C&C Needed

Last week I posted several pictures from a recent trip to Yellowstone. I have gotten nothing but compliments from friends and family. While I like compliments, they don't make me a better photographer.

I was hiking with two non-photog friends, so setting up and waiting for just the right light was not an option. I had to take the light I had and make it work. I had a B+W Kaeseman slim circular polarizer on the lens for all four. I tried to use the partial darkening of the sky(from a CP on a wide lens) to balance out the composition.

Here are four of my favorites from the trip. All are hand held. I'm pretty happy with all four. Which concerns me a little, It tells me I've reached the limits of my perception/ability. So, rip me a new one. What's wrong with them? What could be done differently/better? Color, saturation, contrast, sharpening, composition? Comment on all of them or just one of them. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm completely self taught, so all I have to go on is my own judgment and feed back from others. I'm shooting with a Fujifilm S5 Pro+Nikon 12-24 f/4 and I calibrate my monitor at least once a month. So, if yours is calibrated, we are seeing pretty close to the same thing.

22mm, 1/100s, f/11, 250iso
ACR RAW conversion. Slight levels adjustment and Smart Sharpen.
http://www.pbase.com/quath/image/80115103/original.jpg


12mm, 1/320s, f/8, 200iso
ACR RAW conversion. Slight levels adjustment and Smart Sharpen.
http://www.pbase.com/quath/image/80115116/original.jpg


12mm, 1/250s, f/8, 200iso
ACR RAW conversion. I masked the bacteria mats and used curves to increase the contrast and bring out the reflection of the clouds. Slight levels adjustment, smart sharpen.
http://www.pbase.com/quath/image/80115098/original.jpg


12mm, 1/200s, f/8, 200iso
ACR RAW conversion. Slight levels adjustment and Smart Sharpen.
http://www.pbase.com/quath/image/80115106/original.jpg

Thanks in advance,

-Dana

"ACR RAW conversion. Slight levels adjustment and Smart Sharpen."

I'd suggest playing around in Shadow/Highlight, working mostly on adjusting the highlights. That will bring back some of the blown-out areas of this photo. Actually, a little Shadow/Highlight might help all of the photos a little bit.

As a baseline, I always go Levels >> Shadow/Highlight >> Brightness/Contrast >> Hue & Saturation >> Color Balance. Then I typically do my masking and more advanced stuff from there.

Well, you seem to have nailed down quite a few things.

The colors, contrast, etc. all look wonderful on my screen. Images are sharp front to back, yadda yadda yadda.

My criticism is going to deal with composition. While the images are beautifully captured, they are not particularly interesting to look at for very long. There is no "surprise" that really draws me in. When I look at these images, I find myself more impressed with the colors and sharpness than with what the picture is actually of.

My point is this: get a foreground!! Most of these images would be improved with a bit of foreground to give the viewer some perspective. This doesn't always mean framing your photos with a tree or a flower or something, although that is often good, but it could mean changing the angle you are shooting from.

For instance, in the 3rd photo, what I'm really interested in is what appears to be the dry and cracked soil on the ground. Perhaps if you had gotten closer to the ground, and filled the frame 4/5 with the ground, and the other 1/5 with the tree line and sky, it would have more impact.

The same goes for the 4th photo, if you were shooting through that grass on the water, I think the image would be more interesting.

Try to tell a story with you images as well as capturing the beauty of the landscape. An example: in the second photo, the most interesting part of the landscape is the steam coming out of the geyser, yet that seems to have been overlooked.


Lastly, shooting wide isn't always the best approach. I haven't seen your other work, but from these four images it appears that you prefer to shoot wide rather than zooming in on the action. For the first photo, I think a cool picture would have been filling the frame with those trees you see in the background. They form a really nice and pleasing pattern.

Anyway, I know this is all very jumbled together, but I hope it helps!

Keep up the good work!

I agree with dipstik, like the colors. In photo 3 I get drawn to the dark treed hill in the center left (distracts from the really cool soil).

And it looks like your Smart sharpen is over-sharpening (but I haven't calibrated my monitor), I only recognize this because I am guilty of over-sharpening on a regular basis.

Nice photos, I need to get back to that place sometime, it's been 16 years:eek:

Disclaimer: I am both new and very critical, which is a bad combination, but I am honestly and genuinely just trying to offer what input I have. So don't take it too hard. ;)

Totally agree with dipstik on the composition note. I like the composition in the fourth photo the most because your subject (the intersection of the logs in the foreground) is the most obvious in that one. It seems like your subject in the third photo was the geyser, which makes me question why you included as much in the frame to the left as you did. If you did it for color contrast, try cropping some of that stuff out, and see if you like that any better.

I have been taking a pretty good number of pictures since I have been home, and where I have improved the most is by making it obvious what my subject is. I feel like two good ways to do this are 1) by having the subject be either much darker or much lighter than the background and foreground and 2) by having the subject in sharp focus with most other things out of focus. I would advise zooming in some and playing with your depth of field to make your subject "pop" a little more. I have definitely found this is more difficult to do, mentally, shooting large-scale landscapes because so many things around you seem capturable. I used to do this a lot: "Wow, this whole scene looks really nice. I want to take a picture of everything in front of me just as it is. But I don't know what to expose the picture for or what to focus on because I don't know what my subject is..." Picking out a particular aspect of a landscape can be considerably more interesting than having everything in focus.

That said, the colors and sharpness are fantastic. Though the composition may not be "interesting" from a photographer's standpoint, I can still see that the range of colors you were looking at was really cool. (Which is why you shot it, I guess. :tongue: ) And the perspective in #3 is interesting, IMO.

Keep shooting! It works!

...this is exactly what I was hopeing for.

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Originally Posted by ski_adk

I'd suggest playing around in Shadow/Highlight,

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I try to do any adjustments in curves, but I'll play around with S/H and see how it looks. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by dipstik

My point is this: get a foreground!!

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:D I see what you are saying.

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Lastly, shooting wide isn't always the best approach.

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I agree. Whenever I get a new lens I tend to shoot with that one exclusively for a while to get to know it. I bought the 12-24 about three weeks before this trip. So that's the only one I took with me.

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Originally Posted by wendigo

And it looks like your Smart sharpen is over-sharpening (but I haven't calibrated my monitor),

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Unfortunately, smart sharpen is only as smart as the person using it:)

Other than halos and artifacts, is there anything to look for when sharpening, or is it more a matter of judgment?

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Originally Posted by Deep Days

Disclaimer: I am both new and very critical, which is a bad combination, but I am honestly and genuinely just trying to offer what input I have. So don't take it too hard. ;)

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LOL! that is a bad combination. But if I can offer you advice on how to become a better skier, you can offer me advice on how to take better pictures:)

Thanks for the input.

That third picture is the shit. Seriously- one of the nicest pics I've seen in a while.