Fog

[massimomossi]

Shot this in Norfolk, VA, last week. Very heavy fog, sun not even peeking through.

Olympus SP-570UZ, 92mm zoom. ISO 64, f/8, 1/200 sec. Slight crop on right side; otherwise full frame. PP in PSE7: sharpening, noise removal, brightening of picture using "auto levels".

It seems way too noisy for ISO 64 with minimal enlargement. The overall feeling of the picture is close to what I envisioned, with a bit of color in the corner and largely color-less main subject, and maybe the graininess is part of that effect.

Suggestions?

Thanks for looking and commenting,
Massimo

[Robert Amoruso]

Massimo,

Very interesting image and I like the idea behind it. I decided to download it and do some tweaks. Any, all or none are your option... but you have lots of possibilities with this image so I hope you don't mind if I demonstrate a few. Complete workflow below and in the next post I posted an image of the layer stack.


1) Cloned out line on right side of image.
2) Selected everything except the colored rocks.
3) Using that selection I:
a) Hue/Saturation and removed all the color by removing all the saturation (slider to left completely.
b) Curves adjustment and chose high contrast preset in PSCS3. An agressive s-curve to pump up the contrast.

NOTE: You can recover a selection by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on a mask. After making the Hue/Saturation correction, the selection is lost. I regain it by using the above process and then making the curves correction.

4) Recover the selection by holding down CTRL key and clicking on the mask used for the curves correction.
5) Inverse the mask with SHIFT-CTRL-I. Now the rocks are selected.
6) Curves correction used Lighten preset in PSCS4 but same thing if you pull up and left on the the middle of the curve.
7) CRTL and click on this curves mask to get selection back.
8) Hue/Saturation to pump up the green.

9) You have a vignette on the left top and bottom corners but not much on the right top only lessened with the cloning. So I did a selection (using Quick Mask) on the top left corner, hit CTRL-C to copy, CTRL-J to make it a layer.
10) In the menu go to EDIT > TRANSFORM > FLIP HORIZONTAL to reverse it.
11) using the move tool (V on keyboard) to grab the selection and move into right top corner to get a vignette.
12) Selective Color correction, I added black to the neutral channel to make the pilings darker - more black. I then masked out areas I did not want darkened by this correction. See selective color layer below.

[Robert Amoruso]

Layer stack for what I did above.

[David Thomasson]

It's an intriguing shot, but my attention is drawn first to the very dark form in the bottom right corner, then to the lighter but more interesting form in the middle. My eye doesn't settle down anywhere. Maybe take out the dark form at the bottom? I also could wish for a little less canvas at the top and a little more at bottom below the reflection. Something like this:

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/2558/fog.jpg

[Paul Marcellini]

When I saw this I instantly envisioned David's post. I also think the dark corner detracts from the nice moody and mystery of the piling in fog. I don't mind the grain at all. I think if you even out the vignette a touch and crop/clone the dark corner, you have a real winner.

[David Thomasson]

When I saw this I instantly envisioned David's post.

Move evidence of your superior aesthetic sense. But we already knew that from your photos. :cool:

[massimomossi]

Robert, David, and Paul,

Thank you all for your very generous comments--and the time you put into improving the image, Robert and David!

I'm glad you all liked it enough to make substantive suggestions that open up techniques for me to explore in this image and others. This is why I submit my work here!!!

Massimo

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Massimo,
Very nice that you recieved a few different takes on this. Dvid's re-post really shows the strenght of looking at the different comps in the field. Very effective and moody. Nicely seen.