Stepping away from normalcy...And back again. (C&C)

[Bitter Jeweler]

1.
Stormy

2.
Forest Fire

3.
The Dancers

 

[Josh66]

Wow, very nice. I love your abstract work...

...I can't figure out what #1 is..., and I must know, lol.

 

[inTempus]

Cool stuff man.

 

[SpeedTrap]

I love the last 2 very nice stuff. # 2 tould make a great photoshop texture.
I am not so hot on number one, I undertand what you are going for nut it just looks like spray painted paper pull tabs off the frozed pizza box.

But I do like the 2nd and 3rd ones. They are nice and clean and draw you in.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Very nice. I really like both #1 and 2. Nice composition, nice tones, etc.

#3 is also quite nice but I would like it better if the background was solid white.

 

[KmH]

#1 looks like a variety of cactus. Nicely subtle.

#2 is interesting but the blurred foreground feels confusing. For me anyway.

#3 is my fave, but with the simple background I wish the left facing flower and the stem were in focus and the one broad leaf at the bottom was not in the image.

Good work. :thumbup:

 

[SuperMom30]

#3 is beautiful I just love it I think the rest are great too!

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it.

O||||||O, #1 is indeed a cactus, or agave, or yucca family.

I am pretty pleased that I am learning to see these shots "full frame", rather than small crops from big pictures.

Is anyone bothered by the hugely oversaturated purple in the thorns?


c.cloudwalker, (#3) I will see what all white does for me. I liked the subtle gradient myself. My reasoning: It mimics the gradient in the petals of the flower. KmH, at F/11 I thought I had more DoF. I had taken a couple with smaller apertures, but with the slight breeze through the greenhouse, they are blurry. Aw, I thought the little green leaf at the bottom added that little something extra.

KmH, on #2, I was tempted to crop the image even higher, at the lower third of this image, creating a sort of Pano image. I felt for the abstract quality I was going for, the focus is the "fire", and felt the blurred foreground to be "natural".

SuperMom30, glad you like them. Do you disagree with the critiques above you?

 

[c.cloudwalker]

c.cloudwalker, (#3) I will see what all white does for me. I liked the subtle gradient myself. My reasoning: It mimics the gradient in the petals of the flower. KmH, at F/11 I thought I had more DoF. I had taken a couple with smaller apertures, but with the slight breeze through the greenhouse, they are blurry. Aw, I thought the little green leaf at the bottom added that little something extra.

To each his own. Which is why I said "I would like it..." rather than "It would be much better."

On the other hand, I agree with you a 100% on the leaf. It does add that little extra something without which this image would not be half as interesting. But again, this is just a personal opinion.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I am pretty pleased that I am learning to see these shots "full frame", rather than small crops from big pictures.

Is anyone bothered by the hugely oversaturated purple in the thorns?

I am glad to read this about learning not to crop. There is, imho, way too much cropping going on here. With film, cropping means an enlargement of the grain and therefore a loss in quality. So I learned early on to do all my cropping in camera. It seems it is the same problem in digital except we are talking about pixels.

As I said in another thread, it is not always possible to crop in camera. Especially with things like photo-journalism and sports but you still should be as close to the crop you want as possible.

If you crop half of the image out, it means you don't know what you're doing. Or, at least, you don't know where you're going with that specific image. Which, to me, is about the same. Along with the basics of composition, this is part of my Photo 101 class.

And, please, don't anybody get upset by what I'm saying. This forum is a learning forum even if there are some pretty advanced photogs here and, we all started not knowing a darn thing about anything. Some people have an eye and it comes to them more easily but none of us who are any good at this have learned without a teacher/mentor. And for most of us it does not happen overnight. So get over it. Go out there, shoot, have it critiqued and learn. And once you've learned the rules, you can break them all. :lmao::lmao::lmao:

Sorry about the lesson everyone. I'm a teacher....



The saturated purple does not bother me the least bit. It works fine so that it is really nothing more than a question of personal likes and dislikes.

