Went out after a ‘freezing rain’ event this past February and captured a few nice photos. This is the first photo I capture. The water is frozen to the tendril of a vine.
Specific Feedback Requested
All comments are welcomed, but I’m especially looking for feedback on the background. I could have made the background black, but I decided on a mottled look . For me, the mottled background better reflects the what was seen.
Technical Details
Canon 5D IV | EF100 Macro | f8 | 1/15s | ISO 100 | 100mm
Post processing: ACR and Photoshop
A very lovely, simplistic image. I love that you can see the vine all the way down through the last ice drop. The lighting in that last big drop really makes this photo stand out. I very much like your BG. I think it nicely blends in with the subject. Nice job!
Wonderful!! Fascinating subject with great sharpness and detail! I think you hit the sweet spot on the BG – all black can look phony. The subject more than holds its own here. It’s so sharp and interesting you could also have another version with a much tighter crop to show off the detail you captured in the vine and ice. For this version, I think I’d darken the brightest area exiting the top of the frame – it’s a bit of an eye magnet.
Couldn’t resist playing. Added a thin white stroke to make it stand out against a dark BG. Should have darkened the bright smidgen right at the top.
Great catch. I like the dark, but not black, background, but then I saw Diane’s rework. She made what’s special about the subject really show better. Nicely seen and nicely treated in the rework, Diane. Almost makes me wish for winter. Almost.
Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. I had fun finding things to photograph that morning. I settled on four photos that I thought came out reasonably well. I will post another photo today .
My wife is involved in a jewelry making group. I’ll ask her if she or another member would have interest in using the photo for inspiration.
David, you’ve got excellent details in the ice, particularly in the final drop. I too think the mottled background is best, especially when you’ve got lots of background. As I look at the largest view, there a significant amount of banding. There are several ways this could appear with my first guess being that you shot this as a JPG. Banding like this is most often seen in 8 bit jpegs. I was originally thinking that some dodging of the darkest areas (along the left and across the middle) might be good, but with the banding, that will only make the banding worse.
I see the banding you’re talking about in the image uploaded. I shoot everything in RAW and work with them in PS as 16 bit files. When I convert the file to jpeg it reverts to 8 bit and in case introduced banding. I know of only two methods to get a jpeg file out of PS. One is ‘save as’ the other is ‘export as’. Is there a another method to get a jpeg?
I don’t have banding in my 16 bit file and I see what your saying about dodging the darkest parts of the BG. I will play with dodging to see what I get.
David, I just went back and looked at my Ebony Jewelwing, female post and the dark background has banding there, so I withdraw everything that I said about banding! It’s clear in the 8 bit conversion to jpeg.
David, you captured a jewel of a shot here (pun intended). Having the 3 separate droplets on that vine does remind me of jewelry. I like what @Diane_Miller did with it too. Great shot.
You can minimize (somewhat) the chances of banding on export of a JPEG by doing as much tonal adjustment a possible in ACR. You lose some tonal overhead going to PS even in as 16 bits, so tonal adjustments done in PS have more potential for banding than the equivalent ones done in ACR, when the image drops to 8 bits for the JPEG.
