Critiques please

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lablover27

lablover27

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Got out last weekend on a long hike and came upon this fella. Tried some new camera settings etc. look forward to any and all critiques on composition, editing, etc. Learning Lightroom and the Sony A1 is a handful.

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More of a question really since you asked for critique - what were your thoughts on choice of f number? You chose to keep the background recognizable versus letting it blur out.. if you did that with intent it's all good. But I'm wondering if more blur would be better.
 
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bleirer said:
More of a question really since you asked for critique - what were your thoughts on choice of f number? You chose to keep the background recognizable versus letting it blur out.. if you did that with intent it's all good. But I'm wondering if more blur would be better.
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Good question. I had the lens wide open but then stopped down to f8 for some reason and forgot to reset. So rookie learning experience. Great comment as I didn’t even think about it even when editing. So awesome, first learning mistake.
 
lablover27 said:
Good question. I had the lens wide open but then stopped down to f8 for some reason and forgot to reset. So rookie learning experience. Great comment as I didn’t even think about it even when editing. So awesome, first learning mistake.
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There is much to juggle all at once.

Since you have photoshop you could experiment with the blur filters. Iris blur would simulate a wider aperture.
 
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Just watched Steves blur background video and did a real quick edit on the jpg. Is this what you mean about more blur on the background? Steves video lined it out perfectly. I did it quick with not a lot of worry about edge detail.
I think I could of added more blur but I think I get the point. Now to refine it
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lablover27 said:
Got out last weekend on a long hike and came upon this fella. Tried some new camera settings etc. look forward to any and all critiques on composition, editing, etc. Learning Lightroom and the Sony A1 is a handful.

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Great shots! The only thing I would consider the next time shooting in this situation is to underexpose by -0.3-0.7. That way the highlights would not be overexposed and you could adjust the shadows in LR if you are shooting RAW.
 
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I'm not really one to give a lot of critique on exposure and tech things. I go more by if I like the photo or not and if it draws me in with the composition. With that in mind, photos 2 and 3 above draw me in more. The red tailed hawk is both of these photos is doing something interesting. Photo 2 you have been spotted (or it looks like it) and the hawk is deciding if you are a threat or not. It's very close to getting ready to fly. Maybe it's looking at that vole running under the grass out in the field. Whatever, the hawk is doing something interesting and causes the viewer to pause and figure out what is going on.

Photo 3 is a great action shot. Prey in the talons and lifting off. It tells the story of survival, the world of predator and prey. It was a very good day to be a hawk and a very bad day to be a vole.

As for exposure and the like, things said above sound accurate to me. From my own experiences, bare branches against a clear blue sky don't make for a very interesting background and fringing around the edges can be distracting, but if that is where the hawk is there's not a lot you, as a photographer, can do. It shows the environment where that animal lives and sometimes that is more important to the photo than absolute clarity or a milky blurry background. Just depends on the story you're trying to tell.

I really like the 3rd photo. Eye contact with the hawk, the action, the story it tells, enough background to have an idea of what type of environment it likes to hunt. Exposure looks good to me, at least it is close enough that you can do a lot in post processing to make it look however you want. I can't really tell about clarity because images need to be so downsized to post on the form it's really hard to tell a lot there but it looks good.

Hope this helps. It's just my opinion and others may differ.
Jeff
 
lablover27 said:
Just watched Steves blur background video and did a real quick edit on the jpg. Is this what you mean about more blur on the background? Steves video lined it out perfectly. I did it quick with not a lot of worry about edge detail.
I think I could of added more blur but I think I get the point. Now to refine it
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I'd say. You can still tell the subject is around trees, but there is more emphasis on the subject.
 
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jeffnles1 said:
I'm not really one to give a lot of critique on exposure and tech things. I go more by if I like the photo or not and if it draws me in with the composition. With that in mind, photos 2 and 3 above draw me in more. The red tailed hawk is both of these photos is doing something interesting. Photo 2 you have been spotted (or it looks like it) and the hawk is deciding if you are a threat or not. It's very close to getting ready to fly. Maybe it's looking at that vole running under the grass out in the field. Whatever, the hawk is doing something interesting and causes the viewer to pause and figure out what is going on.

