Saying hello with some samples.

[elydustin]

Hello! I'm Dustin Ely and I'm looking to get my name out there with everyone else. I am only a beginner (1 year experience) when it comes to photography and photo editing, but I try my best and am always looking for critique.

Please let me know how i can make my photos better, I know i struggle on hitting the focus and clarity at times but if you see something else let me know.

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[thenikonguy]

i dont think its my computer... but I cant see anything...

[elydustin]

ya i think the image uploads didn't work right... ill fix them :P

[Cely]

Excellent work Dustin, I'm looking forward to seeing some more.

[shmne]

Is there a filter or something on the first few? They look weird

[elydustin]

Well theres a lot of time put into a few of them. Its a combination of adjusting as RAW, filters, layers, manipulation, lighting effects, and even black and white layers, and smudge stick.

[shmne]

I understand you put a lot of time into these but I can see a lot of over processing, and pixelation. A good rule of thumb is that a great shot doesn't need any PP, but rather uses PP to bring it to another level.

A good starting point when editing a photo is to adjust only things like contrast, curves, some saturation, maybe even a b/w layer in overlay to add some depth that may have been lost, but just focus more on taking the picture and less on the PP.

As they stand right now a lot of those images look like snap shots, or they look like they've been edited and neither situation is really desirable.

Most of your shots actually show decent use of ROT, but I think it would actually help them out to tone down the pp

[elydustin]

Thanks for the criticism, but they were just jpeg snap shots originally, I didn't know my girlfriend had switched from RAW on my camera. I agree on the pixelation but thats only because they are JPEG edited as RAW and then re-JPEGd so they lost a lot of the anti-aliasing in the compression as well.

I should have pointed it out ahead of time about them being low quality JPEGs instead of actual RAW.

I don't know what PP really is, being new I haven't heard the term before; but over the top is what I was striving for in some of the photos.

Silos photo: I wish i had taken more time to fix the blemishes in the clouds but the smudge stick cartoon-ish look is what I was going for on it because it was already a low quality photo.
Toilets photo: I was also going for an over the top exaggerated look on the toilets sign, playing with the render -> lighting effects tool and learning how to use the smudge stick to paint tarnish and such.

[shmne]

PP = Post Production

I edit jpegs all the time in Adobe Camera Raw but they lack the heavy pixelation that some of yours are showing. The problem I am talking about is not compression artifacts, those are very different. I am referring to the areas where you have highlights that lack definition, extremely harsh lines, and the halos you have.

I understand you are trying to go for the over the top look but this comprimises the quality of your photo. Jpeg quality is not that bad, especially at a max level compression.



This was a Jpeg, opened in camera raw, saved as a jpeg, then further compressed under facebook's compression. I can barely see any artifacting.

I'm sorry you got defensive about what I said earlier, and I know you are trying new techniques. Just try to realize that heavily edited photos, with pixelation are not aesthetically pleasing. It is like a movie that makes the viewer realize they are watching a movie. All the magic is gone.

[elydustin]

ok, I see what you mean, especially in the sky in some of the photos. How do you suggest fixing them? I think they may be areas i left the smudge stick opacity up too high or didn't cover them properly within the mask.

Take a look at Silo, to the left side the clouds to the left have that weird blotchy ness that I didn't notice when I was finishing it up, what do you suggest?