Jellyfish

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Greetings. From the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I just acquired the Nik suite and this is the result of some interplay between various tools in the suite (and Topaz DeNoise). I converted this to B&W with Silver Efex and worked some of the detail. Reintroduced the color through luminosity blend. But the kicker was Color Efex Dark Contrasts... really popped the detail in the middle parts of the jellyfish.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Paul Lagasi]

Very nice image, you'll love Nik software. there's so much you can do with it. I would remove the white spot and the other mark in the bottom left of image.
The jellyfish came out awesome though, especially through glass. TFS

[Cindy Cone]

Michael, this is a beautiful image. Great job with your new Nik software. The detail and the glow on the jellyfish is really, really nice! Agree with Paul about the white spot

[Cheryl Slechta]

Michael, the jellyfish looks like he's floating through outer space so the white dots don't bother me - I thought they were stars Except maybe the largest brightest one, and I think I'd either remove or darken a little more the form in the lower left as already mentioned.

[Christopher Miller]

Beautiful image, Michael. Love the look of the jellyfish against the black BG. Personally I would remove all the little spots in the BG and make it solid black.

[Kerry Perkins]

Good one Michael, nice contrast and light source. I think you'll find the combination of Nik and Topaz plugins pretty exciting, I know I do!

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Paul, Cindy, Cheryl, Christopher, Kerry,

Thanks much for your comments. When I get around to printing this I will have to see about the other creatures (white dots)... sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't. The blobs in the lower left, by the way, are the profile from the back of a little boy looking up at the jellyfish. Here it's a strange subliminal compositional focusing element ;-). Again, I'm split on whether I like it or not.

Paul, yep, shot through glass... the worst part is the shooting around/processing the reflections. This one's techs: D4 70-200f/2.8 at 110mm 1/200 f/2.8 ISO 8000 (!) for ettr

Kerry, Having great fun with Nik and Topaz (a little Adjust here, a little Silver Efex there ... ). Especially great for the chiaroscuro theme.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I love shots of jellyfish. They are so cool looking. I might remove the various spots for an all black BG. I imagine this must be a really tough shot to get.

[Diane Miller]

This is absolutely stunning! The jellies there are so hard to shoot with the dim light.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Jackie, Diane,

Thanks for your comments. Yeah, shooting the MBA is a mixed blessing. Beautiful subjects, great color design of the displays, er, little light, terrible reflections, distortion filter glass, crowds, wb?... uh, not to mention "Papa, can we go now?" ;-)... but every once in a while the planets align...

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Judy Howle]

Somehow I missed this one. Beautiful photo, very nice work!