Pink

[pixmedic]

And there's no texture in the black, it's difficult to tell if the flamingo is standing against it or the black is cut out to show the flamingo. The very reason these black backgrounds do not work is that you can't create a mask that's good enough to be convincing and you remove the texture from the background so it's no longer consistent with the subject, it bears no relationship, it is removed... And who ever sees a colourful bird against a black background? Sorry, the bird's great but the background shows a lack of imagination.

Sure, because we NEVER see portraits taken against a black background. [emoji6]

To me, this is a flamingo portrait, and the background was done in the same manner many portraits shot against a black background are. (Flamingos need portraits too)
The bright color of the flamingo against the black background is striking and contrasty. Well chosen, like a person wearing light clothing when being shot against a black backdrop.

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I was watching a friend of mine editing some pro audio tapes once. The guy he was recording was a pro and didn't stop when he made a mistake, he simply paused and repeated. My pal was editing these out. To do it he not only recorded the voice but also recorded five minutes of the empty silent room. "Why don't you use blank tape?" I asked.
"Because," he said, " the recording of the empty room sounds different to blank tape. If I added pauses with blank tape you'd notice the abrupt change in ambient sound."
The same with portraits. if you shoot against a black background and edit the imperfections the 'ambient sound' remains the same. If you add a black background after you notice the abrupt change. Not least because there is a shadow from sunlight across the bird and the shadows on the bird are lit by reflected light. Look at it properly and tell me you don't think the bird and the background are disjointed. Look at the tail feathers, is the bird in front of the black or is the black in front of the bird?
Black is not the opposite of colour and hence not the best way to contrast it. Colour contrasts with colour, not a complete lack of it and a complete lack of brightness. This is basic colour theory, so yes, just putting things against a black background does show a lack of imagination and understanding of colour and doesn't give as good a contrast as you seem to want to believe. Just about any text book you care to read will tell you the same, so go and try it, be bold.

I made my observations from looking at the image and noting what I saw, so I'm afraid you get a disagree back.

I dont recall actually mentioning about color opposites, so im not sure where you are getting that assertion from.
I simply mentioned that the pink flamingo looked striking against the black background. which it does.
if you read Jamouls post, he clearly states he did not "add" the black background. the background was already dark, he simply edited to amplify that effect. it was the effect he wanted, and given the responses to this post, it clearly works here.
you might have noticed, having obviously read my post, I mentioned the flamingo shot as a portrait, as apposed to something different, say...a wildlife shot.
while perhaps not a perfect variation of a classic "portrait" shot, and obviously given the limitations of not having a studio with adjustable and mobile lighting, this shot definitely still works as intended having been shot against a dark background.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Sorry, I don't think it does for the reasons already stated. What I stated was immediately apparent to me, I didn't search for it just to criticise the image.
If you looked and observed you'd notice that back does not so much contrast colour (there are far better ways of doing that) as hide the relative lack of it. As I said in my original post: "Sorry, the bird's great but the background shows a lack of imagination."

It's a perfectly valid and correct observation on the image and about the use of colour.

 

[pixmedic]

Sorry, I don't think it does for the reasons already stated. What I stated was immediately apparent to me, I didn't search for it just to criticise the image.
If you looked and observed you'd notice that back does not so much contrast colour (there are far better ways of doing that) as hide the relative lack of it. As I said in my original post: "Sorry, the bird's great but the background shows a lack of imagination."

