Stumbled upon these ducklings when I was out shooting in RMNP on an overcast afternoon. I'd welcome any thoughts/impressions/derision/suggestions. I've been trying to work on composition and to undo a couple years of stick-it-in-the-middle-of-the-frame! vacation photo mentality, so critiques in that area would be especially welcome.
Also, I really have no idea where to start with postprocessing on this image, if it's worth putting in some effort. B&W maybe..? it's not the most colorful to begin with...
Looks like I must have posted this at the wrong time, it seems to have gotten buried. Either that or it doesn't merit comment Maybe more specific questions would help - does the lower left distract for being OOF/bright? Does the interesting line I thought I saw (the kind of S-shaped curve of the duckling in front, up around the other duckling's head, over to the eye/bill) add any interest to the image or is it just a strange framing? Etc..
Takes time for us to formulate " thoughts/impressions/derision/suggestions" Welcome aboard the forum. Neat shot. I think I'd crop out the bottom half of the photo and work from there. I like the colour.
Wanted to look at this on my good monitor before commenting as my work one does poorly with lower light images. You are on the right track with your crop, may even consider ridding the upper left green out with a tighter crop off the left. Eye is in a good location by not being centered.
Try to find the most interesting elements to keep in and all other out when possible. Lower angle would even be better, always try to minimize oof elements in the front of the frame. I think you got all you could out of it, hope to see more like this from you too!
The second crop looks definitely better, I don't know how skilled you are with PS, but I would also try to blur everything in the bg so the subject will pop more.
Welcome to the forum,
Socrate
2nd crop looks better. Based on your own revised crop I think this would've been better composed as a horizontal to try and include the tip of the bill and a bit more space for him to look into. The blue patch could be individually selected and desaturated if it distracts you.
Steve
Wanted to look at this on my good monitor before commenting as my work one does poorly with lower light images. You are on the right track with your crop, may even consider ridding the upper left green out with a tighter crop off the left. Eye is in a good location by not being centered.
Try to find the most interesting elements to keep in and all other out when possible. Lower angle would even be better, always try to minimize oof elements in the front of the frame. I think you got all you could out of it, hope to see more like this from you too!
Thanks for the suggestions. Originally since I was attempting to think composition, composition, composition, I was looking for interesting shapes, patterns, lines, curves etc. and thought that the sort of S-shaped layout was going to be the interesting part of the image. Obviously that didn't work out quite right Unfortunately a lower angle wasn't possible, I was already laying on the ground with half my eye off of the viewfinder to get this one! The OOF part was distracting for me too, but it's good to hear that from others too so I can maybe treat that as a compositional rule of thumb rather than just my personal interpretation of the image. Something for me to keep in mind! I'll try to play with the cropping a bit and see if I like it better closer in. Thanks again!
Shasoc wrote:
The second crop looks definitely better, I don't know how skilled you are with PS, but I would also try to blur everything in the bg so the subject will pop more.
Welcome to the forum,
Socrate
Unfortunately I haven't had much experience with PS - got it recently and I'm still learning. I assume that that would be accomplished by (carefully) masking off the BG and applying a little gaussian blur...? Thanks for your comment,
Bmetcan wrote:
2nd crop looks better. Based on your own revised crop I think this would've been better composed as a horizontal to try and include the tip of the bill and a bit more space for him to look into. The blue patch could be individually selected and desaturated if it distracts you.
Steve
Hi Steve,
I think I agree with your thoughts on a horizontal orientation. I took a bunch of frames of these guys; unfortunately I didn't think to get a horizontal from this same perspective!
Here's my suggestion. And it is just a suggestion. Often a new viewer has no idea what you want the viewer to feel or see when all we have is a beginning image. So I could be totally off base.
First, this is a nice image. Be proud of it. Given the extreme amounts of work done after the shoot on most shots you have a good starting point.
What I did tot he image was a simple four step edit. All in photoshop.
1. I cropped it to include the lower curve of ...whatever that is. Another duck head? The reason was that by cropping there you have a nice repeated form through the image: the main duck's head, the soft curve at the bottom, the main duck's eye and the little fan of tan feathers.
2. I duplicated the image in a new layer and did a high pass filter (Filter, Other, High Pass (at 5.0) then set layer to overlay)
3. I added some red and yellow in Image, Adjustments, Color Balance (set to highlights).
4. I used the blur tool to blur some parts that were sharp in both the high pass layer and the main layer. So some parts wind up sharpened by the hi pass, others softened. Then I burned in a few light patches in the upper parts. All this focused the sharpness in the middle on the eye and the tan feathers.
For me, the color of the the tan feathers in the middle of the mostly black and white is deep enough to work but remain subtle.
Total time: about 8 minutes. I type slower than that....Show more →
Wow! Thank you very much for the comments and the description of the editing you did, that is very helpful. It also raises some questions - since I am a photoshop noob, the first one being: what made you think to use a high-pass filter/overlay? I repeated your process in photoshop, but... what exactly is the high-pass layer + overlay doing to the image to give it what appears to be more contrast/clarity like that? Playing around with it in photoshop, the effect didn't seem too intuitive. I'll see if I can't find some photoshop for photos resources on the net somewhere, there's clearly much more to think about than just levels/curves/contrast/local contrast etc.
Also, that lower curve is indeed a miscellaneous part of another duckling. That repeated shape was what made me frame the shot the way I did; I only wish the duck part in the FG were a little more in focus. There was a group of ducklings gathered in a little pile while a parent watched from a few feet away. They were amazingly tolerant and curious; one of the ducklings got up at one point, walked all the way around me, found out I was boring and went back to sleep in the pile.
Maybe more specific questions would help - does the lower left distract for being OOF/bright? Does the interesting line I thought I saw (the kind of S-shaped curve of the duckling in front, up around the other duckling's head, over to the eye/bill) add any interest to the image or is it just a strange framing? Etc..
Welcome aboard the forum. Neat shot. I think I'd crop out the bottom half of the photo and work from there. I like the colour.