Hi ! I just joined fstoppers and I figure since people here are way more experienced than I am, I might as well bother them a tiny bit.
So, I recently took this picture, and wanted it to look like it was a painting more than a photograph. However, I feel like I'm in the kind of situation where I went towards an idea, but maybe not far enough. Do you have any recommandations ?
The obvious next step for me would be to try long exposure, with varying shutter speeds.
I thought about it, but I didn't like where that went. I thought the water lacked volume, that it wasn't given as much focus as I wanted. I prefer having the water stopped in its tracks, and work from here to get something with more volume, so to speak.
so we had this conversation the other day about taking 2 shot and blending them 1 a fast shutter speed to see every bit of detail then a long exposure to make it silky. layer them in photoshop and the make one of them a lower opacity to make the other photo show through and you can try that through various %s. or you could just put it into the blur filter menu
Thank you ! I've tried the method Trevor taught me, but next time I'll just do it while taking my picture.
I think you almost achieved it Carbonaro but it's almost a mono(black and white picture). I think you need more colour in the picture to make it painterly. You don't really ever see black and white paintings. Sketches maybe.
True enough. To be fair, I thought I already went somewhat overboard with the saturation. Apparently not.
I really like the idea, it looks like you've used a long lens to pick out some details, which I'm always an advocate of, and it's a bit abstract, which I also like.
For this photo, there isn't really much colour, so it might be worth converting into black and white and playing with the contrast to separate the light and dark areas more clearly.
For the future, I think it's worth trying to find a more clear point of interest, such as a rock that the water is moving around. I've found this helps with the contrast, in terms of stillness and motion. But that's just a personal thought.
Thank you Jordan.
It was indeed shot at 86mm (on an APS-C camera).
I'll try to keep your opinion in mind next time.
As far as making this image more painterly goes, just some processing work needs to be done. The following is just my personal take:
The first thing I notice is a lack of much detail to work with and a lack of color which a painting would have, so I would bring up the shadows and some other values to get more detail out and make the image flatter, and then do some more fine tuned contrast control via the different layers and methods there are in photoshop.
Then I'd do what is called an orton effect. I feel that would help this image and what you're going for, as when done correctly it gives images a painterly glow. Skip ahead if you're already familiar, if not: Make a copy of the last layer you worked with, and throw a gaussian blur on it. For my images I usually do a radius of 15-17 pixels. Then go to image > adjustments > levels, and bring the blacks and the highlights closer to the center. I usually use the histogram given to decide where to go. bringing both points to their hottest spots in the histogram respectively, but just crush both ends a tad. You're probably going to notice the photo looks absolutely horrific at this point, but this is when you change the opacity of the layer. Drag the opacity down all the way, and slowly reintroduce it until you get the look you want. Then copy the layer, and throw a high pass filter on it on overlay to bring some detail back while keeping the blurry/glowy effect (Or if you want the lack of detail for the painter effect, skip that part!)
As far as composition goes, i can't help since i don't know this location! But having a real subject/center of focus never hurts!
I attached before and after screenshots of a quick/not dialed in orton effect so you get the idea of what that effect does, in case you weren't already familiar! if you were already familiar, than hey, maybe somebody else reading this hasn't heard of it yet and can learn!
Hope i didn't ramble too much. I actually like what you are going for here, just needs some TLC!
Thanks a lot !
I didn't know about the Orton effect, so it was very informative. I've tried it a bit, but I felt like I needed to keep it light.
Less is more in most cases of that effect. I do very fine/small ones on a lot of my images as just a general contrast adjustment (I feel lightroom's contrast adjustments are, to be frank, garbage, so i do all my contrast stuff in photoshop). Glad I was able to show you and joseph cole a new technique!
thanks trevor i wanna try that now
I reckon it's looking pretty good already, Rémi! Already very painterly to my eye. Love it!
I think in this case, higher saturation doesn't make for a fake, gaudy effect as I often think it does with more "realistic" images, but instead heightens the impressionistic effect, so I'd brighten the shadows, bringing out the colours there, and give the spray a glow, as if it's catching the light a bit, by softening the lighter tones only. But that may not be what you envisaged.
I love the simple (?) composition, without a "point of interest". For me, you capture the FEELING of a waterfall perfectly.
I wonder if Radisa would want to mirror-image it...