Tree Hand

[Nina]

Well, you have seen Mike's take on the same subject, mine is in the essence similar. WDYT?
Canon EOS 5D
1/160s f/4.5 at 85.0mm iso200

[Mike Farley]

In some ways I like the angle of view, which is less straight on than mine, but it has resulted in the bottom right hand corner going out of focus, which I find distracting.

[davidc]

Interesting seeing a Nina-Mike head to head
Still trying to decide which version I prefer... I shall provide an opinion in the morning!

[Mike Farley]

Choose carefully, young man ..........

[davidc]

Well.... I've spent WAY more time thinking about this than I probably ought to have! Even roped my wife in who said "aren't they the same", then rolled her eyes when I pointed out the details and eventually she chose Mike's

As for me.... I'm afraid I'm on the fence for this one but at least I can explain why!

Nina's image - I like the tones of the hand and especially the green moss on the tree to the left and think the extra space helps it out. Like Mike though, once I noticed the OOF bottom right corner it detracted slightly.

Mike's image - I like the contrast and tones in this one and *think* I prefer the overall composition; I've been swinging between the wider shot of Nina putting more context as to where the hand is vs. Mike's tighter crop with focus on the interest element, the hand.

So sorry everyone but it's a tie for me
Still, it was fun to see you both tackle the exact same subject and come up with different results. Mike maybe you and I should do that for a 365 day sometime, others welcome to join of course. Seeing how people view a scene and choose to render it to the viewer could be a good learning exercise, maybe even for a club night sometime?

You can both have a gold star for effort

[Mike Farley]

Dave, your wife shows excellent taste!

The interesting thing is that Nina and I were standing right next to each other and shot at almost the same time. It just goes to show the truth in the old adage that no two photographers will produce identical images, even when everything else about the scene is the same. Given the choice, I would probably have positioned myself where Nina was, although it would have been unseemly to have barged her out of the way!

Thanks for the comments, which are very interesting.

And yes, we should get together for a 365 shoot some time.

[davidc]

I've just compared the focal lengths and they are in effect the same FOV given the cameras you were using. Which implies you cropped yours more than Nina perhaps?

Also meant to ask first time around - did you use the nik software (colour efex pro perhaps?) on yours? Or the silver efex pro/layer blend method? Definitely has an "efex pro" feel to it

[Mike Farley]

I've just compared the focal lengths and they are in effect the same FOV given the cameras you were using. Which implies you cropped yours more than Nina perhaps?

Also meant to ask first time around - did you use the nik software (colour efex pro perhaps?) on yours? Or the silver efex pro/layer blend method? Definitely has an "efex pro" feel to it

The hand was very central in the shot as taken, so I did crop in a bit and placed it on the geometric division lines. Some more of the edges would have been lost when I added the border, which I did in SEP2. Whilst I did use the Luminosity blending method, the effect is quite subtle and there is very little difference in the textures between the final result and the straight image. Good spot, though.

[walterconquy]

I am not going to comment on this as I am the model, all I will say its a beautiful hand, very expressive, got you by the ----s.
Wally