After 8 ratings (close to 4) this photo was rated 2. Which is okay, but unfortunately no feedback was provided. I would like to improve and therefore any feedback is very welcome. Any suggestions you could provide?
After 8 ratings (close to 4) this photo was rated 2. Which is okay, but unfortunately no feedback was provided. I would like to improve and therefore any feedback is very welcome. Any suggestions you could provide?
Hi Jürgen!
Giving a low rating w/o feedback. I think that happened to almost all of us in online galeries.
A sunrise/sunset with fog and mirrored sun on the water and bold trees. A nice mood is in. The colors appear naturally to me. A nit left weighted. Nothing going on at the right. Fory personal taste the photograph appears a bit 2 dimensional. I am missing depth in it just a tiny hint from the sun plus 1 tree a bit in the fog at the right.
I hope, I could help a bit.
All the best, dg9ncc
Hi dg9ncc!
Many thanks. This is very helpful.
Best, Juergen
My main suggestion, Juergen, is to ignore the two-star rating. A number of people have observed that some members seem to give whole portfolios two-star ratings, presumably in spite. Fstoppers is a fairly troll-free zone, but you always get a few.
Yours is a fine shot in my view. It is 3-, going on 4-star quality for me, but I can't think how to improve it. It's well-composed, moodily atmospheric with beautiful textures and colours. What elevates an image to 4 or 5 stars is pretty much indefinable in my opinion.
A bit like on eBay, I think it is best to only give positive feedback on portfolio images (i.e. I ignore what I don't like), in order to avoid revenge ratings. Discussion posts like this are where people actually seek feedback more than in portfolios, where I think most of us post work we're pleased with, even proud of, so negative feedback, thoughtless or spiteful or not, hurts - and can detract from viewing pleasure for others.
I also think "Needs work" on the two-star rating is not very sensible. What "work" can be done on an ill-conceived, or fundamentally poorly-composed image to improve it?
Just my take on this issue.
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts, Chris!
Juergen, I agree a lot with what Chris and Dg9ncc said, but would like to fog is not only one of the most difficult atmospheric conditions to properly expose for. I have found it to be also possible the most difficult in post processing. Years ago during a lecture it was mentioned that fog was kind of like photographing snow and if trusting the exposure meter you’ll wind up with gray icky looking snow, the remedy is to increase the exposure by 1 to 1 1/2 stops. With fog however even though a straight light meter is going to underexpose the image. I have as of yet not found a uniform remedy as with the method for exposing snow, but at least this is a starting point even if just as a “warning” FOG, FOG proceed with caution, and one consolation is that digital memory is much cheaper than film ;). As best as I can figure fog has many more variables than snow.
Juergen I too like to photograph fog but have never photographed it head on into the sun especially such an intense and well defined sun as you have here. I like it and the challenge :), but, all I can do is offer my advice from processing the fog images that I have. From what I have found you have to select the highest values in the image to increase there brightness/luminesce and contrast ever so slightly while not affecting the lower tones and colors. Rather than doing this in one smooth “quick” move as far as I’m aware doesn’t exist. I have found repeated small/narrow marginal selections with small adjustments to work best while using patience, persistence along with experimentation and critical evaluation. Working with fog takes time, have you seen the movie “Contact” … there’s a scene were the main character as a young girl is tuning a shortwave radio and her farther advices …small moves Ellie, small moves.
I don’t know how familiar you are with layer blend mode or if ON1 even has them or layer blend if capabilities? So best I can say is try done oppose of what I suggested with the shadows except with your highlights on both counts avoid fast and quick “stay away from the exposure slider!”.
Juergen it just dawned on me you never asked for all this nor did you ever mention fog although in your portfolio title you do say mist?
As to the annoyance of those low ratings without comments believe me I have seen my share of them both Lee and Patrick have recognized the issue in the Critique the Community / Photo Contest but not how the same mentality is becoming more prevalent within the general community. And these believe it or not are nominal compared to the missing thumbnail blue question marks of 24 hour censorship. Thankfully these are becoming less frequent.
See: https://fstoppers.com/photo/683688
Hope this was helpful I got on a role and forgot you use ON1.
Later Paul
Hi Paul,
This was really helpful and I do appreciate your input. ON1 has the feature of blending layers. It is like a clone of Lightroom, besides it actually has a slider for midtones! I haven't done much with the blending tool yet but I will continue with versions of the photo and we will see were I will land. One point to consider is that I can't push the boundaries too much with this one. It is a Velvia 50 slide which I scanned using a Nikon 5000 Coolscan but there seem to be some limitations to what you can do in post processing. Likely not being an issue for this file.At that point the photo is much like the slide looks like. It was taken more than 25 years ago without any post processing options. Maybe I can enhance it with the input provided by the members.
Again, I really do appreciate the constructive feedback.
Thanks,
Juergen
Juergen, glad you got something out of my ramblings. I keep forgetting more and more people are moving on from adobe programs, and while I was writing my last I was reminded of an open source program “GIMP” with maybe something to consider.
Well any way you mentioned midtone slides does this mean all RBG channels? With the tools I use that have access to each separate channel I adjust each of them before the global adjustment. I learned the value of the individual channels while teaching myself how to scan film, (manually). One thing I would do after the preview scan I would go to the curves tool and in each channel set both a black and white point and then and midtones of each to 128 before anything else. Everything else was subjective based on the image and the histogram on eye on each.
Nikon 5000 Coolscan the flagship of personal dedicated film scanners a friend of mind had/has one but never seen him use it but I’m pretty sure he would load it and hit auto and from what I could tell he got real good results. I’m the opposed I like to learn limits and how far they can be taken to obtain the optimal to my ability. Rather than “enhance” an image I seek to optimize them based on what I experienced and photographed, digitalized, processed and exhibit either digitally or printed format.
One thing I learn digitalizing film is that E-6 film dyes/colors fade even under dark archival conditions. Early on in my photographic pursues is the “archival” quality of Kodachrome. When I was well on my way scanning film I learn about full frame transparency slide mounts. The two things I learned were factory mounts cardboard or plastic the window or aperture crops into the image on the film so it was not 100% of what the camera or I saw through the lens. I began remounting what I felt my best images and rescanning them. The next thing was that with the non-Kodachrome images I had all had dark edges of equal thickness on all sides when they were remounted in the full frame mounts. These images were treated the same and all in a close to archival dark storage to my ability right along the Kodachrome’s. Never one did I ever observe this on any of the Kodachrome images. So my advice to any analog/film photographer is to get optimal scans especially E-6 films as soon as possible and persevere any memories of important bodies of their work.
Paul, the midtone slider is a global adjustment which impacts all colors. The curve tool allows to adjust the midtones by RGB, global or locally.
With respect to film scanning I have no experience with the emulsions you used, I used almost exclusively Velvia 50. But the cropped view of the mounted slide is something I can confirm. I used snap-fit plastic mount and ended up to remove part of the material at the inner side of the frame with a sharp knife. My last slides are now 16 years old and I had rescanned a few lateley, as far as I can tell they seem not to fade, yet. Or only to an extend which is not notable. I stopped using film and moved entirely to digital, also less hassle when traveling through airports.