Diane had a comment in a thread where she mentioned that sometimes when we go back and look at what we think is a "dud" photo, we might look at other ways to compose the photo and make it into something else. Thus the title for this post ....
I thought we could post our own examples of "lemons", and how we tried to make "lemonade" out of them. Or, take a shot and re-compose someone else's "lemon" into your own version/vision.
Here is my contribution, and a bit of back-story .....
SO ................ I was ending a photo morning because the light had gotten high/harsh, and the winds had really kicked up out of the North. As I was leaving the Refuge, there is a small beach where people often park their cars to access the water for swimming, fishing, paddling, etc. Anyway, today it is nearly deserted due to winds blowing so hard the sand was flying. But low and behold! There is a flock of Black Skimmers who have landed next to the beach! Never have seen them here before. They are all hunkered down, facing the wind with their eyes mostly closed. This allowed me to get a lot closer than I would have been able to under any other conditions. So I try to get a shot before they all spook off - in fact a car swung by right after this photo and caused them to lift off (I have some BIF of them I'm still working on). But I really did a horrible job of composing and focusing.
OK, so here is the lemon shot I got .......
Pretty bad.
Still, I liked the colors of those beaks, the whites and the green grass. I started playing with crops, and realized a had really blown the focus point into the middle of the pack, but ........ I found something. One bird with it's eyes open, in focus! I took the crop, played around with setting to over-do the colors (blacks blacker, orange orangier, green, greener, etc.) and came up with this ... this .... this non-realistic, arty-kinda shot that I like.
There is just something I like about this photo, yet it does not feel complete just yet. But for me at least it's 100X better than the original. Happy for any suggestions on things that could be done here.
Andrew, I really like where you are going with this. I would take out the green and make it a stronger B&W, but keep their bill orange. Blurred most of the other birds. Here's a quick and dirty.
Glennie, after that noisy miner, you have a new trick in your bag, eh? Haha. Just kidding. But I really like this almost "bichromatic" interpretation. I would even take it one step further, make everything B&W except for the bird in focus. I think that would so cool! The glaring issue for me here is.... color fringing from chromatic aberration. Should be pretty easy to fix in post.
Good example! This is a classic idea, to showcase the one different subject in a sea of similars.
Glennie and Adhika had good takes, too, but I like the tonalities in the original for getting a little more detail on the birds. I'd crop even tighter than Glennie did.
The green chromatic aberration at the top caught my eye right away. It's a function of your lens, and fixable in ACR/LR, and to some extent in PS.
Would love to see others' takes here and posts of their own lemonade. (I'm kinda fond of Margaritas myself...)
I like the composition there, but the incomplete feather tip is a deal breaker for me and thus the watercolor conversion. Have some lemonade, everyone!
The great act of balancing - Lemonades from Lemons
Here is another one from the last trip. I think most of us agrees that backlighting is probably one of the worst condition to photograph birds. But it was so hard not to press the shutter button when you had a subject that was trying so hard to balance itself on a windy day.
Here is the original capture (LR screenshot):600mm, f/8, 1/2000, ISO 1000.
I cleaned up the beach a little bit, converted it to B&W, quick masked the bird's chest and brought up the exposure using curves, then add canvas to the right for composition. I have also enhanced whatever small catchlight that I got on the eye (there was a tiny bit of catchlight which I think comes from the sea).
Making Lemonade from Lemons ....