It's a perfectly valid and correct observation on the image and about the use of colour.

maaaaybe, but if you had looked and observed, you would have noticed that jamoul said the background was already very dark when it was shot. it wasn't like the bird was going to relocate and pose in front of a more proper background. it was what it was when he took the shot. or, he could have just thought "oh, black background...guess i might as well just not shoot".
so...one would have to evaluate the photo based on that little tidbit of information.
what i mean is, when you say that the black background shows a lack of imagination, you imply that the background was deliberately chosen to be black, rather than him simply adapting to already existing conditions. which is simply not the case.
your complaint has, thus far, only been about the background being black. which it obviously is. what you have yet to offer, given the background was near black when it was shot, is what alternative editing should have been done to that existing black background.

my statement however, is that given the conditions in which the picture was shot, this picture turned out nice. really nice.
instead of jamoul leaving what would have simply been viewed as a terribly underexposed background, he made it to look more like a formal portrait. to me, that is not a "lack of imagination", its turning lemons into lemonade.

i mean, there has to be some credit given for him taking a shot that might have otherwise been a tosser, and turning it into something that does appear to have a lot of general appeal.

 

[JacaRanda]

Sorry Tim,

I am the one that deserves the disagree back; not Pixmedic.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Edit: This part of the post has been removed with greatest of respect to the OP. There wasn't anything interesting here anyway, so you've not missed much.

Here's an alternative:

You don't reduce the background to complete black, but leave a little texture there. With near black there is little colour, with texture there's continuity. A little imagination???

Maybe if you separate the luminosity from the colour before pushing the contrast etc. Or even applied the mask to the bird first the background wouldn't be so mucked up with saturation and contrast and wouldn't have to be masked out? With a little imagination and technique you can easily reduce the impact of a less than perfect background and still keep the context between it and the bird.

I shall repeat my apologies to the OP, I love the bird.

What really upsets me about this exchange is that I don't have perfect vision (mild+ deuteranopia) so I've always understood not only the relative nature of vision, but the gift of vision. I have also spent a lifetime of looking and observing ten times as hard and as long at everything, searching for the clues and differences, for so long now that it's a habit that I achieve in a glance. I've also spent a lifetime studying colour and vision a point well beyond trying to understand what you see. But I still always question what I see, and I always look. So it upsets me when someone who I assume has better vision just wastes it with a casual glance. And then calls me an idiot (in polite terms ) for not reading the text.

I evaluated the image on what I saw and I still stand by my original observations. A photograph is also the vision of the original photographer so I leave the imagination to them as well.

 

[jaomul]

@Tim Tucker

I like c and c. I even liked your post that criticsised heavily one of my favorite shots that I have taken in a while. I have no issues with you disliking my shot.

I said the pp that was carried out on this shot. The area behind the bird was more in shade and no mask was used. All pp was done in Lightroom with no area specifically targeted, just a few simple global adjustments.

I don't like the way you've digitally processed my photo to prove you are correct about something that you clearly are not.

The lower feathers are black

It's a photo, not a court case

 

[pixmedic]

Timmy man,

you have completely missed my point.
this was never about technical issues with the photo.
I, jamoul, and im sure everyone else is extensively aware that the image has some technical flaws. noone is debating the issue you brought up. i certainly never denied the point you have so painstakingly pointed out many many times in this thread. but, as i have stated several posts ago, it was never about a technical flaw here. it was simply about jamoul taking a picture of a bird against a dark background and making it look better than it would have left with a somewhat visible background.
that image without jamouls editing, the way he edited it, would not have looked nearly as good.
my point is, and has been from the beginning...this image looks nice. even with its flaws, its a nicer image than could have been produced in a vain and futile attempt to correct the flaw you brought up.
There was no way for jamoul to have taken this shot, and fixed the issue you feel is the problem. not without additional light sources anyway. so I say again, given what he had to work with, this was never "unimaginative" , it was taking a lemon and making lemonade. cool, refreshing, artistic lemonade.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Timmy man,

you have completely missed my point.
this was never about technical issues with the photo.
I, jamoul, and im sure everyone else is extensively aware that the image has some technical flaws. noone is debating the issue you brought up. i certainly never denied the point you have so painstakingly pointed out many many times in this thread. but, as i have stated several posts ago, it was never about a technical flaw here. it was simply about jamoul taking a picture of a bird against a dark background and making it look better than it would have left with a somewhat visible background.
that image without jamouls editing, the way he edited it, would not have looked nearly as good.
my point is, and has been from the beginning...this image looks nice. even with its flaws, its a nicer image than could have been produced in a vain and futile attempt to correct the flaw you brought up.
There was no way for jamoul to have taken this shot, and fixed the issue you feel is the problem. not without additional light sources anyway. so I say again, given what he had to work with, this was never "unimaginative" , it was taking a lemon and making lemonade. cool, refreshing, artistic lemonade.

