I took this image of a juvenile herring gull recently and I am wondering if this is considered acceptable in terms of composition, as the bird is photographed with its rear end towards us but is looking back and so there is eye contact. Would love some feedback on that. Other comments are more than welcome as well of course (like: get the whole bird in the frame! Yes, he landed too close by and I could not take a step back ).
Taken with the Canon 40D and the Canon 300mm f/4 on a cloudy afternoon.
iso 800
f/4
1/1250
Manual
Spot metering
HH
In CS5:
Corrected WB
Then, as the bird was pretty much in the middle, I removed a bit of space from the left of the bird and added that to the right. But the image is basically still full frame. And of course I had to work the BG a bit to make it uniform.
After this I applied some s/h, levels and curves. Brought out the eye some more. Then noise reduction and a bit of sharpening, both selectively applied.
I think it is a lovely looking photo. HA and eye contact look very good to me as does the spot on focus.
A bit more dof might have changed the photo a bit as well and was available if you had wanted it.
I like the nice complimentary bg as well.
Photo does look just a tad mushy or muddy and I wonder if there is a still a slight colour cast.
If mine I would crop tighter removing the oof top of tail and having nice hollow created by top of wings leading into sharp eye. Some off left and right then to match it up. More of a tight portrait shot.
Dave, I think you are right about there still being a colour cast. I took the tiff back to PS and tried to correct it. It doesn't happen often that WB is off but when it is I always have a lot of difficulty getting it right.
Bill, I tried cropping it a bit tighter at the bottom, but I didn't like it as that made the back and back evenly big and that didn't look right. So I cropped it pretty much as you did, except I cropped tighter left and right. And I also brightened up the eye a bit more as well.
Here's my repost. Improvement?
Thank you both very much. And I understand that in itself a shot like this, with a bird looking back, is all right then.
Levina, I think in theory this works - as long as we can see the bird's face/eye we can "connect" to it and that's really what it's all about. I'd have to say, though, this is a less than ideal composition overall just because of the angle of the head in relation to the body - if the neck were extended more I would probably like it better but it feels awkward and even with the tighter crop still feels like way too much of the image is OOF. That's just my two cents...
I do think the face/eye are spot on for a good HA and great detail but, overall, this one doesn't really work for me.
Hi Levina. The image has some good qualities that have been covered. Glad to see you using a higher ISO. WB settings and actually as much as possible are best done in a RAW converter, such as Abobe Camera Raw that comes with CS5. Are you shooting RAW in the first place? The workflow doesn't need a TIFF conversion, simply open the image in ACR, do your adjustments, open in CS. Any adjustments you made in ACR are stored in a seperate "sidecar" file so they are not permanent, and simply deleting the sidecar file (.xmp format) gets you back to what you started from.
I save my images in the .PSD format, and although some people think that it limits use in other image editors and TIFF is better, I think that PSD is so universally accepted that it is unlikely you will even find another program that can't use it. I stand to be corrected. Also the PSD format saves photoshop specific things that are lost in TIFF.
If you need the TIFF for a specific reason; like a printing service, it is a simple matter to convert the PSD to TIFF.
In ACR it is simple to change WB settings, that are actually just a few lines of code in the RAW file.
I'm in agreement with Julie that the large areas that are out-of-focus in this image is detrimental and the bird is in a rather awkward position. Use of proper depth of field, which doesn't necessarily mean the entire subject is in sharp focus, is quite important and OOF (out-of-focus) elements can enhance the focal point of the image (the main point of intererst). That is not happening here. Hope I've been helpful. regards~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 02-04-2011 at 06:15 PM.
Yes, Bill, I shoot in RAW and do only basic stuff like WB and correcting exposure in Lightroom3 or ACR. Then I take it to Photoshop where I do everything else. When I'm done I save the master file as a tiff.
I don't have sidecar files as I always convert my RAW files to DNG's when downloading them from the camera, but of course I can undo any adjustments I made in the RAW converter and reset them anytime.
With this image I tried to correct WB in the tiff as I *really* didn't feel like processing this image all over again, just to correct WB
Yes, I see your point, and have confronted this many times, especially when doing stuff for OOTB that can involve multiple steps going back to ACR is not an option. Generally though, since I do as much as possible in ACR, the final work in PS often isn't very extensive. Since ACR saves the exact settings I used, I don't have to start over, and there are many things that you can do in ACR that have better results than if you do them in PS itself. I was wondering why you convert to DNGs when downloading from the camera? regards~Bill
Well, I guess everyone has his or her preferences when it comes to processing images. I mostly use Lightroom as my RAW converter for one reason only: all the cropping grids. Other than that I will correct WB and exposure in there (if necessary) to take full advantage of the RAW format and I also apply a very small amount of initial sharpening to the entire image. All the rest I do in Photoshop. It is the way I work and it works well for me. To be honest, I don't think I would know how to process an image properly without layers and masks...
As to converting my RAW images to DNGs, well, that's another choice I made when I started all this. DNGs are not camera specific which for some reason gives me a safer feeling (which is no doubt nonsense!), and you don't have these sidecar files that I found really annoying having around. But I don't think one is better than the other. I just chose this format, is all.
Good night for now, Bill (it's after midnight here... )
Interesting thread for many reasons. A few points:
1. If you open a RAW image as a Smart Object, you can go back to ACR anytime you want to re-edit. I haven't fully explored this yet so am no expert and am still trying to see if the whole process will work with photography.
2. I like the image because what needs to be in focus is. The OOF body of the bird draws your eye towards the head and eye of the bird. More depth of field may have worked if you could get enough to render the body more or less in focus.
3. See here for a method of diagnosing and fixing colour casts:
John, Smart Objects are next on my list of Photoshop techniques to explore. I have just seen a video tutorial by Deke McClelland where he did a few things using Smart Objects and embedding stuff, that made me think that I need to learn this too. So your remark couldn't be better timed! Right now I don't know what SO are about really, but that will definitely change.
I will read up on the method of diagnosing and fixing colour casts. I really have a problem when it's off and 'auto colour' can't fix it... So thanks for the link.
Looking back.
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