The only thing that bothers me about that image is the triangle in the lower left corner. Not enough to have mentioned it originally, you'll notice. It looks to me as if it is background instead of another cactus leave.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Thanks again c.cloudwalker.
I understand a lot of critiqueing is a matter of opinion. I like to at least explain my thought processes as to why I choose to do "x". It generates valuable feedback to think about in future work. Many suggestions make me go back to editing, to at least see how it looks a different way. This is invaluable.

i have learned a lot from books, and a lot from here. Thats why I keep coming back!

 

[KmH]

3.
The Dancers

For comparison purposes: just cloned

 

[musicaleCA]

Great work Bitter; love it. And...er...um...useful critique...useful critique...I agree. I like the slight gradient of the background in the third. And I kinda agree with KmH; I think it might have a little more omph without the leaf. (Edit: Ninja'd by KmH, and I like the cloning-out of that leaf. Shiny.)

c.cloudwalker, ditto on the cropping. When I crop, I try to make sure it's something I'm doing that is because I was limited by the equipment I had. There are quite a few shots that I've cropped because my lens didn't quite have enough reach; that's when I'm thankful I've got 12MP to work with. Or sometimes, the 2:3 aspect ratio doesn't work well. (I have cropped out around half an image for these reasons before, and sometimes, dumped most of the image, like this one, but that was because I couldn't get in close enough with the lens I had on.)

As for photojournalism, pft. If you aren't close enough to the action, I say run (I think I *really* cropped, two photos in that set?)...as long as you aren't running toward a tank or something like that. So I disagree that cropping is a sign that you "don't know what you're doing", but completely agree that it's, well, just better form to crop as much as possible in camera. Plus the bonus to IQ is tremedous when you avoid cropping.

 

[Skedaddle]

Great shots. I like all of them but the last photo looks better without the leaf in the background. The last photo is my favorit out of the three but it was hard choosing between the 2nd and 3rd photo.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

c.cloudwalker, ditto on the cropping. When I crop, I try to make sure it's something I'm doing that is because I was limited by the equipment I had. There are quite a few shots that I've cropped because my lens didn't quite have enough reach; that's when I'm thankful I've got 12MP to work with. Or sometimes, the 2:3 aspect ratio doesn't work well. (I have cropped out around half an image for these reasons before, and sometimes, dumped most of the image, like this one, but that was because I couldn't get in close enough with the lens I had on.)

As for photojournalism, pft. If you aren't close enough to the action, I say run (I think I *really* cropped, two photos in that set?)...as long as you aren't running toward a tank or something like that. So I disagree that cropping is a sign that you "don't know what you're doing", but completely agree that it's, well, just better form to crop as much as possible in camera. Plus the bonus to IQ is tremedous when you avoid cropping.

My choice of words is, I agree, a bit strong. I find that on forums it makes it easier to make a point.

The point you make about not having the right lens is valid here as, from what I've seen so far, most members are not professionals and may not be expected to have more than one camera around their neck at any given time. When I worked news (mostly war and social unrest) I always had three around my neck and sometimes four if I was also going to shoot some color (very rare.) One body usually with a 85mm (nice portrait lens without getting in your subject's face but not so long that you can't do general shots), one with a 200mm (for when you can't get close enough to the action or... when you just shouldn't ) and the third was a rangefinder with a very fast 35mm (the 35 is the best blind-shooting lens - wide enough to point in the general direction and get the shot but not so wide that you get distortion; rangefinder is for those situation when you don't want to make any noise as in when photos are not allowed or would not be appreciated by the subject.) This basically covered all situations.

Side note here for those who do not know what a rangefinder is: when you trip the release on an SLR, it raises the mirror out of the way and that makes noise. A rangefinder does not have a mirror since it is not focused through the lens and, therefore, it is silent.

As you say yourself, not cropping helps the IQ and, when you make a living from your photography, IQ is extremely important.

When you are an amateur without all the money in the world, you are better off spending what you have on quality glass rather than a second body. Especially since in most situation you will have plenty of time to switch lenses if the need arrises.

And the loss of IQ is not as important.