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We went to the Valley of Fire last year while we were in Vegas. We've already decided we're going again. Not enough time in one day to see it all. Have to finish the walk down the Mouse's Tank if nothing else....
as an example of why i dont consider what my camera does a finished product heres, a before in camera of the tiger shot above.
from our vantage point the tree was an issue, exposing to the right gives slightly washed out colors but a nice low noise exposure, and contrast and detail are fairly low in the cameras algorithum...
no photoshop was used on the above ,only nikon capture nx2. photo was cropped and darkend and lightened in spots.levels and curves used and sharpening.
i like to bring out all the detail in the fur and coloring.i know some of you purists will go i like the origional version but the fact is i dont like it as its to snap shot looking and nothing stands out. but thats my taste. bottom 2 were edited out of camera as well.
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-17-2010 at 04:19 AM..
1 - Very nice framing. Personal preference would have been to bump up the black point a bit.
2 - Good sharp focus on the tiger, but (again, personal preference) maybe crop out some of the blank space on the right. There's also something weird over-darkening going on with the grass on the right-center. And a distracting halo around the tiger.
3, 4 - 3 is great. I like the framing and the facial expression in 3 better than 4, but again, the distracting halo in both.
5 - Great!
Were all of them shot with the Nikon 80-200mm? The bokeh seems a little harsh in some, but can't tell if it's the lens or processing (e.g. over-saturating the green grass/leaves).
i agree the bokeh became to defined when i tried to bring out the details in editing.
funny you mentioned the dark green area in the tiger photo.. i realized after i jpeg'd it i darkened to much and it stood out a little to much. i may try to re-do it later. im going to keep from enhancing the background as well that will make it alot softer .... im having trouble seeing the halo though. i see the sun hitting the grass around the animal so it looks a little lighter but im not seeing a halo.
im going to try more black point too, i just hope i dont loose him into darkness...
thanks
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-17-2010 at 08:12 AM..
okay Fuzz...how'd ya do that one??? I mean the flashing between original and edited photo??? that is awesome! so much easier than scrolling back and forth.
okay Fuzz...how'd ya do that one??? I mean the flashing between original and edited photo??? that is awesome! so much easier than scrolling back and forth.
Animated GIF created using Photoshop. PS has an animation window, which allows you to create frames from layers. In this case, I had the following layers:
- Original image
- Levels adjustment layer
- "Original" text
- "After adjustment" text
So from these layers, I made...
Frame 1:
- Original image
- "Original" text
Frame 2:
- Original image
- Levels adjustment layer
- "After adjustment" text
Then save for Web as GIF. Note that not all photo hosting sites may show the animation correctly.
I use this a lot in astrophotography forums, where we deal with very subtle details and there can be small but very noticeable differences due to processing.
fuzz i think we should talk a little about what transpired here. there is alot going on and educational and also why editing after the fact is so key.....
lets start with the origional photo as it came out of camera.. as is the photo is as exposed as i could get it without blowing out. to myself the photo is rather un-appealing straight out of camera..the lighting that day left it pretty colorless ,flat and lacking contrast.
out of camera was un-acceptable to me...
using tonal contrast algorithums i put back details and colors using combinations of contrast,saturation and brightness.
you then noticed that we still had room on both sides of the histogram and further pushed the histogram even closer to the side walls taking up every avail space without touching.
that further deepened blacks and brightened whites giving even more range to the tigers colors.
this is all stuff no camera can duplicate,it can only be done by learning to post process and has nothing to do with making photos un-natural.quite the oposite, its taking what the camera was able to do and putting the naturalness back in.
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-17-2010 at 05:13 PM..
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some animal shots
