Waiting For Perfect Light #1

[Daniel Belasco]

TriColored Heron

Techs: canon 1d MkIIN 500mm f4 @f8 1/200 sec. iso 800 -2/3 EV

http://newimages.fotopic.net/?iid=yzkqij&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[Daniel Belasco]

This is only my 5th. post I think. I haven't been able to get the image posted properly or the writing to come up right, so I decided to write the image circumstances here instead of above.

This was taken at a local pond, actually not a pond but a salt water Mangrove Cay on the island I live on in The Bahamas.<ST1:p</ST1:p The light on this pond can be very beautiful, but it lasts only 5-15 minutes, just before sunset. And only then if there aren’t any clouds to the west. What makes the light nice is I can still get some direct light on the front of the birds and I can also get beautiful reflected light from the low Palm branches behind the bird. The pond is about 100 meters by 25 meters wide. The Palm trees behind the bird are called Golden Palms. These Palm trees don't grow 100-200 feet high like more Palm trees you see, but maybe 25 feet tall. The palm fronds are also much larger, 15-20 feet long than regular palm fronds. This gives a reflection on the water that allows such images as that above. (The diagonal line on the right is the tree trunk).
The light lasts only a short period of time, but of course you also need a bird to walk in front of the light. The patch of light on the water is only 3-5 feet across and if the bird is moving I only have a second or two to take the shot.
In the image above I set up my gear near where I thought I would get the good light when the sun began to set. There was only 1 bird at the pond that evening, a TriColored Heron. I had know this particular Heron for over 6 months and knew he would make a systematic search of the pond for small fish and if I sat tight he would walk across my patch of perfect light hopefully before nightfall.
The last bit of light was fading fast before the heron got to my spot. But to my surprise he stopped there for 5 minutes. He sat real still turning his head ever so slowly, stopping at each model pose. I'll post some different poses later. I had the right lens on the camera and these images are posted full frame-no cropping.
The 1/200 second was because of the fading light, also iso 800. I used f8 because I wanted the entire bill in focus as he turned his head. I also like slightly underexposed images.

[Ramon M. Casares]

Very nice species and indeed a nice spot to wait for it, I like the colors and nice light, I would only suggest to crop from left to improve comp and also I would try to tone down the bright areas at the top. Image Quality has suffered but mostly because you didn't use the maximum allowed weight (200 kb) I would go back and repost it with a better web-size treatment.
Congratulations though for all the effort, it did worth it!

[Jay Gould]

Daniel, I think the bird with the orange BG at the head is really cool. However, I would try to do something with the brown refection in the water just to the right of the beak. It is like a barrier and as such while I am looking at the bird's head the brown line is grabbing my right eye. I would also tone down the dark spot in the upper right corner, perhaps even cropping just at the edge of that dark shadow.

Overall I really like the bird.

[Mark Perry]

Beautiful Dan!

[David Fletcher]

Beautiful colors Daniel. Like the pose too, and feel the suggestions made with enhance this fine shot.

[Stu Bowie]

I like the pose and light in this, and you have captured a great reflection too. This needs a CW rotation. A quick way to check is to line up the tips of the beaks.

[Kiran Khanzode]

I usually surf through the bird thumbnails....this one caught my eye....really !

What incredible lighting....I absolutely love the pose..the reflection. Could the image take a little CW tilt ? Great exposure....lovely splash of colors...
Such light is what I (try to) do photography for...get the light, get in position, find a subject..SHOOT before it's too dark !!!

[Rohan Kamath]

this light is surreal... the colors are fantastic...Is there any way to remove the brown tree reflection on the right of the bird??? If there is could someone please share that...(will help us newbies learn as well... :D)

[Arthur Morris]

"Liking underexposed images" is of course your right, but doing so yields files of inferior quality. As I believe that I pointed out in a previous but similar post of yours, the bird here is also too centered. But the biggest problem is two fold: the brightest light in the image is just below the bird's breast. This draws the viewer's eye from the bird's face. Secondly, the bird's head is lost in a dark area of water.

[Jay Gould]

I like the pose and light in this, and you have captured a great reflection too. This needs a CW rotation. A quick way to check is to line up the tips of the beaks.

