That's very interesting, thanks for picking up what I intended, a debate over something where all sorts of views are perfectly valid.

Personally. I've thrown away airbrush style techniques for portraits and moved to a more naturalistic feel, making more hopefully of the character of people rather than creating plastic replicas. I've also tended to clone out things from cityscapes and landscapes, leaning more towards a realistic acceptance of what is there. Obviously there will always be exceptions, but I mean just as a general trend of thought.

An example of a grittier portrait:


It's harsh, the lighting makes it more so, but it does I hope show the true grit of her personality. I don't think it could be softened without making it pointless, and the background, for me, adds context.

This thought stems from senn's 300mm pictures and ChrisA's points about the defects in the images. I called them impeccable, Chris pointed out defects in them and I suggested this was over-critical. Let's start at that point.

By over-critical I'm thinking of the quest for perfection, for there being no defects in an image and asking if many defects are actually defects. For example, a twig out of place in an image. Should we seek to remove it or should we just accept that nature put it there?

Robby Robinson, Frankie Valli's music director, was asked what happened to a rumoured Four Seasons album. He put the delay down to "excessive perfectionism" which so far has meant it hasn't appeared. Can this be true of our images too? Are camera club judges excessive perfectionists when it comes to our images? And yet their own can be full of the defects they see in ours?

So the question is, should we leave more of nature in as it is? Or should we really try to eliminate everything that is out of place?

No problem, I'll start a new thread rather than divert senn's, as there's a point I'd like to make that you might like to take up as well.

I was giving you a straight response to what you said Chris, I understood that was what you wanted? I'm not sure how that is stomping on you, or how it was any different from your straight opinion as stated?

You seem to have taken it the wrong way.

I stand by impeccable. I think you're being overly critical Chris, when the images are quite delightful. It doesn't matter what they were shot with, but if we think they are good there's no reason not to say so.

Impeccable quality.

I'm agreeing with Smeggypants here. The image doesn't look right and seems over-processed to me.

You could combine images in Photomatix, or even use the in-camera HDR, and I think you'd get a more natural appearance.

Well, it just means that the more you put in the more you get out.

Wandering around with camera hoping something will leap out at us may work a couple of times in a lifetime.

Planning works almost all the time. It is unfortunate that the best images are often to be found at the top of the tallest mountains, at the furthest points from the car park and at the oddest times of day.

I understand that times before 5am also exist. We got up at 2am once to drive to Shropshire for a dawn photo walk.

That's an interesting point - I've noticed the ads can respond very quickly to any browsing as well.

People use whatever they want, but Dodge69 hits the nail on the head in that being up at 5am is the key, not what equipment you own.

Sue's cousin John and myself made the dawn trip to the shores of Loch Awe, armed with camera gear and bacon butties and flasks of coffee. The getting up was quite tough, but the sitting on the shore watching the sunrise, with tasty sandwich and hot coffee, was as pleasant as shooting the images.

Obviously it was Pentax bacon and coffee....

I came to Pentax after Halina, Konica, Zenith, Rollei, Nikon, Mamiya and Fuji by the way, FWIW. Actually quite a few more now I really think about it as I did a project where I learned to use every camera type that ever existed. The objective was to be able to pick up any camera and suss it out fairly quickly, right from early wooden stand cameras onwards.

Because this is Pentax User I don't write here about all those things, but I do sometimes on my EPZ Blog.