Morning Sun

[Don Berendsen]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on this forum. I'm a self-taught artist who's been dabbling in drawing and painting for about 10 years and am just starting out with serious photography. I have negligible experience with a camera outside of program mode. The image below was taken at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney on my first day with my new DSLR.

The image details are:

Olympus E-3 with 12-60 lens @ 60mm hand held in natural light, 1/80 sec. F8.0, 0.0 EV exposure comp.

Aperture Priority
Auto WB
Picture Mode: Natural
Saturation: 0
Contrast: -1
Sharpness: -1
Gradation: Auto


PP in Photoshop

Brightness -10, Contrast +36

Hue/Saturation
Master: H +10 S +28 L +9
Yellows: H -14 S +5 L -18
Greens: H -16 S -2 L -7
Blues: H +2 S +1 L +3



This is my second version of this image. I felt that the subject had more to offer than what was presented in my first version so tried a different approach. I welcome and comments but in particular am interested in feedback on the composition and PP. Since the crop is so significant I was going to post links to the original image and my first version with the automatic parsing off but wasn't sure if that would violate the one image per post guideline.

Thanks for taking a look.

[Gordon Craig]

I think the composition on this is real nice. The white is a little intense and I would have darkened the highlights in Photoshop. But that is simply my opinion. Overall it is a very nice picture.

[Bruce Murden]

Hi Don. Welcome to BPN! I like the abstract comp here. Good interplay of lit edges and light and shadow giving a good shape and lighting study.

I think the comp can be improved a bit by cropping some off the bottom. For me, there is too much blue-tinted leaf in lower center, pulling attention away from the shapeswhich gives you the highlight region and the shadow region as two separate thoughts in this image. Try cropping just above the bend/angle in the bluish leaf. Also, I agree with Gordon that the highlights are a bit hot.

Overall, nice image!

[Julie Kenward]

Welcome to photography, Don and especially to the macro/flora forum. I agree with Bruce that the comp is just a little off - his suggestion of bringing up the bottom of the frame a bit would most definitely make it even stronger. You did a wonderful job of getting it all on a diagonal and including all four branches - it's very nicely done.

I also agree that the highlights are too hot - I like a bright white edge against the dark green (you get that in Iris plants a lot also) but when the yellow stripe shows then you know you've blown the highlights. I'm not real familiar with Olympus cameras so I am going to try to explain this from a Canon standpoint and if you have any questions feel free to ask them here or send me a PM.

There are many different ways to help get the exposure right - start off by taking the image in RAW format instead of JPEG as it allows more room to correct blown highlights. Take different photos at different exposures, checking the histogram for flashing highlights (most DSLR's will let you set the camera up to do this.) Adjust the exposure until you get the highlights to stop blinking on the histogram. Once you get it in the range of no blinking highlights you can use things like the shadow/highlight or exposure adjustments in Photoshop to help bring the dark areas up while retaining the whites. It's certainly okay to have them be bright but once they move to blown you lose the detail.

Always expose for the highlights...it's much easier to bring the midtones and dark tones up than to bring the highlights down. Just keep that histogram as far to the right as you can without blowing out those whites.

Another thing I'd do is clone out the few white blotches on the lighter green areas...a simple fix.

[Don Berendsen]

Thank you everyone for the very clear and helpful suggestions and your generous kind words. I really appreciate your taking the time to share your knowledge and experience.

The white is a little intense and I would have darkened the highlights in Photoshop.

I've scaled back the highlights a bit in PS as you and other have suggested Gordon. It could probably use more but I think even this much is a definite improvement.

I think the comp can be improved a bit by cropping some off the bottom. For me, there is too much blue-tinted leaf in lower center, pulling attention away from the shapes which gives you the highlight region and the shadow region as two separate thoughts in this image. Try cropping just above the bend/angle in the bluish leaf.

I think your suggestion on the cropping is sound Bruce so I experimented with it and it took a while to get a comp that worked for me. As I was considering the cropping I've realized that I need to spend more time visualizing the image when taking the pics. Also I need to get in the habit of taking alternate views to provide more flexibility for the final composition. I really felt the constraints imposed by my original image, it's been a valuable learning experience.

Welcome to photography, Don and especially to the macro/flora forum. I agree with Bruce that the comp is just a little off - his suggestion of bringing up the bottom of the frame a bit would most definitely make it even stronger. You did a wonderful job of getting it all on a diagonal and including all four branches - it's very nicely done.

I also agree that the highlights are too hot - I like a bright white edge against the dark green (you get that in Iris plants a lot also) but when the yellow stripe shows then you know you've blown the highlights...There are many different ways to help get the exposure right...Always expose for the highlights...it's much easier to bring the midtones and dark tones up than to bring the highlights down. Just keep that histogram as far to the right as you can without blowing out those whites.

Thanks for the warm welcome Julie.

Getting the appropriate exposure is something I really need to work on. The E-3 does have a blinking highlight and shadow indicators available for reviewed images. Unfortunately I already had more than I could handle when I took this pic the day after getting the camera (my first DSLR). I've been studying exposure since then and experimenting with it recently to learn how to use the camera's exposure management capabilities. I can see it's going to take a while just to get the basics down and a quite a bit longer until it becomes second nature. Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure should be here any day now and I'm looking forward to studying it.

Another thing I'd do is clone out the few white blotches on the lighter green areas...a simple fix.

I was thinking about that as I was originally working with on the image but decided against it. The different PP of this new version diminished the blotches and some of the more obvious ones have been removed. Thanks for the suggestion, it's a noticeable improvement.

***

Thanks again to everyone for all your help and encouragement. This has been a great learning experience.