* Weekly C&C Thread #6 * Guaranteed Feedback!

Interesting shot with lots to look at. The colors look a bit cartoonish to me but otherwise I like it.

Greg

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http://www.pbase.com/dadas115/

I like the speckles or strips on the petals and I particularly like the color on the front petal.

But---the crop is so close that it's impossible for me to really get an idea of just what kind of flower this might be. And the thing in the middle (I can't remember what it's called---I'm just a silly mathematician) looks like an ear of corn on the cob. Of course, that may be the point of the macro look at this flower.

I'm also not sure what the focus of the picture is supposed to be. The front petal and the corn-cob thing seem to be in focus, but the curved top part of the other petal is not.

Overall this is a picture that took a while, but it started to grow on me (not sure why) after a while. My first impression, though, was pretty much focused on the corn-cob part and I didn't particularly care for the picture until after I started to look at the interesting pattern on the petals.

Robin

I have an HDR version of this as well but this one is pretty much straight from the camera, minor levels and sharpening.

I really love the vibrancy of this image. I appreciate that your cropping and framing were for use as a desktop but I still think I would have moved the flower slightly to the right within the rectangular crop. This would have left room on the left for icons and I have a pathological hatred of centered images. But then I am a bit strange !

Wonderful pano!

Were I to nitpick, I prefer the more neutral tones on the RHS to the (for me) to the slightly unnatural bluey-green cast on the left. But other than it really is very nice indeed.

Mike

Hi Greg,

I really like the DOF in the shot, how you managed to get the head and body tack sharp but the wings blurred (I'm not even sure it's DOF or motion blur). Gives a great dynamic to the image. I wish the crop would be different. I think cropping a little closer to the wings and at the back and leaving more in front of the bird. That would enhance the dynamic feeling IMO. I also think the photo is quite colourless, so I would enhance this by converting to B&W.

Cheers
Jochen

I'm not usually one for wildlife photos, but the unusually muted tones on this shot work well for me. It has just the right amount of contrast and there is an element of motion blur which is not objectionable because the head and beak are in focus. The wing in the foreground is perhaps a little dominating in the composition, but otherwise it's a fine shot.

Mike

Another super pano. The painterly effect works really well, and I love the detail e.g. in the clothes. The only nitpick is that I keep wanting to see the legs of the people in the foreground.

Mike

I really like the blurry foreground and the colour of the sky in this photo. I also find the shiny wet stones are great. The little bit of lens flare adds to the whole feeling. My major criticism is the wave. It is disturbing the whole tranquil feeling of the rest of the image. The exposure is IMO either too long or too short on it. The way it is at the moment it looks a little like a double exposure, and I find it really distracting. It's rather unfortunate because the rest of the photo is so great.

Cheers
Jochen

I just had a look at the original, I actually didn't do that much adjustments. Your version is too red, here is what a straight conversion of the RAW without adjustments looks like:



And here is what those flowers look like in sunlight:



Cheers
Jochen

zardozfromoz said:

I had it printed about 60cm wide, but that's nowhere near wide enough
to appreciate it. The full size image is 14196 x 2360 pixels. I'm
going to have it reprinted and framed at 2.4 metres wide, which
represents a pitch of 150dpi. Should be good enough to walk up to it
and view it from 8x10" viewing distance and see plenty of detail.

Click to expand...

! That should be a great print.

zardozfromoz said:

Yep. The scooter is a major way of life in Taiwan. They have their
own special waiting areas at lights, and are permitted to turn into
those areas in front of other vehicles, ready for the light to
change. It's a pretty good system, actually.

Click to expand...

A nice system. The typical in the USA is that the biggest car dominate and smaller vehicles are on their own. But i think a few more years of oil demand elsewhere and things will change.

zardozfromoz said:

zardozfromoz said:

What's the processing? Looks close to a watercolor effect.

Click to expand...

It's very careful tone mapping (courtesy of Photomatix), followed by
a fair bit of finessing in Photoshop. It's derived from single shots
that have been exposed at different levels in ACR, so it's not
strictly a HDR image. I was very lucky to shoot six shots in
succession with so many moving objects and still be able to blend
them together into a pano where there are no duplicated people or
objects. Actually, that's not quite true. If you look closely, you'll
see some deliberately duplicated objects that tell a bit of a story.
I didn't notice those objects at the time of shooting but I've been
able to work them into the finished image, and I think they add an
extra dimension to those who find them.