Jamoul, please accept my apologies about the last post, now edited. Please accept the edit below as a suggestion of the imagination I referred to in my original post. If you just back off a touch on the original you should achieve a more convincing effect. It's just a case of seeing the image as a whole complete work, rather than the bird against black. I've never disliked your shot, I just disliked the background, see below for my reasons.

Pixmedic. So what is it about then? You're disagreeing with me having a different opinion? If you didn't disagree with the point why keep hitting the button?

And what's with this "vain and futile attempt to correct the flaws"? It's not hard to do, you just don't move the slider quite so far as to move it to complete black, you leave a little and faint texture. Like this:

It's an edit of an edit, but don't you see how a trace of texture connects the bird to the background far better than featureless black? Is it really far removed from what the OP was doing?

That was my only original comment, the black looks like a cut-out, you can't tell if it's in front of or behind the bird because it's disconnected, it has nothing in common. This is what I'm frustrated about you not seeing, you don't see the disconnection between the bird and the background that's so obvious to me that I commented on it. It's a simple obvious mistake, when you get seduced by the added contrast of pure black you fail to see that you've separated the image into two disconnected parts, and you fail to see that pure featureless black does not offer the contrast you think it does. You make an admission it has flaws and a flat statement that there's no other way to handle it. Then you tell me I've not looked at it properly. Well you have a little imagination and at least look at an offered alternative, and quit hitting the dislike button because you fail to see what I'm suggesting.

 

[JacaRanda]

Taking the time to illustrate what you were getting at Tim, works much better than telling someone they lacked imagination. How would you or any of us know what he imagined? He did what he wanted to do I assume, because he never asked for help processing the image in another or more imaginative way.

 

[pixmedic]

Timmy man,

you have completely missed my point.
this was never about technical issues with the photo.
I, jamoul, and im sure everyone else is extensively aware that the image has some technical flaws. noone is debating the issue you brought up. i certainly never denied the point you have so painstakingly pointed out many many times in this thread. but, as i have stated several posts ago, it was never about a technical flaw here. it was simply about jamoul taking a picture of a bird against a dark background and making it look better than it would have left with a somewhat visible background.
that image without jamouls editing, the way he edited it, would not have looked nearly as good.
my point is, and has been from the beginning...this image looks nice. even with its flaws, its a nicer image than could have been produced in a vain and futile attempt to correct the flaw you brought up.
There was no way for jamoul to have taken this shot, and fixed the issue you feel is the problem. not without additional light sources anyway. so I say again, given what he had to work with, this was never "unimaginative" , it was taking a lemon and making lemonade. cool, refreshing, artistic lemonade.

Jamoul, please accept my apologies about the last post, now edited. Please accept the edit below as a suggestion of the imagination I referred to in my original post. If you just back off a touch on the original you should achieve a more convincing effect. It's just a case of seeing the image as a whole complete work, rather than the bird against black. I've never disliked your shot, I just disliked the background, see below for my reasons.

Pixmedic. So what is it about then? You're disagreeing with me having a different opinion? If you didn't disagree with the point why keep hitting the button?

And what's with this "vain and futile attempt to correct the flaws"? It's not hard to do, you just don't move the slider quite so far as to move it to complete black, you leave a little and faint texture. Like this:

View attachment 116832

It's an edit of an edit, but don't you see how a trace of texture connects the bird to the background far better than featureless black? Is it really far removed from what the OP was doing?

