Willow Light #3

Another from willow shoot-through experiments. I decided to show a mixture of in-focus and OOF branches. I really liked the texture of the OOF background.

Thank you again, @Ed_McGuirk for pointing out alternative blending modes for dodging/burning. That prodded me to read up more on them, which is proving very helpful.

Specific Feedback Requested

How does this work - is the background too busy for the mostly in focus foreground?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
a73r, 207mm, f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 200.

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Beautiful image. I’m thinking I’d like to see how it looks with ALL of that first layer of willows in sharp focus.

Bonnie, I like the surreal nature of the background juxtaposed to the realism of the clear willows.

Another lovely image, Bonnie. Big fan of the style.

I like the OOF elements also and they do dominate the scene to the point that the IF branches in the foreground sort of get lost. But they do add some context to the composition, so that’s positive. It just seems like something is missing here. I’m thinking more foreground IF elements might be more ideal, but not sure.

Thank you @Ronald_Murphy, @Mario_Cornacchione, @Matt_Lancaster, and @Tony_Kuyper for your thoughts. Tony, I know what you’re saying. The foreground is too much like the background, and it is visually unsatisfying vs. having everything sort of hazy. Perhaps trying to combine IF with OOF, where the two elements are similar in tone and contrast just won’t work. It’s a work in progress, for sure.

I’m really interested in how you get these images. I understand the idea probably something I would need to mess with.

To offset the contrast of sharp and soft, could you add a slight Gaussian blur to it the image overall?

I’m glad that it was of help to you. The color dodging technique can be quite handy sometimes.

I do find this attempt at the shoot-through technique less successful than your prior post, for the reasons mentioned by @Tony_Kuyper. The IF foreground elements just blend in too much, not just in luminosity and contrast, but also in color. The other thing about the image posted here is that feels more two dimensional, whereas the prior post felt more three dimensional. In the image here, it’s like there are only two primary planes of focus. The other post had more planes of variable focus, essentially with a gradient of sharp/soft that had elements in various places along that gradient. Here there is less of that feeling of dimensionality.

But this shoot-through stuff inherently involves a lot of experimentation, and hopefully you’ll post a bunch of these and from the critiques get some good input on things that can help guide future attempts. And every now and then you’ll hit the jackpot on something that works really well, and carry that forward too.

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Ed really hits the nail on the head here.There are a few techniques such as shallow DOF (here), ICM, and extreme shutter speeds of moving water and animals, that require a lot of experimentation. And from what I’ve seen on NPN, I know many of us in this community are well-versed in such things. The key is to just do a lot of it and study the results because only through a lot of attempts and remembering what works do we get good at them and get some fine images.

We are also quite lucky as artists to have a place like NPN where we can post our experiments and receive constructive criticism.

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The color palette is wonderful Bonnie and I too like the texture of the background. I agree with Tony that the IF foreground elements get lost in the OOF background. It feels like the foreground elements should be darker but overall I like the abstract qualities.

Like this one a lot Bonnie. It’s the sort of thing I would print large and gaze at for a pretty long time. I might even reduce the saturation a tad more which probably goes against most of the other comments here.

This is wonderful. I love it. I would try to darken the BG a little.

Thanks, @David_Wallace , @Eva_McDermott, @Ian_Cameron , and @joaoquintela for your thoughts. I’ll give your suggestions a try.

David, Matt L. asked about my techniques in another post - here is what I posted there (I couldn’t figure out how to just link it):

  • Use an open aperture, although it doesn’t have to be extreme (e.g., f/1.8). The lens I’m using only opens up to f/6.3 when zoomed out.
  • Use a long lens. I’m using a 100-400mm, usually zoomed out to more than 200mm. Although I suppose this depends on the size of the plants.
  • I think shooting-through works better with finer (smaller diameter) branches and stems. You get that hazy look without branches totally blocking the things beyond. I haven’t done this without shooting through branches close to the lens, but maybe that would work (I’ll have to experiment with that idea).
  • If you want the bokeh balls, the scene should be backlit to a degree and have small, bright features. These are willow buds, but water drops work well, too (think dewy grass).
  • I look around through the viewfinder while hand holding to find a potential scene. Then, I put the camera on the tripod to fine tune the composition.
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Alright @Bonnie_Lampley I gave it a shot!

I don’t have a 100-400 so I used my 28-75 and got real close, f2.8, I messed around with a few others but but liked the softness of this one the best. Tried to brighten it up and reduce contrast. I think I will probably keep messing with it to try to soften it up even more. Im interested in how you pick a subject/pattern to focus in on amongst the chaos…This was likely more luck than anything else. I did zoom in as much as possible while focusing to try to find at lest one sharp area, but how I chose that I couldn’t tell you.

Nice, @David_Wallace! I like the softness of this, also. And the colors are lovely. As far as picking a subject, I just look through the viewfinder while moving around and adjusting the focus. I think the trick is to have a bush where you won’t have anything in sharp focus at some focal length. I’ve found that in really dense willows like this it is difficult to get a good composition. It’s especially difficult without a long lens, because with a shorter focal length (even at 75 to 100mm) you’ll still have some dof. Zoomed out to 400 and placed close to a subject, the dof is really small, so it’s easier to get things oof.

For your photo, I’m taken by that tiny curved twig in the upper half - that is the sort of thing I notice, and that is easier to make the subject if you can zoom way in. Here’s an idea of what I’m thinking - just a quick and dirty 1:1 crop and a couple radial filters in ACR to make that twig stand out more. It’s still pretty small in the frame, though.

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Thanks for that @Bonnie_Lampley ! I really like the way the colors came out also. It is amazing what different people see, to be honest I never really noticed that curved twig. What caught my eye was kind of the repetition of curving from bottom right to upper left and the two angular branches crossing in the middle. But, now that I see that I can understand why you would have selected that as a point of focus. I can see how a 100-400 makes this all a bit easier as well. Thanks for your feedback!

I went back and looked…looks like I may have actually been on to something with out knowing it while I was out…I put it into crop sensor mode to get a little closer to that action you had pointed out!

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