A great crested grebe brings a small branch to the nest. The tip of the branch is dragged through the water, causing interesting ripples.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
The image is cropped a little. I have another one with more space to the left, where the waves end more or less abruptly. In both cases I am not completely satisfied. A better composition should be possible, but this happened in a very short time and some big branches were obstructing my view, so I couldn’t change to a more favorable position.
Is the result still worth viewing?
Technical Details
Pentax K5, Sigma 4/100-300mm @280mm, f/5, 1/400s, ISO800.
RAW conversion in DxO Photolab 6, very little further processing.
Really nice comp, Han. I love the sharp reflection of the head. Terrific. I see you’re using DXO Photolab 6. I just picked it up to use as a pre-processor for my high ISO raw files before pulling them into Capture One, my normal catalog system. So far, I am very impressed.
Hello, I think the sharpness, relfection and twig make a great story worth viewing. I found it a bit disorienting at first…I might try cropping out more of the top to have equal distance between top and bottom frames, which might require a different aspect ratio. Great droplet action too!
Thank you, @David_Bostock and @Robena.Sirett for your valuable comments! @Robena.Sirett : I understand your disorientation. As I said, I’m not really satisfied with the composition too. I shot a few images in a split second, and nothing really as I wished. I’ll share another one; I like to read your opinion. @David_Bostock : yes, PL6 is a very good application. The optical corrections, including enhanced sharpness without halo, and the NR are excellent. Like you, I use it mostly as a pre-processor. Since a long time, before LR existed, I use BreezeBrowser to organize my images. I didn’t like the necessity to import images into LR before I could do anything. Now I often export to Photoshop (tif) or Picture Window Pro (tif or dng) for further editing.
This is a very nice look at the Grebe. I prefer the first image as the Grebe seems more prominent and there’s a bit more room between the shadow head and the frame. I like the wave action more in the first image. For me, the left side of the frame in the re-post doesn’t add to the image, though it does give a more abstract feel to the image.
I really like this and quite a lot to be honest!
Maybe it’s the ripple action made by the stick in the water or maybe it’s the Grebe itself or a combination of both along with the soft lighting.
The fact that it’s dragging a stick to the nest might be the biggest draw for me, I’m not sure but I really like it.
I “think?” I get why you may not be completely satisfied with it ,and yeah, in the small size it is a little disorienting but as as soon as I expanded it to full screen, that orientation confusion went away for me.
As stated, I like it as presented but in the spirit of throwing out an idea for an edit that might bring it closer to what you want, I did an example showing the FG area and the reflection blurred a little, and made the FG area a little darker with a linear gradient mask in ACR (which is almost identical to Lr).
BTW, I have no idea if these programs are similar to what you use in terms of masking
The edit does seem to form a separation between the Grebe and it’s reflection while maintaining a nice sense of continuity overall. I hope I’m not the only one that can make sense of that analogy
The change is fairly subtle.
This may not help at all and it may even be a step in the wrong direction but it is a thought to consider:-)
Thanks to all who commented! @Merv : an interesting edit. Especially the darkening of the FG gives a nice separation. I’ll try it with and without the blurring. Don’t worry about the programs used: many ways lead to Rome . All capable applications effectively have similar tools, albeit with different names sometimes.
I didn’t try it without the blurring but that’s a good idea.
Tomato - Tamotto
I bought one of the earlier versions of Ps (2.0 I think), then later 6.0 circa 2001, but I heavily considered going another route when Adobe went to subscriptions, I was probably just too lazy to make the switch.
Thank you for the response, Han and I hope you have a great weekend!
As you, I started with PS 2.0, for my job. Mainly to build test files, not for photo editing. That came later when I started to scan negatives and slides. I didn’t update PS after version CS5, probably in 2010. In the meantime I tried Picture Window Pro, very different in architecture and therefore with a learning curve, but capable of doing all transformations on 48 bit RGB images, while that was restricted to a small set of transformations in PS at that time. PWP had a very helpful community, the program developers were active in the users forum and when you suggested a new feature it was implemented within a few weeks if it was valuable. Besides that, compared to PS it cost next to nothing. A good argument to keep you from using illegal software
I never liked LR, so I stopped using LR3 (I think) after the trial period, years ago. Now I do my RAW conversions in DxO Photolab and further editing in PWP, and use PS sometimes for the few things that I can do easier in PS than in PWP. All ways lead to Rome
. All capable applications effectively have similar tools, albeit with different names sometimes.
