Inbetween

ICM - Sitting in car passenger seat on the way to nature spot and decided to get some camera practice in at 30 mph through the southern Vermont green mountain forest. Really like the colors and the feathery look.

First haiku attempt
thank you @Ben_van_der_Sande
and @Ed_McGuirk too

Gilded green gliding
Swirl feathered forest reveals
Inbetween dream world

Specific Feedback Requested

Welcome any post-processing suggestions.
Having a tough time learning post-processing. Almost every time I just undo all the edit attempts and revert to the original because my edits seem like a non-improved departure from the original. However, I do really like the edits that people are doing on this site - just don’t know how to do them that well myself.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Unprocessed
Nikon d90, 70mm, f11, 1/5

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Hi Ben, If I hadn’t already, then welcome to NPN! Great to have you here.

I happen to be a fan of the ICM and I think you’ve captured great image here. The streaking or feathering of the backlit leaves rendered quite effectively. Quite an interesting combo with the clear identity of the trees and forest, yet accented with the motion blur of the bows/leaves. And to have captured from the moving vehicle, I can see how you would be pleased with these results. I know I would.

A couple of thoughts, suggestions. To me, the right third or so is a bit more “real” and the whiter streaks in the upper right are mildly distracting, as are some of the highlighted areas. With that I was thinking of a crop and hopefully still retain or maybe even emphasize the abstract nature you’ve captured.

Regarding processing, well, it’s a never ending learning path we’re all on. For starters, I would recommend checking out Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity masks and panel as well as Sean Bagshaw’s video tutorials. there are other very helpful tutorials and resources in the NPN Marketplace. Not sure if you access as a Trial member - if not, then recommend going to goodlight.us for Tony’s website and you can find Sean’s as well.

to your image, beyond the crop, I used some luminosity masks of the highlights and toned them down slightly. And also there is a technique of painting color on an empty layer at a low opacity. I used this technique to darken the bright spots on the forest floor by painting in some darker brown colors grabbed from another area of the image. Also used a simple Levels Layer and brought in the dark and white points to increase contrast a bit. Perhaps too much to explain in a post, but to say we all learn little things at a time and build up our tools over time. If you want to learn about luminosity masks or “painting” - start googling and learn one bit at a time. And of course explore NPN and keeping posting and offering comments as well. We’re always learning.

I really like the effect you’ve captured here and I hope this edit maybe gives you some ideas of the potential here. One of the great things about the ICM’s - there’s no right, wrong or any rules!

Hope to see more of your images and participation. Oh, my edited version. Hope you don’t mind.

Lon

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Ben,In my comment on your special image I am with @Lon_Overacker. Learning about photoshop is a must to give an image more of yourself. Here on NPN is a great opportunity to learn from others. Now in your work I see a certain style already. Also your experiment with haikus is special. Therefore I will say, learn but stay with yourself. And keep on experimenting.

I played also a little with your image to show what is possible in photoshop, TK7 ,and the videos of Sean Bagshaw.
The haikus is for me also an experiment. Yours I like !

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This is an interesting ICM image, I like the green/yellow colors that you were able to get here. There is a nice glow created by those colors and the light. I do agree with @Lon_Overacker comments about the right side. I think that the white streaks draw too much attention since they are brighter than the colors and light in the left 3/4’s of the image. This can be hard to visualize before shooting. So when doing ICM’s, I like to experiment doing dozens of them, constantly checking the LCD for stuff like this, so I can take another stab at it to eliminate problems like this.

Post processing doesn’t have to be that hard, not all great images are the product of hours spent in post. A lot of folks here use Lightroom/Photoshop for software. I would highly recommend a Lightroom based processing video by @David_Kingham (the owner of NPN) “Understanding Tones and Colors” He advocates an approach that is easily understandable, and very flexible. It covers the power of Lightrooms local adjustment tools for dodging and burning in conjunction with the LR Luminance Range Mask. This approach is essentially an easier to learn and use cousin of the TK Actions tools mentioned by Lon. The TK tools are much more powerful in terms of control over adjustments, but they are an advanced tool with a significant learning curve.

Here is a rework where I used this approach to burn the lighter tones in the right half (using Luminance Range Mask), and then used TK Actions color mask to select the whites in the URC, and used Edit Fill in Photoshop to paint that selection with a color selected from the rest of the image.