Click to expand...

I see one dark gray car doubled. And two people starting out at a distance and then be side by side. Are there other doublings?

zardozfromoz said:

I tried for an effect that makes you believe it could have been drawn
with pencils, but I was careful not to go too far because I know how
sensitive people are to strong HDR techniques.

Glad you liked it

Click to expand...

I think you found a nice look.

You might like this mural in San Francisco. It's not photography, but still:
http://www.monacaron.com/galleries/MSR-unv-gallery/welcome.html

Notice the window in the upper left for scale.

--
Dan Daniel

http://dandaniel.zenfolio.com/

Certainly seems everyone wants a focal point of some sort! Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions.
--
Dan Daniel

http://dandaniel.zenfolio.com/

ddan daniel said:

I see one dark gray car doubled. And two people starting out at a
distance and then be side by side. Are there other doublings?

Click to expand...

Actually, there's two different darker cars that are doubled, but they don't impact the reality of the image because they're rather plain and they could be different cars, and the instances of each are so far apart that you don't connect them to each other. I mean, you often see two identical looking cars right next to each other on the road. But you've found the duplicate people! I noticed while I was stitching the separate images that it made the best blend to choose the guy from image 1 and the girl from image 2. This put some distance between them where in fact they were walking side by side like you see them in the right side of the image. So you can imply that they'd only just met on the left, and by the time your eye pans to the right they're together. Awww! How sweet!

I was worried that asian people might view the image from right to left, which would break the continuity of this little story, but my taiwanese girlfriend assured me that it worked the same way for her as it does for western people, starting from the left and looking across the image to the right. This works because the image is so consistent with details right across that your eye isn't drawn to any particular point with too much emphasis.

I'll admit now that I saw all this after I took the photos. I'm nowhere near clever enough to plan this before I shot!

--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

Thanks. I agree about the legs.

--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

Model Mike said:

Wonderful pano!

Click to expand...

Thanks

Model Mike said:

Were I to nitpick, I prefer the more neutral tones on the RHS to the
(for me) to the slightly unnatural bluey-green cast on the left. But
other than it really is very nice indeed.

Click to expand...

Would you believe that I haven't made any changes to the colours? I've just tone mapped the image and played with Photoshop settings like saturation that affected all of the image evenly. So that's how the colours really were, except that they were very muted. In fact, in reality, everything was depressingly grey. The reason there's such a change in tone across the image is that the smog makes things bluey-green, and the storm on the right mixed with the low afternoon sun behind the clouds makes things more yellow-brown on the right. I was really surprised when I saw the range of tones in the image.

--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

PeaceFrog said:

I think this shot is fantastic and really gives me the impression
that the city is HUGE. I think that the color of the sky is very
neat looking and I like all the detail that I can see in the
buildings. I say VERY well done.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Glad you liked it. The place really is huge and dense, and it's exactly the same scene out the left side of the building as well!

--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

James J Hughes said:

The contrast in the colors between the two sides is interesting but
the landscape on the right isn't as intresting as that on the right.

Click to expand...

I blame the Kaohsiung local council for building an airport over the the right ;-)

James J Hughes said:

Good capture, superb PP just a bit too much going on for me.

Click to expand...

I blame the Kaohsiung local council for ridiculously high density zoning laws ;-)

It's more interesting if you can actually see the detail, though. Here's a 100% crop example. They look like ants down there!



--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

Wow, there's a certain surreality to this image caused by the long shutter speed. I really like it. I'm a bit distracted by what looks like overblown sky on the right, though. It's like there's no colour there, which makes the colours of the sky in the middle of the image look out of place and somewhat isolated. The tones in the surf and rocks are great, though. Despite giving me a cool feeling, it makes me feel that I really want to be where that shot was taken!

--

Beware of he who would deny you information, for in his mind he dreams of being your master.
More of my stuff here: http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnosis/art

Hmmm. Tough call. I am working on my Abstract photography, including Shapes

No, seriously, thanks for pointing that out! I'll take all kinds of C&C
--
Keitha McCall
Pentaxian and Snapshot Shooter since April 2007
http://flickr.com/photos/aravis121/
http://www.ascenicworld.com

This shot makes me really feel I'm in the scene, rather than looking at it, thanks to the low viewpoint and the shutter speed providing just the right amount of blur.

The bright sky at the top right tends to distract the eye a little. and the big wave looks as if it's ghosting slightly. But it still works well for me.

Mike