Sunny California

[Suzanne]

Hello all! First off I want say thank you. Katy gave me a ring while I was away and told me I came in second in the nature abstract themed comp. So thank you!!

I was away in sunny California, and I brought the trusty dusty camera with. Unfortunately my time was pretty well mapped out for me. However on my last day there I was able to take a drive up north to the Santa Inez valley to my favorite winery up there. (Sunstone, if your curious to know). I was able to take a few shots and would love c&c on them. I had a few specific questions as well.

I thought these came out pretty nice. No editing was done to them.





What can I do about the sky if anything, and are the colours too dull?

The winery has great buildings and I loved the windows, but i noticed too late that there was a smudge on the lens. And so as you can see it made it blurry is there any fix for that other than painstaking reconstruction?



These are the better of the many shots i took that day (except the window). I would love to hear your thoughts.

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Suzanne,

Look you had a nice trip. Wineries do make for some great photo opportunities.

Images 1 – 3. I have tried in the past to photograph plants with long stems and you run the risk of have a stem running through the image the cutting in half. Image 1 avoids that and is my pick. The other thing to do with these images is to shoot from the top down with a wide aperture and the DOF will take care of background nicely.

# 4 looks like a great view from the winery. It looks like a hazy day and you might be able to bring up some more details by increasing the contrast on this shot.

# 5 – The Window. This is my favourite shot. What a pity about the smudge but I love the composition, texture, etc.

#6 is very hard to get right with such a wide dynamic range in the shot. You could look to open the shadows and bring back some of the highlights a bit. People talk about pre-visualising the end result and this takes two forms really – one is the composition and how the aspects of the shot will work in whatever format you choose and the second is looking at the light and knowing what you can do with it in post production. I have had a quick go below using the Shadows/Highlights command and Levels to show you what I mean. I hope you don’t mind.



I do hope you managed to take home a few of your favourite bottles as well.

[Suzanne]

Thank you Peter. You got was I was trying to capture with that last one. Thank you. Canyou explain what you did there to lighten the shadows so well?

Yes, I spent WAY to much money on wine I expect my shipment to come any day and am looking forward to it.
Cheers!

[Peter Ryan]

I use Photoshop but many of the software programs have a Shadows/Highlights adjustment tool.

Most SH tools assume you want to open up shadow detail and generally to default setting is too strong. Most are set mid-way, around 50 of the sliding scale, I normally start around 25.

They also assume you do not want to adjust the highlights so this is normally set to zero.

When you open up the shadows and/or reduce the highlights it is moving detail in the dark areas you cannot see higher up the dynamic range so you can see it but in doing so it can make the image look soft or a little milky. After the initial adjustment you need to open up the Levels command and move the black and white clipping points (end tabs) in a bit to reduce the dynamic range and restore some contrast to the image.

I hope this helps.

[Suzanne]

It does very much, Thank you!!