The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This image was taken near the north end of Vancouver Island from a whale watching boat. I was rather (very) fortunate to have this humpback whale decide to dive with the mountains in the background!
Specific Feedback
I would love feedback on how I might process the image better.
Technical Details
Camera: Canon R5, hand held from a boat
Lens: Canon 100-500L
Settings: ISO - 200, 100mm, F/5.6, 1/4000 sec
I really like this composition and, the subject is really awesome! The backdrop is the best in my view!
I’ve always wanted to witness whales in person but I haven’t had the pleasure to do that yet.
This would have been a very exciting moment for me if I had been there in person!
There’s a couple of things that come to mind for possible improvements:
Is to run the image through a noise reduction process because the clouds and the BG trees don’t seem to be as smooth as I would expect.
The image seems to be a little underexposed to me.
I noticed in the image file name that it may have been processed with DxO Deep Prime, I’m not familiar with that software so the best I can offer is to say that I think the exposure needs to be bumped up by about 1EV and maybe bump up the contrast just a bit using a curves adjustment layer?
I mostly use Ps and ACR (Adobe Camera Raw).
In the edit example I used an Exposure adjustment layer in Ps with the exposure at +1.00 and Gamma at .80 but again, you may be able to use curves to bump up the contrast to get similar results (If you like what I did).
And, I reduced the noise a bit using Topaz Denoise AI but I’m sure your noise reduction software is as good or better than what I used.
Anyway, it truly is an awesome image in all other aspects!
I hope you don’t mind that I made these adjustments to your awesome image!
I will note that the exposure adjustment brought the brightest parts of the clouds up close to being clipped so I masked those parts and reduced the exposure there.
Willem, this is an excellent view. The whale’s tail, the mountains and the clouds are wonderfully placed (and organized…). It does seem dark and there’s a fair amount of “noise” from the 8 bit JPEG conversion for NPN in the sky. I’m not sure what software you are using to process this, but my first suggestion is to pull up the middle of the luminosity curve. (I’m assuming that you’re shooting RAW.) This will brighten the middle tones the most and avoids blowing out the brightest tones. I think you’ll like the result much more than simply increasing the exposure or lowering the white point.
I’d go back to the raw file and do things in the order you see (top to bottom) in the Develop module. (It’s similar in most raw converters.) Tweak the WB (Temp) and Tone sliders to get a good overall color. Then (in this case) increase the Exposure slider, then bring down the Highlights slider if whites got too hot. Then check whether the Shadows slider does anything good. This is the fundamental setting that gives you the overhead to do other adjustments and is often all that is needed. The rest of the sliders are best used in the order they appear, after these steps. There is a Curves here, too. Then look at selecting various tonal areas for more adjustment or go to PS if further tonal work is needed.
Thank you @Merv , @Mark_Seaver and @Diane_Miller for your critiques and advice! I have tried to use your suggestions in creating the new version of the image above.
Much better! I think you could lower the saturation of the blues a little – or, better, tweak the white balance in the raw stage to pull away from blue a little. That will give you more tonal separation than changing the saturation in PS. Getting the best white balance in the raw stage is well worth the trouble.
What an exciting capture of nature. I like the image as is, but as I looked at it I thought it might be enhance with a more pano look with cropping. Here’s an example.
Thank you @Larry_Greenbaum! That accentuates the best parts of the image, i.e. the whale tail, the mountain range and the low clouds. And cuts out the dark cloud at the top. Great idea!
Thank you @Diane_Miller again. I followed your advice and adjusted the white balance in the beginning, however, I still found I had to take away some of the blue. I did this in PS using the curves and selecting blue. The original image was quite bright and it seemed whenever I darkened it the blues came back. I am guessing this means I didn’t do a good enough job in the beginning?
I have another question for you. I don’t understand why I had so much noise in the sky. My understanding of noise is it should be much more prevalent in the dark areas where there isn’t much signal, however, my bright sky seemed to have a lot of noise for ISO 200. Any thoughts on this? I reduced the noise in the beginning and then at least once more for the sky in PS using ACR.