That was my only original comment, the black looks like a cut-out, you can't tell if it's in front of or behind the bird because it's disconnected, it has nothing in common. This is what I'm frustrated about you not seeing, you don't see the disconnection between the bird and the background that's so obvious to me that I commented on it. It's a simple obvious mistake, when you get seduced by the added contrast of pure black you fail to see that you've separated the image into two disconnected parts, and you fail to see that pure featureless black does not offer the contrast you think it does. You make an admission it has flaws and a flat statement that there's no other way to handle it. Then you tell me I've not looked at it properly. Well you have a little imagination and at least look at an offered alternative, and quit hitting the dislike button because you fail to see what I'm suggesting.

its such a minor difference between your edit and jamouls.
all this fuss over some pixel peeping? for trace differences?
my statement was NOT that there was no room for better editing, but that there was no better option than to keep the background black...which is what you did, and what jamoul did.
whats more frustrating is that you called it a "lack of imagination", but have nothing better to offer than a very slightly better version of jamouls original editing.

really though, if you had just done that from the beginning, instead of calling jamoul unimaginative....things might have gone better

 

[DarkShadow]

Its a Great Shot and I love the Dark Background Nice Job.

 

[pixmedic]

actually, YOU hit the dislike button on MY post first Tim...
you drew first blood.

Oops, my bad, rating undone.

JacaRanda, PixelMedic,
I commented on an edit to a background which I said lacked imagination. I don't think it fair that you expand that to be a general comment about the photographer. I do hope this has not all been about your perception of one simple sentence. Nobody's artistic intent was ever in question, only that you see past pure featureless black and the very problems in perception that it brings and have the imagination to see that a less dramatic contrast can sometime produce a more complete and unified drama within an image. It's a leap of faith because side by side with a quick glance the pure black will always have more impact. It's just the relative nature of vision that we see by comparison and notice relative differences, you will see this clearly if you flick between the images. But if you sit with one on your wall for a week you will see what I'm talking about. This is the imagination the idea lacked, the faith that the apparent lesser of the two holds it's impact over time because it's more convincing to the careful eye. If you did look at the original for a week and noticed the abrupt change to black looked too much like a mask then think the solution would be fairly obvious anyway.

ditto

 

[Tim Tucker]

Oops, my bad, rating undone.

JacaRanda, PixelMedic,
I commented on an edit to a background which I said lacked imagination. I don't think it fair that you expand that to be a general comment about the photographer. I do hope this has not all been about your perception of one simple sentence. Nobody's artistic intent was ever in question, only that you see past pure featureless black and the very problems in perception that it brings and have the imagination to see that a less dramatic contrast can sometime produce a more complete and unified drama within an image. It's a leap of faith because side by side with a quick glance the pure black will always have more impact. It's just the relative nature of vision that we see by comparison and notice relative differences, you will see this clearly if you flick between the images. But if you sit with one on your wall for a week you will see what I'm talking about. This is the imagination the idea lacked, the faith that the apparent lesser of the two holds it's impact over time because it's more convincing to the careful eye. If you did look at the original for a week and noticed the abrupt change to black looked too much like a mask then think the solution would be fairly obvious anyway.

I also put the image on a white border which does have an impact on perception. I did this because editing the edit is tough as the information is already mostly lost and impossible to recover convincingly. As I explained you can achieve a more convincing edit from the original when I offered it as an example of what I'm talking about. The white anchors it, without it the amount I've raised the shadows would vary depending on the background you view it against. But this is basic stuff, so I'm surprised you don't understand it. Come on guys, you going to get the baseball bats out next?

 

[JacaRanda]

Not sure about the baseball bat reference; nobody has gotten out of control. I appreciate your knowledge, background, training etc.
Seems you assume that the OP has software that does masks. What if he only has lightroom? Perhaps a work around can be done.
Stating this is basic stuff and you are surprised someone does not understand it takes you right back to where you started - a little rude.

 

[pixmedic]

Jaomul already mentioned in an earlier post that he on only used Lightroom and that only global changes were made. No masks on this image.

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