If only........

Forum seems a bit quiet, so to liven things up, here's a pic that nearly worked, but not quite. Pretty typical of my efforts, really.




Taken in the evening on the Thames at Chiswick. M 400 5.6, hand-held, 1/640, 5.6.

G

It's a great pic, if only you could catch all of the reflexion... but tell me, wide open? How on earth did you focus this manually?!

Thanks, Flink,

Not catching all of the reflection was the "if only..."!

With long lenses, you generally want to shoot with a fairly wide aperture to maintain a high shutter speed, and good long lenses should be pretty sharp even wide-open. Using an M or K lens on a DSLR presents metering problems unless you use the lens at full aperture, in which case Av mode works fine. So it's a happy combination.

As for focussing - well you should see how many I threw away! Seriously, the only possibility is to pre-focus and hope the animal goes where you hope it will.

I don't do enough nature photgraphy to justify an AF lens of this focal length, and despite what Mac will tell you, there are limits even to my extravagance. Sadly.

G

impeccable timing.
don't say "if only", say "photoshop". copy, flip, rotate, opacity, liquify, and Finish it. Create the clipped area, and blow it up and print it and frame it.

Don,

Now that's what I call a "can-do" attitude. You'll go far.

My PS skills are far too limited. If you feel like showing how it's done, please feel free. I, and the world, await your demonstration.

G

George,

If you keep comming up with shots like that you'll have to change your sign-off.

I see NOTHING wrong with the photo. There's art and there's National Geographic.

IMHO only - I'm just a schlub who likes what he likes - and I LIKE it!

Thank you, Mac.

I'm definitely warming to you Canadians.

G

ok george but two caveats:
1) I was not trying to criticise your image- in fact I complimented it.
2) I'll just mock-up the concept to show what might be done, but cannot take the time to do a great job.

Flippin' heck, well done George......and Don.
A great shot and a very fine example of digital tweaking......"loving your work" - as they say!

Thank you for the compliment, but I must point out two things:
A) There an old computer saying- garbage in- garbage out... that means to get something good out you have to start with something good, and that shot was better than good on it's own merits...
B) I only teaked it as a proof of concept, It'd take alot more time and effort to get it right...I was merely illustrating what I said was possible.

Methinks Don doth protest too much...........you're too modest sir!

If that's a quick 'mock up' of what can be done, then I think we should all start 'tweaking' away with a vengeance.
It is of course cheating (in a photographically purist sense) but I think the ends more than justify the means.

Seeing how the image can be manipulated in no way detracts from the original, it really is a great shot.

Don,

I know you weren't being critical - although that's welcome. I hope I didn't come across as sarcastic; I was simply hoping to spur you on to show what could be done - and it worked!

Brilliant. I am most impressed. I shall have to have a go at this myself, although to be honest, I do feel that this sort of thing has dangers. I wonder how many photographs are now passed off as just that, when in fact most of the final image is a product of the computer rather than the camera.

Thanks again for the demo.

G

Kimbo,

Our minds work as one!

And thanks for the kind words.

G

You're welcome George.

I think I know what Don means though, I'm slightly bothered by the reflection of the gull's left wing tip. I didn't notice at first but I knew something was wrong - it's pointing the wrong way!
I suppose a little extra ripple effect would disguise it fully or perhaps it could be reversed in some way - fascinating, fraudulent but fascinating

For those that want to try ... all I did was copy&paste the bird, into a new layer flip it vertically, resize the canvas, copy and paste the edges of the water, a little cloning and levels adjustment on each layer, before flattening the image. Cropped it then applied the liquify filter with a few quich swipes of the tablet pen to merge the ripples, and then a gausian blur on the reflected bird. a couple gradient fill layere (one b&w for contrast control) one gradient blu for filter, a little brush stroke to vinette and finally a hue saturation layer and a levels layer. Total time =10 mins.
Were that a customers work time would be 1-3 hrs and alot more attention to detail...kimbos right little details like the wing tip....colors and blending of the sepereate layers...
but the gimp, and elements can do this job just fine.