DSS 44 Processing

DsrtVW

Going to get a jump on this one. I did make time enough for the last challenge. These are all single shot process have not played with composites yet.
C&C always appreciated.
1.

2.

3.

4.

bfjr

last one

Dedalus77

Definitely the last one, hands down.

Justiceiro

I like #3. Looks interesting, and we know it isn't staged.

KevXman

Last one, absolutely!

dlplumer

First and last

richtersl

They're all good contenders, but the last one is the one that's going to grab a judge's attention.

Kinkajou

KevXman wrote:

Last one, absolutely!

+1

pyroPrints.com

3 is gorgeous
4 is also nice

lizzard_nyc

Oh my gosh--#4 rocks--it literally looks like a cut out!

Wow. Nicely done.

michswiss

Last one. Needs a cropping snip from the top, but I can't decide from the left or right. Depends on the emotion you're going for. But to quote Liz, it rocks!

sunflowerstudio

I'm the outlier -- #2 caught my attention. It looks escher-esque.

DsrtVW

Last one is a sculpture on a hill in the wine country. Adjusted with curves. I wish there were people there that day to add to the Silhouettes theme.
Thank you all for the feedback.

DsrtVW

sunflowerstudio wrote:

I'm the outlier -- #2 caught my attention. It looks escher-esque.

I like 2 also but I wish the birds had more separation. I have other shots but they are not overexposed enough to make white birds into silhouettes in Capture NX might have to take them to photo paint
I it hard to get myself to overexpose the shot toget to the final result needed

Flyinggina

All amazing but I agree that #4 is the one you should enter.

Virginia

nightpixels

Hi Chris,

The last one has a nice composition but it is extremely noisy (Specially the sky ... for all the pictures for that matter) which works against the picture. With Silhouettes, noise usually should not be an issue mainly because you shoot with a fast shutter speed while keeping the ISO fairly low. To me a great silhouette picture, if shot at the right time of the day, should be virtually noise-free unless the Photographer has intentionally introduced noise to send a specific message. Was the noise introduced during the post-processing? I just looked at your EXIFs and the weird thing I noticed was the info for ISO was stripped out but not for the rest of the specs . How did that happen, you know? Also, the time of the day you shot this at was around 2:30 PM which is odd to see a sky like this, so I assume a fair amount of pp went into this which caused the noise? I am just curious

sunflowerstudio

Is the statue in #4 actually a cutout (i.e. a silhouette?) or is it silhouetted because of the way you've shot the picture?

I've been wonderinga bout this 'cause I took some pictures yesterday of silhouettes cut into a construction barrier (at a mall; they'd decorated the barrier with carved out forms). I've been trying to figure out if a picture of that work is mine, or that of the artist who made the barrier. It'll be a judgment call, I think (it's tough to tell whether it's the dancer or the photographer who makes dance photography wonderful, and I think, in most cases, it's both).

I for one think we're going to get bored of dark silhouettes of people against a sunset/colorful sky. But, maybe the short 2 week window will mean that not everyone has an opportunity to get that shot (and of course, a spectacular one will still stand above the crowd).

JAG

Nice set here. Personally number 4 has a strong content for possibilities. I have to agree with nightpixels that the noise is bit too much. I wonder if you were able to:
1. Crop the image to offset the siloette to the left. This in my opinion make a stronger composition.
2. isolate your sky from the siloette and run a noise removal filter to soften the sky. This will hopefully eliminate the noise issue plus make the picture have more dof.

DsrtVW

Hi Allen
I went and looked in the metedata. The IOS should have been at 200 but it looks like I went over to what Nikon calls L03 which is 1/3stop under 200 I think. I usually do not go below 200. It is interesting it does not show up.

It was a cloud day with more light on the horizon. The only post I did was curve adjustment compress the tone range and then some curve and color balance adjustment. All were quick adjustments to get feedback
Original


Curves Excused the dirty sensor. Sometimes you find out the hard way.



I tried it with different clouds too

JAG

The clouds in this one are most convincing to the image! I really like it!

richtersl

I agree with Joyce regarding the clouds.

Have you tried a vertical crop on this?

AndMan

richtersl wrote:

I agree with Joyce regarding the clouds.

Have you tried a vertical crop on this?

+1

liflander

These are all great shots! I think you could easily go with one of the bird shots (ie #1) and have a strong entry. Nice work on the pp to make these really stand out!
Cheers,
Mark

ic4u

JAG wrote:

The clouds in this one are most convincing to the image! I really like it!

nightpixels

Yup, what JAG said!