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Thank you Lon!
I see what you mean by the whiter streaks on the upper right. Is there a way to adjust them from white to something else (another tone or temp or ?) to help them harmonize better with the rest of the image? I have not yet found a way to handle small parts of my images that have a patch or area of too bright white which I dont like. When I try burn to tone them down, it seemingly does nothing. Ideally I would like to change the white color tone to something that stands out less glaringly. I welcome any suggestions. [I just saw …Ed may have answered this for me with his comment]

I want to keep the width of the image, so i prefer not to crop it, but I really appreciate you showing me your version as an example. Several people here have been recommending TK panel to me, so I am looking into it.
Also, interested in the ‘painting’ technique you describe.
Thank you for the nice welcome and helpful comments,
Ben

Great to hear from you Ben!
Thanks for the encouragement and tips. The haiku was fun to write. Thank you for including your example image. It is helpful to see your rework. I like it as a second version but not a complete replacement for the first. I like them both.

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Wow! Exactly answer to my ‘burning’ question of the week! Thanks Ed, I have been asking and asking how to deal with certain small areas of too bright whites in my images. Burning did not work. I tried many other unsuccessful ways also.
Color mask and edit fill from selected sampled color sounds like exactly what I was looking for. I look forward to testing it out.
I like the rework example you made. Thank you.
Also thanks for the other tips and recommendation class and video. Going to check them out now.
Your entire comment was super helpful, Thank you again, Ben

Be aware that Davids video requires Adobe Lightroom, and is specific to that software. The TK Actions requires Adobe Photoshop. The concepts only work in the Adobe world. I think you may use other software, so just be aware Adobe is the foundation of these approaches.

The techniques Lon and I mentioned allow you to select a range of tones (highlight, midtone, darks, etc,) or colors, and then make local adjustments such as burning or adding color through just the selected area. Thus you can burn brights without affecting surrounding dark tones. Either LR Local plus Range Mask or TK/PS allow you to do this.

In my view, many people less experienced at processing who are having a hard time with processing, are trying to do too much using global adjustments that affect the entire image. Instead a series of local adjustments that affect small areas and or tonalities often produce better results.

Liking this a lot. Abstract and sort of real at the same time. I like the tension created with the streaks as one element and the non-streaked trunks as another. Though I’m curious how you got one element to streak and not the other if you were moving past both at 30mph?

Hi Tony, thank you for your comments. I do not know how the photo came out this way. It was not planned. Perhaps it was not technically ICM because it was fairly spontaneous. I was just playing with the settings for shutter speed etc and shooting out the car window. I thought it would just be one huge blur. I did adjust the camera settings several times between shots to find a sweeter spot. The 30 mph is a guess but probably pretty close. It was 2 summers ago in Vermont.
I think for this photo as the shutter was open I was panning the camera and then raised or dropped it down slightly. I may have panned it back to undo the car speed. One way to find out might be to try to recreate it. Maybe I will sometime since I like the result.
I think the right half adds a lot to it because -as you said- the camera seems to have picked it up differently.
From the other comments here, I noticed the whiter streaks in the upper right corner. I am also curious about what made them.
It turned out to be one of my favorite photos.
Ben

Welcome Ben!

I don’t dabble in ICM, so I’ll leave the suggestions to the experts, but I am appreciating this image because it does remind me of how attractive forests can be while driving. I’ve noticed an effect that the motion seems to have that makes the scene more attractive then when I stop. I think it has to do with what my eye and brain are able to process when in fast motion?? (On the other hand, it is frustrating because many times I’ve thought “Oh, that’s beautiful; I should photograph that scene” only to find when I stop that it’s not as attractive as I thought passing by. Your image kind of captures that for me.

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Hi John, thank you for your comments. I have similar experiences - between what I see and what the camera gives me. Sometimes I get something extra back with one click that is more than what I saw. And I love it. Other times I see something magical and the camera gives me back something less - without any of the magic that I saw. Here on NPN, I am beginning to learn that maybe sometimes it is missing depth and light and color and contrast other technical things which can be adjusted back into the photo with post-processing - so that is of interest to me. However, since I like being in nature much more than sitting for hours at a computer, perhaps learning post-processing will help me to simply take more photos that I like on the first try.
I have experiences with other types of art with 'lost or added in translation - like sculpture - where many times challenging to achieve my original vision - and painting/ poetry where often something extra and new is revealed.
Using the camera to capture motion is fascinating to me. I especially like rivers also.
Cheers, Ben

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