Forgotten

curly · Jan 12, 2015

I recently got a new D7000 and a UWA lens. These are some of the first photos off of it, and I am liking this camera much better than the D40 I have been using. Went to take photos in/around an old abandoned farm house at the back of my grandfather's property.

These are a few that I have attempted to convert to B&W in Lightroom (first time really trying to use Lightroom, I still have a lot to learn).

I feel like the one of the outside is a little dark?

C&C appreciated

Benjo255 · Jan 12, 2015

How did you convert them? I have the feeling you just desaturated them (and this seldom gives the results you want). They're too much "grey & grey", but may be it's my monitor.

Something doesn't convince me in composition.
Flowers are on a too chaotic background and they struggle to come out.
House from outside is not bad (in truth my fav one), but I would try a different crop. In your one is (without a good reason) in the middle of everything.
Chair is cut, and doesn't rally tell me something interesting.
Table with broken pieces is a nice subject, but I'm not impressed by the angle of view. You didn't dare here.
Fisheye one is just a fisheye room and is lacking of something that strikes the heart.

Try crop the house in a more interesting way.
I hope you don't get offenced. I'm the last of newbies, so those above are only my feedback to get better.

KenC · Jan 12, 2015

The second one (view of the house) is the most interesting to me as well. As is, there is too much in the frame. I would get very close to the front of the fence, or even partway along it, so that you get only the larger sections of house on the right, with little or no sky and some ground. It's difficult at first to appreciate how close you need to get with an ultra-wide to frame a subject in an interesting way.

curly · Jan 12, 2015

Thanks! The one of the front of the building (which is actually a shed/stable) was taken with a 35mm lens.

Also, not sure if it was noticeable, but at the bottom edge of the gate nearest the shed, I had a lens flare. After converting to B&W, I tried to cover this up using spot exposure change in Lightroom.

Is there another way to address lens flare in Lightroom, or should this be done in Photoshop?

Benjo255 · Jan 12, 2015

curly said:
After converting to B&W

How do you convert in lightroom? do you balance colors in BW after desaturating?

curly · Jan 12, 2015

Benjo255 said:
curly said:

After converting to B&W

Click to expand...

How do you convert in lightroom? do you balance colors in BW after desaturating?

Since it was my first time, I started by using a B&W preset filter that gave the look I was wanting and then adjusted contrast and spot exposure in areas.

Benjo255 · Jan 12, 2015

I suggest you to try balancing the colors in the hue/color/B&W section. You can bring out more tones or dark some other tones. If you really love B&W, I use Silver Efex Pro 2 (niksoft, by google) and I love it.

timor · Jan 13, 2015

I don't know, on my (crappy) monitor they look fine to me. You could fool me saying they were shot on HP5 and developed in Ansco 130.

Rick58 · Jan 13, 2015

I agree with timor, They could easily have been shot on film. I also like #2, but I think I'd go with a tighter crop and lose some of the bright sky. It really isn't contributing anything to the shot

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kdthomas · Jan 13, 2015

I like the foreground sharpness in the first one, but the bokeh is kind of strange looking to me. Can you tell us what you did in post on that one?

timor · Jan 14, 2015

kdthomas said:
but the bokeh is kind of strange looking to me. Can you tell us what you did in post on that one?

That will be interesting. What's wrong with out of focus areas ? I think this lens is quite nice with pleasant image rendering, but then I am always open to learning... Little more elaboration ?

kdthomas · Jan 14, 2015

timor said:
kdthomas said:

but the bokeh is kind of strange looking to me. Can you tell us what you did in post on that one?

Click to expand...

That will be interesting. What's wrong with out of focus areas ? I think this lens is quite nice with pleasant image rendering, but then I am always open to learning... Little more elaboration ?

Well I didn't mean that anything was wrong necessarily ... Just that (to me) it seemed like the area behind the blooms had a kind of painted (thresholdy?) sort of feel ... Maybe it's just me, LOL