Invitation

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
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Invitation
Invitation1280Ă—2048 777 KB

During my first ever visit to South Carolina, we visited a local preserve. On the way back to the cars, everyone else was packing up, I saw this row of backlit palmetto palms and had to stop to try to make an image. Those waiting the car kept asking, me what was taking so long?

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

What caught my attention was the lighting of the yellow and green branches. The orientation was chosen, after the encouragement of another local photographer, to experiment with different views.

Technical Details

Nikon D850, Nikon 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 1600, 62 mm, f/8, 1/40 sec
Processing in LR, adjusted orientation, color enhancement, cropped for composition.

3 Likes
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Hi Marlin,
what a nice detailed shot of the palm tree leaf. I really like the orientation and cropping.

I know how that feels. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that more than once. :wink:

When I look at your image my eyes like to take in the details of the plant. But the textures seem to be a little bit blurry. I think your image could benefit from additional sharpness.

Beyond that, I would not change anything. Well done.

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But the textures seem to be a little bit blurry. I think your image could benefit from additional sharpness.

Jens, Thank you for the comments and the reassurance about sharing the experience when out with family. My wife has given up looking for me and now just tells everyone not to bother, I will show up sometime.

I did take some of the sharpness out intentionally, trying to hide a bit of the “dirt” on the frond, thinking it would be distracting. I guess plants are just naturally that way so I tried to put some sharpness and texture back in in the repost.

Palmetto Frond Sharper
Palmetto Frond Sharper1280Ă—2048 1.17 MB

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I can imagine that. Meanwhile, my wife has more patience with me than I can stand. She always says: take your time. But I can’t really relax when I know she is waiting. I still have to improve that!

About the sharpness: I like the sharper version a little bit better. But this is my personal taste. If you blurred the image on purpose, it’s perfectly fine. It’s your artistic choice.

But if you are concerned about the dirt you may can get rid of it. I don’t know which software you use to develop your images. Just for demonstration purposes I used ACR here:

Palmetto-Frond-Sharper-Edit
Palmetto-Frond-Sharper-Edit1280Ă—2048 1.05 MB

  1. I opened the detail panel and and applied some Noise Reduction and a little bit of Sharpening to recover some Detail
    image
  2. I activated the Healing Tool and clicked on the dirt spots that I wanted to remove
    image

Again, no need at all to remove the dirt. But in case you would like to have a cleaner image, I just wanted to show you an easy way to achieve it.

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Thank you for taking the time with this. I really like what you have done. I am using LR, but am still a novice. I will eventually will do something formally to learn the processing better. Probably will switch to LR classic and PS, when I get my file storage and backup plan more sorted out, but have not used ACR.

I had used the Healing Tool to take out some of dirt already, but thought I was getting carried away! I am still trying to sort out how much alteration of an image I feel comfortable with and knowing when to stop, or keep going. As to the sharpening,

Thank you for including the slider settings. My understanding and use Sharpening and use of the the detail section is still fuzzy :slight_smile:

Good luck with feeling it is ok to take your time.