3 More Shots From Hawaii (C&C)

Sherman Banks · Mar 22, 2009

Here are a few more shots I took while in Hawaii. Let me know what you think.
1. Shot with a polarizer on my 18-55mm, AP mode.

2. Shot with my 55-200mm, AP mode.

3. Shot with 18-55, AP mode.

BoblyBill · Mar 23, 2009

1. This is a great Cityscape shot!!!! Great job on getting the exposure right for both the city and sky. That is a very difficult thing to do and you did a great job doing it. I like the framing and color of this shot! I'm suprized that nobody has commented on these shots.

2. The only thing that I can that would improve this shot would have been to get up a little more so that the branch was not in front of the bird. The branch in the forground is distracting and needs to be removed. I'm not sure if you could clone that and make it look good, but if you can I would try to do that.

3. I like the exposure, but I'm sad that the legs got cut off in an awkard way. I would have tried to make sure the whole bird was in the picture.

Mr. Murmeli · Mar 23, 2009

I love the first one! One day i'll buy polarizer filter as well, no doubt about that.

But did you do any post processing to that picture or was it just the filter that made this look like this? Exif says you used CS4 so if you used pp, mind if i ask what kinds of things you did with this?

Sherman Banks · Mar 23, 2009

Thanks to you both for the feedback! With post-production I will generally just push the curves a little bit to darken the lows and bring out the highs. The cityscape needed almost nothing because the polarizer did much of the work (highly recommended for the $30 I spent at Ritz for the UV and polarizer). I only wish the clouds on the left had the contrast as the ones on the right.

It's funny I didn't notice things like the odd crop on the chicken until you mentioned it. I thought it was great and now I see that I wish I had its feet in there.

As for the other bird, the tree wasn't intentional to block the bird, but not having it would leave a bunch of poop marks to distract the viewer instead. Looking at it now, I probably could've fixed the poop easier than the branch. I really just wanted the color on the beak to be the focal point and I like the way that it turned out. I think I mostly like the contrast in texture from the smooth bird and the coarse log.

Thanks again for the feedback as it's greatly appreciated!