Snowy: Matching Pair Photos

ginger_55

I just spent HOURS working these up: just to prove I could do something in an excellent manner. I "cleaned" off the whole green lake. Except for the one piece on the bottom of the second photo. I have lots of these, good potentials. I think my favorite of all is that first one, I love it when they play with their feathers.

And the second one, well, it was another double dippin' bird. So, there are many photos there, too. I liked this one best, and since I have to clean the whole lake to post it............. these photos might be rare :rofl .

I have these unframed, naked, just a line and also with this grey frame on. If you want I could bring anything over from Smugmug, I always work them up in a normal fashion, too. Have to, in case I want a print made.

ginger (I guess this pair doesn't exactly match as the second one is a regular size 5 X 7. I wanted to get some of the green off the top, just extra for no purpose there)

Rohirrim

Nice Images Ginger. I like the first one best.

ginger_55

Thanks, Steve, I like the first one best, too.

Anyone else?? Anyone??? I gave you my dog,

I give you my birds.................

Comments??

ginger (Thanks, again, Steve!)

Osprey Whisperer

Hey Ginger,

Nice captures. Very good composition to these. Not sure what you meant by cleaning the lake? (did you remove junk in image with PS?). I'm thinking they could use a boost of saturation, contrast, and sharpening? They look a bit "flat" and "soft" to me?? Not terrible...but seem a bit washed out. I might try tweeking them just a tad in PP/PS. Perhaps a bit of doddging and burning where needed? The first one is worth the effort IMO. Like that best. Just seems to be missing some "pop". Might even try that first one as a B&W.

Nice job.

MM

bfjr

1st for me Ginger, but I hate to choose
IMHO maybe some more contrast
also maybe a little more crop on 1st one from left side to bring branch from corner of frame into frame?

ginger_55

I did get the color corrected, this time. I have gotten slack about that as I have not been shooting birds much, not white ones, and not white ones on green. So when I have, I have hated the colors.

But when I make them contrasty, I really hate them. So I think this probably has been an issue all along, thinking back to a challenge where I didn't make the finals, the photo had the same soft quality that these do.

I do this on purpose. I could, probably will, do a curves correction to bring up the contrast, but I have tried it for myself and not liked it, I do know that. I like this soft feminine (almost) look. So now I have to ask myself.............do I have a client here.......?? If I want to please others, I do, if only myself, I don't.

Just an interesting thought.

ginger (Just spent two hrs getting CS2 activated.........)

ginger_55

Above, the original as it came up from RAW. I cropped it, don't do that much, but sometimes with birds, I do. Decided to with these, considering the distracting vegetation. Also, I removed spots from the green algae on the lake, I do the same on beaches, usually, it makes them look better, less distracting, etc. It was a lot of work on this stuff here.

This is more contrasty, It is not bad. I tried to go even more contrast, each time correcting the color to make the green less yellow and more blue, I didn't do that in the original one I posted last night, up at the top here. But the more contrasty, the more it brought out the yucky green/yellow. On this bird, even with the WB color correction in RAW, the bird was still yellow/green with the added contrast, so that was even more reason to color correct.

Here is the final, you all will probably like it better. I would like to know as I don't know which one to present to people.

ginger




That was a lot of difference in contrast, though it may not appear so. Anymore and I was losing the branch entirely. Perhaps here I should go to highlights and raise the highlight color. Kind of grainy, too?

luckydog

Definitely a little grainy in the last version. To go back a bit, I like the first more but maybe just with a little sharpening. The grey border goes well with the shot. To present these to people, do you mean to sell or just display? I have never printed a photo with a border like this before as I find some people like to co-ordinate frames/matting with the interior of their house or other existing frames. All I usually do is put a white border around it so there is room to attach the image without compromising the actual photo content.

Trish323

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ginger_55

Trish323 wrote:

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Thanks everyone! I mean many things when I say which to present. I would choose to sell plain photos with no lines, etc. If I were putting them in stores as I had planned this past summer, but I didn't, I would have used plain photos with a matte. That way the "owner" can do it any way they want.

So if I really like a photo, as this one, I do it, definitely, what I call naked, no borders or anything. I put that in any gallery I put out for sale, not that I sell anything, but it is the idea that naked is the easiest one to handle. If I were buying a print to frame, I would buy a plain one. But then I put just a line around one, as I think that presents well here. But I am one of those who like to play with presentation, so I often do a third version, either framed like I did at the top here, or a poster, something, just to interest people. Most are odd sized and I wouldn't know how to get them printed easily, if I wanted to. Unless I did it, and I just have a cheap printer, don't want to get into the printing business.

And, of course, no one looks at my site, most things are over priced, this is all theory, but I do it, or I try to.

Trish! I LOVE IT!

ginger