Stuart, what an interesting way to check whether the object and the reflections are square/lined up. To be clear, you are indicating in this image that the bird is leaning a bit to the left so that the tip of its beak is further left than the tip of the reflection's beak, correct? That is what I am seeing when I put the edge of a notepad against the tip of the reflection's beak.

[Jay Gould]

I also like slightly underexposed images; I like the color saturation, so -2/3 stop.

Daniel, in regards to your desire for higher color saturation, I was reading some threads about the 5D2 and high dynamic range/pattern noise on the POTN forum

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=728145

which also brought home the necessity of exposing to the right as far as practicable to obtain the maximum information a scene has to offer.

What I have learned from BPN, and it is hammered in to the point of having its own abbreviation (ETTR), is to use the histogram and the post image preview so that you expose to the point where the blinkies - the tiniest blinkies - just start to appear and then depending upon the image back off slightly.

We are constantly seeing serious photographers looking at their LCDs after every shot and checking histograms; I never really understood the importance prior to joining BPN.

I am writing this out for me as well as for you so that if I have said it wrong I will be corrected.

My understanding is that it is easier to tone down the hottest spots and bring out the information in the shadows if you are against the right (white at 254+), then to be able to open up the shadows if you are against the left (black at -1 or +1 or +2).

It is also my understanding that even if you have exposed to the right so as to have as much information in the raw file to work with in PP, you can still in PP increase your color saturation to a level that meets your satisfaction.

In the POTN thread, in post #32 the poster was discussing the dynamic range of a particular image taken by a 5D2, and while the purpose of the thread was to discuss pattern noise in the 5D2, it really brought home the importance of ETTR so that in PP you can bring out the additional information contained in the shadows that would otherwise be lost by intentionally underexposing.

Please be clear that this is not posted because Artie pointed this out initially. Had I read the cited POTN thread before I made my first post - I still overall like your image and the concept your were attempting to achieve even if it isn't totally achieved - and the fact that you intentionally are underexposing, I would have added this information to my first post.

Daniel, does this makes sense to you?

Everyone/Anyone, have I said this correctly? Thanks in advance for any corrections/assistance.

[Arthur Morris]

Intentionally underexposing so that an image looks good on the back of the camera is poor technique. Expose to the right and then darken the image during processing.

[Jay Gould]

Peter, the RP is great!

With the narrowness of the image I can see the appropriate Japanese characters vertically down the lower RHC saying something appropriate.

This could be printed as a long screen-type image.

[paul leverington]

Hi Dan!

Hey I really appreciate that you wrote something about the circumstances about the picture. Some text describing the scene and your intent so much helps in the understanding and enjoyment.

I think your vision for this shot is right on. Looks like a great pond with those reflections too. Tri-colors are awesome bird subjects. This birds body position is near perfect. Great head position, sweet s-curve in the neck, one leg in front of the other, all lead the viewers eye up and down and provides lots of interest. The water colors are terriffic too. The ones that bother me the most are the whitish ones above. They take away from the others. The brown ones as mentioned by someone else is next. I have no idea where you were around the pond but is it possible to shoot down the length of the pond and still get the colors? Perhaps these obtrusive hues could be iliminated?

Up by the picture you had F4 as your opening, and down below you mentioned that you used F8. I'll assume for now it was F8. And at 1/200th, if he wasn't moving at all, froze for the moment, heck you could be at 1/60 or even less with the IS on the lens and thereby come up with more light, maybe making a possible slower ISO too. You can always darken it down in PS to whatever flavor you want. As is, there is a quantity of noise I think, and thats because at the darker area of the exposure scale there are a lot less tonal values per one f stop (inherent for digital capture). To be of helpful and constructive benefit for you, here is a link that might help you with that. If you have a handle on all that already, then pardon my redundancy. Here's the link:

http://www.gardenstatecolor.com/pdf/Exposure.pdf




The concept rocks--and this shot shows that to be sure. You definitely got something going. And you have a situation that's repeatable. In my honest opinion the reflections aren't quite in the best locations in this shot. If it were me I think I would study the pond hard for exactly the right reflections and stake it out.. No sense being anywhere else because without them one wouldn't succeed in the vision. I would keep tweaking all the elements till it was just the way I wanted it.


