This is my daughter on Lily

mochabean

I love to photograph horses. This is my daughter during practice. Difficult to shoot in the barn, so I was very pleased when the light hit this jump and I caught the shot. The background was very dark with distractions, so I took it all the way for drama. What do you think?

joshhuntnm

very nice. I like the black background. That was natural light? no flash.

mochabean

joshhuntnm wrote:

very nice. I like the black background. That was natural light? no flash.

Thank you. Unfortunately I can not use flash around the horses, they spook too easily.

Skippy

mochabean wrote:

I love to photograph horses. This is my daughter during practice. Difficult to shoot in the barn, so I was very pleased when the light hit this jump and I caught the shot. The background was very dark with distractions, so I took it all the way for drama. What do you think?

Looks like you took it in the dark,
that was my first impression (what's she doing jumping in the dark?)

It still looks too dark to me, you cannot clearly seperate the horse the rider and the riders hat from the background and forground.

These are shots that are not easy to get, it's all about timing and available light.........great attempt .... Skippy
.

mochabean

What to do?

Here's the original. Tried everything in CS3 to fix lighting, etc.. Very difficult to shoot in a dark barn. I should have shot at higher ISO then 100, was afraid of blowing out the brights even more.

Skippy wrote:

Looks like you took it in the dark,
that was my first impression (what's she doing jumping in the dark?)

It still looks too dark to me, you cannot clearly seperate the horse the rider and the riders hat from the background and forground.

These are shots that are not easy to get, it's all about timing and available light.........great attempt .... Skippy
.

Matt336

*photo removed*

mochabean

Hum...
Thanks for giving it a try. I spent hours playing with every move in CS3 and nothing to my liking. I certainly will have more opportunities to catch the sun as it was here and shoot with different settings. Outdoor shots are soooo much easier! I am not sure what you mean about posting on photobucket, if you would remove I would appreciate. Thanks for your imput. I still like the black bkgrd, just for contrast sake.
Wendy

Matt336 wrote:

Here is what I came up with from the original. I'm not that great at retouching photos, but it turned alright I thought.


I used the shadow/highlight feature in the Image/Adjustments pull-down and then did some noise reduction to get rid of any noise that was caused by the shadow/highlight action. I also removed the window that was to the left of the rider as it was very displeasing to the eye.



*I have this hosted on photobucket. If you want it removed I will do so immediately.

Matt336

Photo has been removed. Good luck with the future shots!

Richard

I rather like the dramatic, black background, but looking at the original I think you might have been able to keep the hat and rider's face a bit brighter. Still, if you try your best and still don't get the results you want in Photoshop, it probably makes sense to just move on and shoot some more. It's a cool shot in any event.

Cheers,