Photos Photo of the Day

f/16
1/180
ISO400

Pentax FA 50mm1.4 reversed, Sigma flash (with diffuser) + Nissin SC-01 hot shoe cable. Camera in one hand, flash in the other kind of perched over the end of the lens. It's a little awkward but I like the ability to move the flash around.

 

how's my first attempt at burning and dodging?


Lotus classic by wuyanxu, on Flickr


and i took a Duck's curiosity for granted


Interested duck by wuyanxu, on Flickr

 

Why is there blur around the tree tops and top of lamp post? Burning and dodging shouldn't be blurring anything.

I'd have waited for the woman walking the dog in the background to have gone too

 

i used auto mask tickbox in Lightroom with the brush tool, but after underexposing the sky, there is a halo-like effect around the trees. how to get rid of the unnatural halo trees and make it seem more natural?

thanks for the feedback.

edit: without blur along tree top, it looks like this:

 

IMG_5376 by Andip85, on Flickr

Background annoys me on this, but like the look of the two parrots together (for ref, the one of the left is about 4 months old)

 

Went to the zoo on Thursday:


Peacock by measter2, on Flickr


Slender-Tailed Meerkat by measter2, on Flickr


Hamadryas Baboon by measter2, on Flickr


Lion Cubs by measter2, on Flickr


Sumatran Tiger by measter2, on Flickr

More here

 

Personally, I wouldn't mask anything off at all. just feather the edge of the brush and build up to it in thin layers. The tops of the trees may be darkened slightly but it's better than blurring them. Both will probably be obvious that the sky has been darkened to some extent, but the blurring is by far the most intrusive. Rather than completely darken the sky though, make it more of a gradient from top to bottom instead.

Better still yet, don't use lightroom. Lightroom's editing is pretty crude compared to photoshop. In CS5 or 6 you can use the refine edge tool and extract tool. This allows for some pretty complex masking. I use it sometimes if I need to composite a model into a false background. Not something I do often these days, but here's an example below.



Model shot in studio in such a way to replicate the lighting of the background. As a result, the fine hairs on the arm were hugely backlit, and seemed to glow.




To retain a sense of realness (yes I know the background is a game) it was decided these would be retained. They were masked off carefully with quick mask, and then refine edge was used to make the mask retain every individual hair, while letting some background detail through.

Quick mask is a very powerful tool, as it allows you to make selections using a paint brush, and as a result, the selection retains the qualities of the brush, so you can have a selection with half of it opaque, and half with 50% transparency set; half hard edged, and half feathered etc. Once you get your selection as good as you can, then refine it further with refine edge.





You also have to consider that if the sky is very light, and you wanted a dark sky, then the photograph is wrong to begin with. If you know the car and the person who owns it, just re-shoot it the way you want it to be. Get as much right in camera as you can. Why spend hours doing all this stuff when it will be faster to just re-shoot the image What you are doing here is trying to correct for over exposed sky due to excessive contrast. I'd have just re-shot in different conditions that offered lower contrast and therefore nothing would need doing to it. Or, if the car wasn't one you knew, and this couldn't be re-shot, I'd have taken many shots using auto bracket, and combined the sky from a darker shot in a different layer using overlay.

Post up a RAW file if you can please. Use Zippy share or something... post up the actual CR2 file... let me see what I can do.


When all is said and done though... if you want a photo of a car with a dark dramatic sky... you really need to shoot it when there's a dark dramatic sky.

 

National Paints Il-18 by angad84, on Flickr


Gooney Flight Deck by angad84, on Flickr

 

Wow some great pictures i really like these 2.

 

That's really nice, love it! Would it be possible to see an unedited colour shot?

 

Thanks Krikkit.

I can't locate two of the three RAW files I used to make that shot, but here's the -1EV shot. Straight from RAW to JPEG via Lightroom, all settings default and resized down to 1200px wide.



That's probably the first HDR shot I'm truly happy with, and getting it all done was a breeze compared the hell I've had to endure with other shots that turned out looking like crap. Go figure.

 

Even the LDR shot is nice, I think the colour adds a bit more to it, compensating for the lack of HDRness.

Out of interest, which program do you use to create your HDR shots? I had a go with LuminanceHDR over the weekend, which was recommended as a free one, but I couldn't understand what it was doing (or why it was just producing crap, more to the point).

 

This was taken in 1988 at the wedgewood factory in tunstall stoke on trent,taken with a Canon AE1 Standard camera 50mm standard f1.8 canon lense and METZ CT 45 Flash camera setting was AE aperture priority at f2 I used Kodachrome 64 Film image scanned with low res scanner

 

I make a few adjustments in LR4, then select the images I intend to merge and right click -> Edit in -> Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5.

Use mostly auto settings for the merge and then process to taste. With this one I did very little in PS CS5, and then re-imported the TIFF to LR4 and finished processing there. I'm very very comfortable in LR4, and very lost in CS5. I know someday I'll have to figure CS5 out but I'm the very definition of lazy so that keeps me tied to LR4

 

Love that. Was it a C47 or 53?.. or just a DC3?

 

Thanks. Just a DC-3. Retired Sri Lankan AF bird from back when it was still the Royal Ceylon Air Force.

 

fireworks from Edinburgh firework concert

fire works 5 by whisperwolf, on Flickr

fire works 4 by whisperwolf, on Flickr

 

I've not had a chance to look at mine from Sunday but I suspect yours are far superior.

 

I suspect it will depend on where you were watching from. I was near the observatory, so if you were on princes street you might have nice shots of the fireworks infront of the castle that I couldn't see. It was a little bit too windy to do some longer exposures as the fireworks turned into bright cloudy blobs rather than the straight lines explosions I wanted so I dropped down to 1 to 2 second shots.

 

Speaking of fireworks, thought these long exposure shots were pretty cool. The refocusing trick is pretty cool.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/08/unusual-long-exposure-firework-photographs-by-david-johnson/