Trail of the Snail

TonyCooper

Seen on the rusty body of a car in a salvage yard

David_S85

This is really good! Love the comp. too.

sarasphotos

oooh, and I love the way the slimy snail trail glistens on the rusty background! Wonderful DOF, great composition.

ziggy53

Outstanding! (... And +1 what David and Sara said.) Subject and setting; perfect example.

Cygnus Studios

This is just beautiful.

Stumblebum

Its nice.....but at risk of being different.....the bokeh at top left and bottom right is for me acting as eye pull.....it is not setting up the main subject....but drawing attention and it not sure it should do that....cheers Tony!~

TonyCooper

Would you prefer this crop, Stumblebum? I kept the 2:3 ratio, and wanted to retain the
depth-of-field changes, but cropped it tighter to remove the corners.

Personally, I'm not sure. I kinda like the snail to be small in the overall field, and the crop
makes the snail larger. I don't want to change the corners by PS manipulation.

ziggy53

The tighter crop does seem to reduce the snail's struggle and plight. It's still good, but I think that I prefer the original crop better in this case.

Perhaps use Photoshop to just reduce the intensity of the few OOF specular features in the blurred portions of the scene in the first version?

TonyCooper

Ziggy...I'm avid user of PS, and immodestly claim to be an advanced amatuer.

But, I wouldn't know where to start, and end, on this. Not because I don't know
how, but because I don't where it's needed and where it's not. I don't see anything
that jumps out at me enough to bother with.

I do take suggestions, and tried a different crop, but I don't really see what
Stumblebum and you see as a problem. It's rust, and rust doesn't have a
standard look to go after.

Stumblebum

Tony, I greatly prefer #2, it has reduced the edge textured-bokeh, which was mimicking noise.....love it now! Bokeh is doing its job now! Cheers~

denisegoldberg

I much prefer #1. I think it does a better job of showing the snail in context. In this case the size of the snail in the overall photo is important, and the edge bokeh doesn't detract from the photo (for me).

black mamba

I prefer #1 as well. The bokeh issue is not an issue to my eye. Good work, Tony.

Cygnus Studios

We have another "original" vs "cropped" thread with opinions coming down on both sides. This is why I love forums. For me every picture comes down to whether it is about the subject or of the subject. I much prefer about the subject images.

The original image is about the snail and that path it has taken. It tells a story. You can almost feel the implied struggle to get there. I could see it as an inspirational poster hanging on a wall.

The second image simply looks like a picture of a snail. Nice in its own right, but that is all it says.

ziggy53

What I see, not that it causes severe angst and I may not be seeing what Stumblebum is noticing, is 2 - related issues:

1) The lens you used creates a rather "busy" bokeh, which is exacerbated by spectral highlights.
2) The post-processing I presume that you did to make the rust a bit more "grunge" (which I think is both appropriate to the theme and the message).

... Both of the above conspire to make the background more apparent than is necessary for the story.

As a demonstration, the following GIF shows:

1) 3 - Blue highlighted areas which I think are spectral highlights which do not serve to promote the subject and story.
2) The original first image without the blue highlight.
3) After using the Photoshop "Clone" tool to replace the highlights with less obvious pixels. (Plus I did a couple more, just 'cause ...) This is the primary recommendation.
4) Additionally, I used a graduated Gaussian blur in (especially) the upper left and (barely) the lower right.

I will delete the GIF at your request (since you didn't ask for a demonstration and it is your image).

TonyCooper

Ziggy...Ahh, those things. In some photographs those would be taken out as a matter of course. In this photograph,
they aren't noticable to me because of the nature of the surface.

And, I most certainly added to the grunge effect. For a photo posted to a rust junkie group, I assume that this is
perfectly legal and even desirable. Sometimes applaudable. Horses for courses.

In this case, it was run twice through NIK's Color Efex Pro 4's "Detail Extractor" module set very high. I prefer this in some
cases to PS's Filter>Other>High Pass>(high radius setting) because it has less of a halo effect on edges when I'm
going for an extreme effect.

Now to the blur...I'm not with you on this. That change in texture through the image is what I was looking
for, and the blur lessens this. I like the range of roughness.

By all means, leave your edit in place in this thread. Any kind of learning experience is good, but this really
isn't as much a learning experience as it a split between two viewers (you and me) on what kind of effect to
go for in a particular image. You've gone for the natural effect, and I've gone for an extreme effect.

I don't routinely go for extreme effects or excessive sharpening by any technique, but the rust junkie group
in this forum leans - almost falls over - to this approach.

I'm going to start a new thread titled "Baseball Extreme" later today to present two images that are also samples of
extreme processing. Please add your comments to it. Don't expect extreme processing in everything I show here, though.

Tony

black mamba

Hey, Tony. Most of us true Rust Junkies seldom employ extreme PP work outside of dealing with rust. And you're right....in that realm, there are no boundaries at all. You're known to dance around the edges of the Junkie world ( some of your auto work scores big ) and we appreciate your contributions. More importantly, though, your support, and mentioning of potential benefits of some of the Junkie ways that may be beneficial on occasion, means a lot. Good on you.

Stumblebum

For the record, I am with Ziggy on this.

If the artist is going for busy bokeh and want bokeh to draw attention then THAT should be the main subject.

Here the effect was so strong, like mimicking noise, that had to look at it and it didn't enhance my viewing experience in anyway. Based on the photo, bokeh is suppose to sit in bg and help the main subject shine, and in first one it was not doing that.

In second one the effect is curtailed simply due to less area, and eye can stay focused on the main subject without it being pulled by bokeh.

Cheers Tony and Ziggy and all!

Juano

Good discussion. I can agree that the bokeh is somewhat distracting, but I still prefer #1, the composition is nicer.

TonyCooper

It's a welcome change to see disparate opinions about a photograph treatment.

Like anyone else, I appreciate a pat on the back for one of my photographs, but I
am well aware that not everyone likes the same thing in post treatment. It's those
critical comments that get to me to look at my own photograph with new eyes.

A critical comment doesn't mean I'll agree and change. Sometimes I do, and sometimes
I feel my first version is what I went for, and what I want to stick with. But, it does make
me aware of things that I might want to do in future processing.