Still life

[Mike Farley]

This is the image I produced in LR5.7* from the original Raw. The blank area at top left is due to the original being crooked and I could not straighten it without leaving a gap, which is easily sorted out in Photoshop.

Nina's pic - Mike's take

Nina's Pic.jpg (132.43 KiB) Viewed 2355 times

Below, I have shown some of the LR adjustments.

Lightroom adjustments

Nina Adjust.JPG (76.93 KiB) Viewed 2355 times

The most important thing for me was to get the colour of the tulips looking natural. Ordinarily, I normally stick with the ACR Standard camera calibration, but on this occasion I opted for one known as "Astia/Soft". Fuji incorporates a number of film simulations for JPEG processing and some of these are available in ACR. Next I did the Basic tab adjustments. You will note that Highlights is set to -100 and Shadows +100. This is the first step in a technique to maximise the dynamic range. The next stage is to adjust the Whites and Blacks sliders to the points where clipping starts, by holding down the Alt* key and moving the sliders to the point just before clipping is indicated. Quite often, the tones look quite flat at this point, so the final step is to adjust Expose and Contrast to the point where the image looks good. In this instance not much was needed, but in some instances it is necessary to push the Tone slider much further than usual to the right.**

At this point the image looked a bit too crisp*** to me, so I introduced some negative Clarity and slightly reduced Vibrance. There were some bright spots, so I made a small reduction to Highlights in Tone Curves using the Target Adjustment Brush. The image was shot at 800 ISO and although the X-Pro1 is not an especially noisy camera, I applied a small amount of Noise Reduction.

Next I adjusted the central part of the image using an inverted Radial Filter, the adjustments for which are shown in the screenshot below. Note that I reversed the reduction in Clarity on the main subject and boosted it a bit.

Radial Filter adjustments

Radial.JPG (29.67 KiB) Viewed 2355 times

Finally, the edges were a bit too bright so I darkened them using Post-Crop Vignetting set to Colour priority. I cannot say that the bottom part of the image works particularly well and I would probably follow Nina's example by cropping it.

To my eyes, this is a more realistic rendering. YMMV.

* Option key on a Mac.

** This is a technique I will be demonstrating as part of my Lightroom talk at the club in July.

*** Let's simply avoid the words "too sharp".

[Nina]

Thanks for your detailed and informative response Mike. I have done a rough and ready adjustment to the processing, but I still I think that the picture has as yet unrealized potential. WDYT?

768high-sat copy.jpg (628.82 KiB) Viewed 2349 times

[Mike Farley]

....... but I still I think that the picture has as yet unrealized potential.

There are times when I stand* in front of a scene and think "wow" as I press the shutter and that feeling continues when I look at the resulting image on the rear screen. Then I get it home but when it is on the large computer display somehow it just does not look right. I tweak it and prod it in Lightroom, but it simply does not work. After that I try some gizmo effect and it still refuses to co-operate, so I have a go with something else before giving up and I move on to the next shot. And invariably repeat the cycle. Just occasionally something works as planned, but more often than not it is a shot which I did not think much about at the time which turns out to be the winner. It's why I have to take so many photos, the odds are poor.

This picture seems to be one of the "doesn't quite make it" variety. It ought to be a success, but somehow isn't. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but maybe (and this might seem a strange thing to say about a still life), there is too much going on? It is unusual, with a number of different shapes and textures, but perhaps this is where the problem lies? The flowers and the lantern seem to work well together, but I am not so sure about the woolly background. If it were mine, by now I would be at the moving on stage, but I will be interested to see if you can find a way to get more out of it.

* Invariably it is finding something which has the potential to make a good photograph. I am far too lazy and uncreative to assemble various bits and pieces together in an interesting way.

[davidc]

After watching this over the last few days, my opinion and interest have changed over time! For me, it's a photographer's image where I personally don't see what led to the picture being taken - it's pretty on first look, but not so much ongoing draw longer term. Technically it's fine, the post-processing is OK but the impact & message aren't clear to me. I do agree the petals look unnatural and I'm not sure but has the contrast increased since the first shared image?

Then again, I think that side of things is hard to acheive in still life images which is why I usually find them dull to look at and hard to take myself - something I do try to work on, when I can!

[Mike Farley]

Then again, I think that side of things is hard to acheive in still life images which is why I usually find them dull to look at and hard to take myself

There are a couple of people in other SLF clubs who take stunning still lifes. The images are meticulously put together and lit, comprising all sorts of different elements which I would not even think about using, let alone know where to find. I even wonder how they got hold of their backgrounds, as all I have ever used is a bit of mountboard or a piece of black velvet. It's a skill, one which I do not have, and quite often the results of these two photographers look a bit like the old masters' oil paintings you can see in places like the National Gallery. I usually like the images, appreciate the effort that has gone into producing them, but do not really have the will or the inclination to do something similar myself.

On the other hand, I do enjoy going out to find things to photograph not quite knowing what I will end up with. Occasionally it is nothing, but as I found when I did my 365 project more often than not I come home with something that is at least usable and there have been some delightful surprises along the way. It's making the effort to go out there and making the best of what you find which is important. Others, judges even, occasionally seem to enjoy the pictures I get which makes it worthwhile. And that's the great thing about the hobby, the sheer abundance of different genres and subjects. No one can do it all.

Last weekend I went to Brands Hatch to photograph motorsport, something which I have not done before. Trying to keep a car that's travelling at around a zillion miles per hour in the frame and in focus, even with modern AF wizardry, is a challenge. Merely pressing the shutter at the right time is difficult. I have not yet gone through the results in great detail, but it is evident that I was frequently taking the shot a fraction too early and the car was not filling the frame. Thanks to the wonder that is the rear screen, I knew at the time I was doing it but still could not manage to get it right. I asked to see one of the images the organiser had taken and could see the difference a practiced hand makes.

With time, I could probably get similar results, but the options for motorsport images are quite limited. As someone said on the day, you mostly end up with a side or three quarters view of a racing car, mostly going left to right, with blurred wheels and background. To introduce a bit of variation and improve composition, I was given a tip of angling the camera so that it looks as though the car is on a slope. I did try getting more than one car in shot, but that is really difficult. You need to be at the right place on the track to achieve a degree of separation between the vehicles, but those spots are few and far between often due to safety requirements. It would also help if the drivers forgot about racing each other and took aesthetic considerations into account instead when choosing where to place their vehicles on the track. Oh, and could they try not tearing around so much while they are about it as it does make the photography that more challenging.

I enjoyed the day and am glad to have gone. Photography has encouraged me to have an experience I would not otherwise have had, but I am not sure I would do it again. I should end up with a few more shots for the portfolio, but I am always on the lookout for something new. For me, photography is about variety and I do not have sufficient interest in motor racing to want to go back and do it again. Maybe I'll think differently when the time comes again next year.

The real burning question for me, though, is how the heck did a thread about a still life image end up with a discourse on motorsport?

[Nina]

The real burning question for me, though, is how the heck did a thread about a still life image end up with a discourse on motorsport?

I must be to blame I suppose!