible.

Another issue that I see is that the shot is rather underexposed. Scenes like this tend to fool the camera's metering system into underexposing and a stop to two stops of exposure compensation are often called for. If you look at your histogram, I think you will find that the brightest areas of snow have a value of around 200; whereas snow is white, so the brightest areas should be at 255. This is what the black point, white point and middle point adjustments fix. There is a school of thought in the B&W community that I subscribe to is that in most images, you should show a full tonal range of values from pure black (0) to pure white (255). There are only 256 tonal values available for a B&W image; in most images you need to use all of them.

Finally areas that are not doing much for the image (after you see what my first two points do for the image); I definitely see why you might consider cropping out some of the left hand side of the shot, so long as the balance is still there to counteract the presence of the tree. I would be more concerned about cropping out the top as both the clouds and mist are not doing much for the image.

[Urbanflyer]

I generally agree with Manfred--and bravo to you for moving into more learning about Post Processing. As Manfred said, cropping the left needs to be thought about carefully as the strength of this image is the current placement of the tree and the balance of the tree with the space to the left.

Hope you are having fun!

[Geoff F]

I tend to agree about cropping from the top and going to a more widescreen ratio.

A bit of blank space in the top left corner helps to balance the tree so I would leave the left side alone.

Otherwise, this looks like a good scene to me.