Freedom

[Richard Lovison]

http://richardlovison.com/photos/paragliding2.jpg
© reserved 2009, Richard Lovison

My wife and I were at the summit of Mount Greylock last Friday and were treated to an air show put on by hang glider and paraglider enthusiasts. I'm not sure if this one can be classified as a landscape image though I thought it might fit the forum classification. If not, please remove it and my feelings will not be hurt. :)

Olympus E-3
ZD 40-150mm @ 150mm (300mm 35mm equivalent)
ISO 200
manual exposure - 1/800 sec f8
continuous auto focus
image stabilization
hand held

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Richard,
I'm fine with it here as it is mostly a skyscape.....with a glider in it.....so I'll leave it here! I di some S/H adjustment...mostly to the highlights to bring some more depth to the clouds. I cropped off the top whiter band at the top and a bit off the bottom....just for composition. I lightened the glider a bit and brought out some more vivid color.....I figured since he is the focal point.....I'd really make him stand out. finally a few points of black to the neutrals in selective color. Definitely a much bolder presentation this way....and not everyones cup of tea......but gives you a few possible ideas to explore. Nice job placing the glider in a nice position in the frame compositionally. Let me know what you think.
PS Black border was just for BPN presentation to avoid bleeding into the BG.

[Robert Amoruso]

I agree with Roman on this one.

[Richard Lovison]

Roman,

I like your crop and I appreciate you taking the time to share your point of view. I agree that the focal point is the glider and that one's attention should be brought to his location so I understand the reasons for your photoshop changes. And they are all well done.

Your increase in the drama to the sky and increase in saturation to the person and seat create problems for me. The changes to the person go to far in realism though they certainly make him "pop". The added increase in drama to the sky make for an another unreal situation as the glider would have more than the normal "screws missing" to be paragliding in such ominous conditions. I imagine he/she would be concerned about lightning strikes.

With that said, if you feel that the image needs more impact to be successful-- and I feel that is what you are trying to say and I respect that -- than the image as I shot it and presented it has failed. Not a problem as it was an overcast day with less than interesting skies and flat light. The ideal shot for me would have been with a polarized blue sky with big puffy white clouds.

Richard

[Roman Kurywczak]

Actually Richard,
I don't think it failed at all! Although the blue sky with puffy clouds does sound apealing. I was going to do a subtler sky...just bringing it up a touch ....but the changes were so subtle it didn't look very different......so i went darker just to make it stand out more! I do agree he would have to be a bit screwy to go out in conditions like that. I do also realize that you probably lost a bit of depth to the clouds in the jpeg compression.......so that does come into play. I still do feel you can go lighter with him and the seat.

[Richard Lovison]

Roman,

I did a bit more work, reprocessed the RAW image and changed the WB to 6000K... it gives a bit more of a neutral look and probably closer to the conditions at the time. I took your suggestion and lightened up the person and seat as well, increased saturation by 20% though I only slightly altered the contrast of the clouds to bring out a bit more detail.

http://richardlovison.com/photos/repost-gliding.jpg
© reserved 2009, Richard Lovison

An added note: Actually the above image isn't neutral, as it is a slight lean toward the red. The original post is more neutral though colder than I remember the scene.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Richaed,
I like the slight warmth and the way the main lower cloud now has nice definition. Nice job on the re-work!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Richard, I also feel the repost is stronger!