Photo of the Week #190

Competition in photography is a much debated topic. Some people like it and others don’t. The image above is heavily processed and entered in the “Creative Experimental” catagory in our club comp. In this image, I isolated the woman on her own layer. There was actually a friend walking with her but I removed her to make it look more lonely. I then did my blurring of the beach and water, then replaced the woman with composition in mind and I made her shadow for more realism. Lastly, I took the image back to Lightroom for finishing contrast and colour adjustments. In total, I’m guessing maybe two hours of work.

Below is a judge’s comment that I received on this image.

“the empty space, the soft colors and lone figure to show perspective is really well done. a very moody image that is nicely composed. this category though requires more experimental work than just blurring lines or panning a camera for higher scoring.”

At first, I was confused, how could this judge not recognize the work that I’d done? The reality though is that I still got 24 out of a possible 30 as a mark…….not too bad at all really. The bottom line is that I do my art for me first. If others like what I do, of course it makes me feel good but if you do something creative to please others, you will often lose interest in it eventually. I love this image and I put a lot of thought into it so that’s the most important thing to me.

Photo of the Week #157

My wife and I were down in the Adirondacks and came upon these two fellows fly fishing in the Ausable River not far from Lake Placid. I love photographing people, it is often easier to tell a story when people are involved. Will be so nice to travel again, even smaller trips like this would fell so great, wouldn’t it?

Photo of the Week # 189

I first went to the maritimes in 2004 and I immediately fell in love with lighthouses. So much so that I spent quite a bit of time touring around taking photos of as many lighthouses as I could. Since I was just beginning my journey in photography too, most of those photos weren’t very good. Sad really but goes with the territory I guess.

Lighthouses are woven into the very fabric of maritime Canada. They were used for many years to help people navigate safely to their destinations. They obviously exist in other countries too and as I’ve traveled a little, I still find myself attracted to their lighthouses.

Faro Castillo del Morro - Havana, Cuba

Photo of the Week # 188 - Before and After

For something different, I thought I would show a little before and after. I really think there are a lot of people that have difficulties with the editing process, although it is really a lot of fun to do if you try it. I shoot everything in RAW format so it requires attention before it becomes a finished image. I believe in RAW images as I wish to have control over the processing instead of letting the camera make those decisions like if you shoot JPG.

My wife was taking our granddaughter to a play in Toronto and I had a couple of hours to kill so I decided to go and see if I could get an image of the flatiron building on Church Street.

The above image is the RAW shot from the camera, directly into Lightroom. The only thing I had done to it was to crop. My main objective was to get the information for the sky so as not to blow it out.

The second image is after my editing workflow. It was right around sunset so I worked with the colours a bit, warming it up a little to reflect that, enhancing the orange from the sunset. I did a little colour grading to accentuate the warm light in the streets. I straightened buildings as best I could. Since my main subject was intended to be the flatiron itself, I began to work on it, bringing up detail and textures. The light hitting the front of the building was introduced as I thought that would look natural but I wasn’t seeing it in person. I also put subtle light patches on the sidewalk under the existing lights just to add depth to the overall images. I also lit one of the lights that was burned out while I was working on lights.

The overall scene looked cluttered and chaotic with all the wires, signs, lights and such so I took the wires out as much as possible. I think that helped to make things look a bit more clean. I toyed with removing the signs but decided against it, after all, it is a city, right?

For the most part, the finished image is pretty much what I saw with my eye, which is usually what I try to accomplish. Some may like it, others might not but I shoot to please me first

Before

After

Photo of the Week # 187

Photo contests are an interesting thing. Some like them, others don’t. We all like some recognition for our work but not everyone likes the critique from judges. You have to listen to the critique without taking it personal as it isn’t meant that way. It is critique to hopefully help you to understand how an image may be better, that’s all. Sometimes you won’t agree, we are attached to our images after all. You have to take a step back and be objective, maybe that judge knows what he/she is talking about.

A version of the photo below was entered into a contest where it scored mediocre and garnered non favourable critique. I created the composition very deliberately the way I did but I was told the subject was too central in the frame and the foreground was too dark. I was confused as other judges have said if you want to bring attention to the subject, do it with light, darken the foreground to guide the eye to the true subject.. I got to playing and cropped to a new composition, avoiding most of that foreground this time and pushing the subject off-center as suggested.

Comments welcome.