I'm not sure if this is right for this group, but I don't know where else to put it. I found this lovely leaf and liked how it seemed to be walking along the pavement. I'm happy with how the foreground blurred as well. Hope you enjoy! Any comments are always appreciated.
(I'm not certain what the settings were, I already formatted the card...)
Also: Minimalism, Abstract, Experimental. I like it, Alison.
In terms of CC, I'd like the leaf a little lower, and to the right, for more breathing space above, and less OOF foreground in front. I've faked it here, but I've changed the aspect ratio in the process. Your bokeh in front of the plane of focus is not very appealing, grabbing the eye. The bokeh behind is appealingly smooth. Nothing you can do to change it, but I'd be careful with OOF foregrounds with this lens.
But they're minor points. It's a great image! Lover the colours & toning.
I agree with Chris.
I do like the edit and toning. It has a cinematic feel.
I agree with Chris as well.
Another option as well when it comes to macro: Watching your focal plane easier said then done in the field. You don't want to clamp down on your apreture too much as you could loose the style.. but perhaps a few shots in a row with slightly different focus, then focus stack the leaf and the focal plane on the ground. I believe photoshop has focus stacking these days.. But I'm still on CS3..
Just to add, I took Chris' image and did a slight sharpening and noise reduction. Not everyone's tastes, but just tossing it out as more options.
I really like images like this.
I like this refinement, Joe.
Thanks for all the tips and feedback everyone! I actually liked the blurriness in the front but perhaps it was taking up too much space and competing with the subject. I do like the crop changes and the different ways you all have played with this image
I will have to read up on focus stacking; I don’t know how to do that or really what it is, lol.
This was mostly just a test shot. I haven’t had a chance to play with my new camera much due to terrible weather but this leaf was near my front stoop and I liked how it seemed to have a bit of “personality”. There’s an AI mode and so I let the camera take over and this was the result. I do tend to like a lot of blur and shallow depth of field, but perhaps that isn’t to most people’s taste. It seems the things that appeal to me most are generally shunned around here, haha. Oh well, this was for fun anyways.
Use your artist intuition. Do your work the way you wish. Over time, your style will evolve and imerge. I edit to my eye. 100 photographs will make 100 distinct images of the same scene. I try to see my final image before I press the shutter. As you develop your technical skills, this will become easier.
I think posting here and seeing all the different points of view helps to develop my eye and skills - it lets me see thinks I may have missed.
Keep up the good work.
Yep. What Roger said. I learn a bunch around here. :)
I don't know if you're au fait with this bokeh business, Alison. For technical reasons (mainly correction of spherical aberration) OOF areas, especially point highlights, are rendered differently by different lenses, and often differently in front of and behind the focal plane.
It is more common to shoot close subjects, especially portraits, with a wide aperture and a smoothly blurred OOF background, so lenses tend to be designed so that OOF areas often look better behind the plane of focus than in front, as in the case of whatever lens you used here. It's difficult (i.e. expensive) to make both good. If you're really keen on selective focus.you could consider Nikon's DC lenses, designed with this very much in mind.
Look at the appearance of the OOF grit at bottom, and it's not smooth. So it's not just the area that is OOF, but its texture, that I noticed for the "wrong" reasons. I dumped my Nikon 35mm f/2 AF lens for its bad bokeh before I ever heard the word.
Found a good link with images that illustrate this: http://www.bokehtests.com/styled/ Look well down the page.
"Around here" on Fstoppers there IS a tendency to focus (!) on technical issues, notably sharpness everywhere in landscapes. Hence focus stacking, combining a series of images focussed at different distances, and software picking only the sharp bits. Some survive without doing it. Like me, so far.
I’m all about Canon products if that helps in your assessments. I just picked up a new M50 so I’m learning all its fun features and limitations as well. The lens I prefer is a 17-55 and it tends to bokeh like crazy which I personally like. Maybe I’m not “au fait” but I like to pursue the experimentation nonetheless. I never claimed to be a professional or even very technical, I just learn as I go one bit at a time.
I’ve found that what many here absolutely dislike about my images others have found pleasing in different contexts so really it’s all a matter of taste. If I was taking a photo of mountains or the like than perhaps I’d be more inclined to a deeper field but maybe not for closeups of smaller objects. Its part of my personal style and if that’s wrong, well...
I appreciate the cc nonetheless.
I'm not criticising your style at all, Alison! I like your "eye" and all your images I've seen.
Bokeh (as distinct from the technicalities of over- and under-correction of spherical aberration, blah,blah, blah...) is purely subjective, and about taste. There's a general preference for "creamy" bokeh, but some people seek out very old lenses with all kinds of bokeh - "swirly" is the new craze.
If that gritty foreground appeals to you, that's fine and could well be used creatively as part of your personal style.
Just wasn't sure if you'd noticed that effect, and since you'll hear a lot about bokeh when shallow depth of field is used, I thought I'd explain a bit about it. You've said you're fairly new to photography as a medium, and there are others of varied experience on this site, who sometimes like to learn what various terms that get bandied about mean..
For some reason I wrongly thought you used Nikon gear. As it happens, Canon SLRs are especially well suited for mounting old lenses, using adaptors.
Chris might be thinking of me when it comes to Nikon and new to the community. :)
I enjoy your style Alison, keep doing you. I love blowen-out butter bokeh in front and behind the subject. I had posted an image in this discussion earlier but deleted it.. It didn't feel right and I hadn't asked.. So I removed it. You're fruit stilllifes look amazing btw...
I entered the 'weekly' contest a little over a month ago and got destroyed with '1 stars'. The images I entered were not ubre-polished using 1200 layers in photoshop.. but that wasn't the style I was after.. instead opting for a very gritty, moody, right from camera, using a home built lens, look. I didn't enter the next contest... but just entered the current contest. Voting is brutal over there wow.. I'm rambling a little..
Congrats on the new camera! :)
Hi, Joe... catching up here in discussions. Well stated thoughts. Brutal... ugh! I took what I thought was a well-thought composition of a church in Manhattan... got the one-star "snapshot" hit and run.
Wankers! :)