Photo of the day or edit of the day

[Reinardina]

I prefer the colour version Reinardina (although I also agree with Paul's comment upon areas of clouds drawing attention away) as the Pastel colouring adds more to describe peacefulness and atmosphere than in the monotone version.

After seeing some wonderful high key photographs recently, I had a go myself. Ended up with a series of images . In mono of course, but I also added a hint of colour to some.





A subtle difference. (I also have one or two, with a bit more colour, but I don't want to saturate the site with a series of near identical images.)

Coomments welcome.

Thanks Andy. When I've got a bit of time, I'll see if I can rescue the clouds from their 'blown-out-ness.'

[ABERS]

The fluffiness of the clouds and the lack of detail within them is part of the overall softness of the image. You tell us your intent was to produce a high key image, which you may have done by winding down the 'clarity' a tad, this will inevitably  result in losing detail in highlighted areas.

Most high key images posted are mistakenly presented as the result of exposure manipulation in the post processing,  whereas a true high key image is the result of lighting manipulation at the taking stage, something one has very little control over  in Landscape Photography.

I would hazard a guess your very pleasant image would be deemed soft rather than high key, and that doesn't  detract from it in any way.

[Hinfrance]

As it's been raining again overnight and I can't get out in the garden until it's dried out a bit, I've got a bit of time for noodling about on the web.

For my taste the pastel coloured version is the better of the two. I'm afraid I too think that the overblown sky is distracting. This is because the middle of the image is blown out, but there is some level of detail again when you get to the top of the frame. Perhaps this is an occasion where masking out the sky and applying a different technique or degree of processing would have worked somewhat better?

As always, just my take on it.

[Reinardina]

Thank you gentlemen, it's good to get feedback.

For starters, I have never tried to take a high key image. Don't know exactly how to do it.

More or less on a whim, I have been trying to get the effect in post production. I think I may even have started, with the image already distorted to get the Orton Effect.

I may go back to the original image and try again, to see what I can get out of it. And I'll happily settle on a soft image, rather than high key.

[ABERS]

Who Pays the Ferryman.

Just a bit of fun, combining a Banksy image with an old image of some boats from yesteryear, and adding a title from an ancient BBC series that took us to Crete back in 79.

[Hinfrance]

Looks good small. The hooded ferryman is quite sinister.

The larger version shows the different lighting and contrast of the Banksy cutout, but as you say, a fun (if slightly macabre) composite

[Hinfrance]

Here's my probably over edited photo for today. Just kept on adding layers in Perfect Photo until I'd had enough. Time for a coffee and croissant methinks.

[ABERS]

Little back street garage up for sale with windows smeared with Windowlene, or the French equivalent. Bit of a cliche but what the hell.

Windowlene Abstract.

[northenderdave]

Been trying out the Mirror effect in Photoshop. Something I have never done before I suppose its something you either love or hate.  A couple of images attached. Should anyone like to see how its done here is a link to a tutorial   http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/mirror-image-effect-with-photoshop/

[Oldboy]

northenderdave - Like the telephone picture best as it looks real. 

[Reinardina]

When I bought my first digital camera (Pentax Optio X), way back when, it came with ACDSee editing software, which had a mirror filter. Just one click, and you had a vertical or horizontal mirror image.

I loved it, and used it a lot for all sorts of creative images. The Photoshop way, seems so cumbersome, but maybe I ought to try it one day.

This is one of my 'oldies.'

[Reinardina]

A second attempt at my Coastal Road shot, implementing the suggested improvements.

Did I do enough, or did I overdo it? This sort of detail, I cannot really see.

[Simple]

Hi Reinardina, I have not seen the original, but the picture drew my attention. I hope this will all come out helpful and not arrogant or overly critical. When I first looked at the picture it looked like a picture of 2 halves. The sky and the bottom part. I looked at the reason behind this and do not want to go into golden means and thirds, because that is boring. The winding road is lovely and need to be a big part of the picture. So I looked at the balance in the picture. The sky is very dominant. ( I love the sky, you have seen skies like that on some of my later pics) The house and tree are not dominant  enough in the bottom half to balance against the sky, but the main imbalance appears in the RH bottom side of the picture, were the side of the dijk is pretty smooth and uneventful. This imbalances with the house and the tree and is emphasised (Jeez, what a word) by the lovely sky. So I thought how to rectify this and apart from cropping into portrait and/or looking at the rule of thirds the only way is to use colour. Like I said I have not seen any earlier picture, so I thought if there was dark green in the trees and red roof tiles and the dijk slope was yellowish green, the big yellowish green area would be balanced of against the small red tile roof area. I would also reduce any amount of blue in the sky, to avoid it to stand out too much from the bottom half. I would do this by reducing the blue saturation. This is totally my opinion but I think the B/W conversion of this shot makes it look imbalanced.

[jinky]

I agree re the imbalance in the image but for me a simple,  almost square crop, to the right of the curved road would do it. I like the monochrome edit.

[ABERS]

Still think this made for B+W.  The title makes one concentrate on the road. I would take all the terrain even further down and bleach the road out more and leave just an impression of the buildings in the shadows.

A crop from the right hand side by a quarter of the  overall width of the image  will keep the eye from wandering to that part of the image. The sky is beautifully caught and doesn't  need any further work.

It all depends if you  want to make a picture postcard or something  more artistic. It's  just my opinion.