With this shot you are really going to have to pay attention to color. They are really strong and if you want to boost some of them, then others will probably clip. It's a really difficult job to do with PS and saturation sliders. And you can mask and do local stuff but this can cause a unatural looking deviation in local aeras, from the actual scenes color balance. Or more accurately the balnce BETWEEN colors in the scene. So many digital shots do this I'm surprised it's not mentioned more often. A viewer might not even know what the problem is --it might be that sublime--but subconsciouly, he or she will sense something artificial. If you really want to saturate safely without clipping any of the channels, there are some working spaces with variants here that are wonderful in certain pictures--and I think this is one image that could make good use of them.

Here's the link for that:

http://www.josephholmes.com/profiles.html

Basically you "convert" from your usual working space(adobe rgb, prophoto rgb) to the one of the J holmes spaces(It will be Dcam3 most of the time), and then "assign" a variant to increase or decrease saturation. By doing so you actually expand the color gamut of the whole space a little bit in increments. In some images this can be a huge benefit. You will never loose the natural relationship ratio between colors and you won't blow them out either by clipping. And read around the site because you can learn a lot about color in general.

I love the shot Dan and your concept is strong. Hope to see more of these soon.

Paul

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[paul leverington]

Hey I was typing when peter posted the remake. Nice job Peter!! Looks very much improved! Sweet!

Paul

[Daniel Belasco]

Thanks Paul for all your constructive comments. I will take them to heart. This was exactly the type of information and constructive criticism I was looking for when I joined theis site. I was beginning to think it didn't exist. Thanks also to Peter and Ramon. Ramon, I uploaded a more detailed image. Paul yes it was shot at f8 with the f4 500mm lens--mistyped when I rewrote the narrative.

Thanks again all.
ddan

[dhfreriks]

Nice image Daniel. It has a few issues as others have stated, but then again I don't believe all photographs need to fit nicely into a little box approved by a few others. I like the mood the darker/saturated colors bring to it. It would be nice if certain Masters of Photography could remember they were once beginners as well, and serve up some constructive and well meaning critiques instead of just sounding bitter and berating someone for daring to post an image they see as inferior. When making money and the business end of photography becomes more important than the art and the passion of being out in the field with nature and helping others then we all lose alot. But, I am glad this same person went out of his way to treat me well 10 years ago or so.... Little actions, good or bad, from someone a lot of people idolize can make a big impression on someone. Be nice Art, I've seen a lot worse photos posted on here, and if you really want people to pay money to join this website it isn't going to help your cause to berate someone like you did on only his 5th post. Dave

[Kiran Khanzode]

I have a confession to make:

I am a nobody in this photography line of work...just another hobbyist like so many others.

The sole reason I joined as a paying member of this site was because of the brand called "Art Morris" and wanted to be affiliated with the name. That's exactly why I came to this site. The news about his talent can be found everywhere you go and that's a huge thing, not everyone commands such kind of respect, it has to be earned and he has earned it (in my view).

I do notice that most of the people bashing Art and his work are "non-paying members"....who (kind of ) have nothing to lose.

But what saddened me the *most* was that Art took the time to retort back to this OP...especially the bad mouthing in this thread. The world is reading.... :-(

This image as posted by the OP is not that bad, Art.

From the Movie Spiderman: Uncle Ben--> " Remember, with great power. comes great responsibility "


I, now, feel like disassociating myself from this brand.

Sad, but true.

Regards,
Kiran

[WIlliam Maroldo]

I came to this site to learn to be a better photographer, and I have been successful as far as I'm concerned. This is supposed to be a "critique" site, which somehow is often lost with everyone going out of their way to be "nice", and going on and on about how good an image is. Practically all images have faults, perhaps minor, but pointing them out is what this site should be about. I wish we could just give our opinions, try to back them up with our line of reasoning, and have another member point out any errors is a line of thought. I'm tired of feeling I need a half page disclaimer saying "this is just one guys opinion, it may not be correct, I do not wish any negative statements to be taken personally, etc.etc.etc".
Anyway, I really like this post, and wish they were all like it. Getting down to the important stuff.
regards~Bill