I find these to be extremely cropped and very flat. Almost looks like S/H was used in post or something else that was used that wound up being too heavy handed. Also, all the whites are gone. I can't tell where the ice ends and the boards begin.
Paul, thanks for the input. Can you please let me know what is S/H? Agree with you that some of these were cropped quite a bit (how did you find that out, can you please let me know?). Also, can you please explain more about these being flat? Is it because they are to bright? Thanks again for your help.
The appearance of depth is created by two factors... isolation (background blur) and shadows (light falloff). When you don't have the reach and/or aren't patient enough to allow the action to come to you, you wind up shooting images too far away and the DoF becomes too wide. Hence, there is less bokeh (background blur). Coupled with the fact that the images appear devoid of any shadows that define depth, the images appear "flat". There is no dimension to them. S/H is shadow/hightlight recover tool used in PS. They appear to have been flattened by that post processing tool whether used or not. My flat comment is in reference to that, too wide a DoF, and no light falloff... ie... I can't see where the ice meets the boards which would also give the appearance of depth and dimension. Hope this makes sense.
Paul, thanks very much for the clarification. That really helpful. Will try to reprocess some of these to see if I get what you are referring here. If not, then will try again next week .
I can't read the EXIF file but too me it looks like you could prolly drop your ISO down 2/3 a stop(ish). Also can't tell what mode you are shooting in but depending on the rink there should be fairly consistent lighting across the light, allowing you to set the exposure in manual and shoot the whole game that way. This helps make sure your meter isn't being tricked by all of the white. Or set you meter to underexpose by about a stop.
... ). Please let me know your your C&C on these. Thanks
