yes, i know, i know, i did it again i didn't stick to one spot but i was hiking... so sue me. let me know what you think.
I am having trouble separating the small sapling for the rest of the foliage i focus stacked the sapling shot so i would have a blurry background but it just doesn't seem to be jumping off the background like i thought it would.
todays haul
Like the first one... the pops of color from the leaves are what make it. Second one is nice but needs a tighter crop, more of the color and the reflection in the water. Third one is nice from a technical view but the composition could be better. The sapling is cut off at the top. Fourth one I like a lot, the bright yellow leaf in the foreground could be toned down a little. You are getting much better with your post processing! It looks like you had better lighting this weekend also!
thanks Red much appreciated! lighting was better but i also balanced my camera so it helped a ton. the sapling was more of a test plus i liked it so i shot it haha.
The sapling image is well focused, with the focus stack. I think what you're seeing is that there is very little positive lighting difference between your subject and the background, or the remainder of the environment. The background is more varied and interesting in both color range and tonal range than the sapling. It's the same sort of thing that could kill an environmental portrait.
Throw it into your favorite editor, and look at the histogram. It's crunched pretty far left, kind of dim and flat. If you want to play around in post and see what you might like...for next time:
- globally adjust the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows and watch the histogram. You should be able to use exposure to shift it right, contrast to expand the range, highlights to pull the right side back toward center a bit, and shadows to pull up the left side a bit. That will let you see what you're doing to the background and to the subject. You'll get a feel for how your perception is linked to the histogram.
- next throw a radial mask around your subject with 30% feather and see what you can do, as above, to make the background a little less interesting than your subject. You can also drop the shadows (muddy up the background a bit), play with saturation, contrast, etc.
It's not a fix for the image. But, it might give you a different way of looking around you the next time you're out.
great tips dean will put them to use thanks a ton
The first one is excellent. The last one crop out the sky, it is along with the waterfall the brightest and ones eye is fighting the waterfall. The other two arent as exceptional as the first and last. Well done
thanks Loretta i will look at that crop i was taking a chance on the second especially with no main object to catch the eye. the 3rd was my first stacking experiment
I like them all Joseph but the 3rd one down of the sapling , the background is too busy.Even though it is blurred there are too many tree trunks that grab your attention.Dean I think is giving you some good post processing tips for that one. I would have wanted to shot that one at a very wide aperture without worrying about fixing it after.
thanks Geoff your right i need to start looking past my subjects as well to make sure there are no distractions
The first thing I thought when I saw these pictures was "Whoa the colors are off somehow." - you said you were going for a natural look, but these colors don't look natural to me.
I tried to fix it for the third picture (shifted tint from green towards magenta, turned down green saturation, then turned overall saturation down even further), but these are JPEGs and there's not much I can do.
I agree with Red, composition wise #4 is the strongest.
You're definitely making progress, but you need to look deeper into what the histogram tells you (Dean already mentioned that) and how to properly balance colors.
yes yours is more like what i actually saw in the field i was just trying to get some punch out of it thanks Thorsten
Because I'm unable to view you gear list, I wanted to know what lens you're using in this instance as some lenses offer more bokeh (blurred background) than others. Otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing.
the kit lens hahahaha its such a piece of junk i can't wait to upgrade
For a "piece of junk" it does rather nicely. Although I'm currently between cameras, I'm gearing more towards a new or slightly dated mirrorless with several old school lenses. As real metal & glass should be considered.
Agree, the gear isn't the limiting factor yet. If you start seeing CAs in fine details such as trees, blurry corners and the like that's when it's time to move on to a better lens. Just talked to a colleague of mine, it just so happens that he's got a D3300 as well and looking to upgrade, but he has a specific reason - he wants to shoot in low light and claims that around ISO 3000 the quality of the images would suck. What I'm trying to say here is, if you haven't hit a wall with your current gear yet, then there's no need to waste money. It's not likely your pictures will improve noticeably from swapping out gear - yet. Another example: I've shot M31 and M42/43 with just my telephoto lens and only now that I realised I can't get M42 any better than this with this makeshift setup I decided to get a telescope - I've hit a wall and no matter my skills, I can't get past that, I have to "upgrade".
The guys at the camera store said I would get better sharpness with upgrading the lens ....as for night photography my camera sucks
Of course they would say that. Which lens is it? Let's get some hard facts :-) Is it the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR?