Ramesh, I think the strongest thing about this image is the composition. I really like that you have the flower in the ROT's position and think you have just the right amount of "negative space."
I also feel the image is underexposed. You've got quite a bit of black area in the image and, despite a levels adjustment, I found it was still really prominent. Fill flash or even a positive exposure adjustment would probably have helped in this case to give the image a more evenly exposed BG.
Also, you chose f16 as your aperture and I actually like the result - you have some detail in the surrounding environment of the plant which is really nicely done. However, you suggested you would have liked a softer BG and using an f/stop of half that amount (f8 for instance) would probably still have given you a nicely focused flower and really cut the detail in the BG - just something to remember for next time!
Thanks again Julie for your detailed input on this image. It definitely helps in my learning process.
Yes, the image is a bit underexposed. I had opened up the exposure quite a bit in the initial processing. The black spots among the leaves are because of the shadow of leaves onto the ground and are detailless. I could not do much about that. I reprocessed the image and used the fill light feature of ACR to open up the BG a bit. I am reposting it here. I feel this has an edge over the earlier post. Let me know what you think.
Ramesh, this is better - it evens out the depth of the dark tones a bit more. I still think you could get even more out of the flower, though...maybe push the highlight slider in levels to about 245...
Julie, glad you found the new post better. a stupid question: are you referring to the white triangle in the levels? If so, that is at 214! There were no pixels beyond that point.
regards,
ramesh
Last edited by Ramesh Adkoli; 07-14-2009 at 07:54 AM.
Ramesh, when I open the image up I see the white slider at 255 and the middle gray slider at 100. I moved them both in to get a lighter/brighter image - taking the white (highlight) slider to 236 and the middle gray slider to 1.39.
Julie, I agree. If you open the jpeg image and alt-click the white slider, you would see some pixels at 255. I had left it at that when I worked on the RAW converted image after pulling the white slider to 214. If i make the above adjustments on the jpeg image, i get the same lighter/brighter image. isn't it too bright?
Getting Dark, packing up from shooting birds at a new feeding station in my yard. Was going to try to shoot this flower with macro lens, but decided what the heck, a 500 will fill the frame.
Morning Show!
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote