Critique this

[mrblaine]

[Britain]

Is this taken from you back patio sir?
Nice

[mrblaine]

Originally posted by Britain
Is this taken from you back patio sir?
Nice

3 blocks away.

I'm not looking for compliments. I want to know how to make it better.

[Britain]

Sorry a bit envy miss the ocean.

My mind drifts to the boat and jetty a tad dark. Not sure lighting that up will blow out the great sunset.

[NAILER341]

seems a bit out of focus, or unsharpened. i dont know if your camera has internal settings like the canon's do, but you might look into the sharpness setting a bit. it is missing the "pop".
i cant quite put my finger on it, but something is making it a bit flat.
great view though.

[mrblaine]

Originally posted by NAILER341
seems a bit out of focus, or unsharpened. i dont know if your camera has internal settings like the canon's do, but you might look into the sharpness setting a bit. it is missing the "pop".
i cant quite put my finger on it, but something is making it a bit flat.
great view though.

I think that's due to the time of day. It was nearly dark and the only light was from the sunset. I had to switch to the nighttime program to take the shot as the shutter speed was too low otherwise.

[JeepGal]

Originally posted by mrblaine
I think that's due to the time of day. It was nearly dark and the only light was from the sunset. I had to switch to the nighttime program to take the shot as the shutter speed was too low otherwise.

You should talk to Sarah about taking them in RAW. (Some cameras have this feature) The pictures just jump out at you...but it requires processing after the fact.

I think Erik did a few as well...here's one of Sarahs from Rubicon this year:



Beautiful Sunset BTW! I miss living down there.

Tam

[TObject]

The sky is very beautiful, I like the colors too.

Aesthetically, when looking at the picture it is hard to figure out what is the main subject; my eyes keep wondering back and forth between the bright red sky and the composition of the boat the jetties and the navigational light. The darker buoy down the picture distracts even more attention as the eyes unconsciously want to examine the dark spot.

Also about the boat, its bottom part is wonderfully silueted against reflections in the water, but the top of the boat is lost in the dark background.

There are no hard rules about what a picture should look like. When we see something visually appealing we naturally want to include as much as possible in the picture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn?t.

It looks to me like there could be several pictures in that one. Such as, one could be telling a story of the boat navigating through the channel, another one of the sunset.

Now, about sharpening. A computer image almost always needs sharpening after resizing. As a rule of thumb, sharpening should be done as the very last operation before saving the final work. Sharpening in-camera usually doesn?t hurt much, unless the picture is going to be scaled up (for printing large posters for example). Also, if you plan on selling your pictures, most stock agencies do not accept sharpened images.

RAW (NEF) files are not sharpened in camera, they may contain information on how much sharpening you wanted, but the actual sharpening is optionally done in the process of raw conversion [by Nikon Capture, or Adobe Camera Raw, or some other raw processor].

Again, preferred time to sharpen is as the last step in image editing, after all the corrections, and, most importantly, after the image has been resized.

Advanced techniques include applying varying amounts of sharpening to different parts of a picture.

And, the last but not the least, there is such thing as too much sharpening. This often happens when you work with multiple images. Your eyes get used to the effect, and you want to apply more and more of it. It is better to be on the conservative side.

[mrblaine]

Originally posted by JeepGal
You should talk to Sarah about taking them in RAW. (Some cameras have this feature) The pictures just jump out at you...but it requires processing after the fact.

I think Erik did a few as well...here's one of Sarahs from Rubicon this year:



Beautiful Sunset BTW! I miss living down there.

Tam

Nikon calls their Raw format NEF for Nikon Electronic Format which is what I shoot in.

[Matt Pascoe]

I really should stay out of this as I have little/no clue about photography. But, Sarah's pictures use a 'trick' that I think could improve Blaines picture. If I understood correctly, Sarahs picture is actually 3 different pictures digitally put together. Each picture is bracketed to enhance a different depth.

I think a tecnique like that would allow you too keep the deep sunset colors AND lighten up the forefront enough to get some detail.

[mrblaine]

Originally posted by Matt Pascoe
I really should stay out of this as I have little/no clue about photography. But, Sarah's pictures use a 'trick' that I think could improve Blaines picture. If I understood correctly, Sarahs picture is actually 3 different pictures digitally put together. Each picture is bracketed to enhance a different depth.

I think a tecnique like that would allow you too keep the deep sunset colors AND lighten up the forefront enough to get some detail.

It's a nice picture, but it bugs me to look at it. I keep following the V the clouds make with my eyes and then dropping them back to take in the lake and vegetation in the front and then it starts all over again.

Like mine, but I see the center of the sunset first, and then start picking out the individual elements and lose the big picture.

If you look at the ship that Sergey posted, your eye movement is pretty calm and you take in the whole thing.

[Britain]

jpg. is a compression. everytime you open and close it looses info.

Sarahs pics is great. What format is she posting as? Everytime a convert to .jpg the pics look like doo doo

[Britain]

Originally posted by Matt Pascoe
I really should stay out of this as I have little/no clue about photography. But, Sarah's pictures use a 'trick' that I think could improve Blaines picture. If I understood correctly, Sarahs picture is actually 3 different pictures digitally put together. Each picture is bracketed to enhance a different depth.

I think a tecnique like that would allow you too keep the deep sunset colors AND lighten up the forefront enough to get some detail.

Ah she's layering. Hope she buts in on this.

[mrblaine]

Originally posted by Britain
jpg. is a compression. everytime you open and close it looses info.

Sarahs pics is great. What format is she posting as? Everytime a convert to .jpg the pics look like doo doo

That's the same issue as the sunset. Kat converts them to jpg to host them on the website.

[NAILER341]

what sarah is doing with thoseis "tone mapping".
i have played with it a bit. the pics look pretty cool. kind of like a painting.







http://www.hdrsoft.com/
this link explaines the process.

by the way, blaine.
i am now looking at your picture on my other computer. it is not as flat as my laptop was making it appear.