Photo 3 is a great action shot. Prey in the talons and lifting off. It tells the story of survival, the world of predator and prey. It was a very good day to be a hawk and a very bad day to be a vole.

As for exposure and the like, things said above sound accurate to me. From my own experiences, bare branches against a clear blue sky don't make for a very interesting background and fringing around the edges can be distracting, but if that is where the hawk is there's not a lot you, as a photographer, can do. It shows the environment where that animal lives and sometimes that is more important to the photo than absolute clarity or a milky blurry background. Just depends on the story you're trying to tell.

I really like the 3rd photo. Eye contact with the hawk, the action, the story it tells, enough background to have an idea of what type of environment it likes to hunt. Exposure looks good to me, at least it is close enough that you can do a lot in post processing to make it look however you want. I can't really tell about clarity because images need to be so downsized to post on the form it's really hard to tell a lot there but it looks good.

Hope this helps. It's just my opinion and others may differ.
Jeff
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The two you mentioned are my favorites. Funny after a few days I can tell what I would change again..haha. Starting to get familiar with LR
 
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Ralph Bruno said:
Great shots! The only thing I would consider the next time shooting in this situation is to underexpose by -0.3-0.7. That way the highlights would not be overexposed and you could adjust the shadows in LR if you are shooting RAW.
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Funny you say that. Right before this he was against the bright sku and I applied +1 exposure compensation and when he took off it was still at +1. I gotta get these buttons customized better for changing action fast! Do the whites look blown out? Shows no clipping on my end but who knows without calibrating my monitor ( Asus proart)
 
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lablover27 said:
Funny you say that. Right before this he was against the bright sku and I applied +1 exposure compensation and when he took off it was still at +1. I gotta get these buttons customized better for changing action fast! Do the whites look blown out? Shows no clipping on my end but who knows without calibrating my monitor ( Asus proart)
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Actually , there not bad but I think if you shoot at the settings I recommended you would bring out more details on the whites. I found that underexposing in most situation allows me to have better control during post processing. You can recover just about anything but if you overexpose even slightly it’s tuff to adjust.
 
lablover27 said:
Funny you say that. Right before this he was against the bright sku and I applied +1 exposure compensation and when he took off it was still at +1. I gotta get these buttons customized better for changing action fast! Do the whites look blown out? Shows no clipping on my end but who knows without calibrating my monitor ( Asus proart)
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There are a couple small detail-less spots I bet you could recover by pulling the whites to the left a touch. Have you discovered you can click and drag directly in the histogram? Same effect as the sliders. A good strategy might be to move highlights right (opens up midtones) and whites left (keeps detail in whites) untill the blinkies are off ( and on the other end move shadows left and blacks right) but just try it, don't make it a rule you do every time, but evaluate each image on its own merits.
 
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bleirer said:
There are a couple small detail-less spots I bet you could recover by pulling the whites to the left a touch. Have you discovered you can click and drag directly in the histogram? Same effect as the sliders. A good strategy might be to move highlights right (opens up midtones) and whites left (keeps detail in whites) untill the blinkies are off ( and on the other end move shadows left and blacks right) but just try it, don't make it a rule you do every time, but evaluate each image on its own merits.
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I will try that and have pecking on to show if anything is clipping. One small spot in the wing area was clipping. This is all fabulous info as I learn the edit process.

side note. Is monitor calibration a must. I use a Asus pro art that is supposed calibrated in srgb. Wasn’t sure if I need a benq just yet. Was thinking of getting the xrite calibrite system. Prints would be the ultimate goal
 
lablover27 said:
I will try that and have pecking on to show if anything is clipping. One small spot in the wing area was clipping. This is all fabulous info as I learn the edit process.

side note. Is monitor calibration a must. I use a Asus pro art that is supposed calibrated in srgb. Wasn’t sure if I need a benq just yet. Was thinking of getting the xrite calibrite system. Prints would be the ultimate goal
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Ideally you'd want to calibrate about once a month or so and have a monitor that covered 99% Adobe RGB. But 100% srgb is very good too. Sending out for fine art printing on a wide format printer can benefit from Adobe RGB, but for regular prints srgb is fine. The lower cost xrite is fine unless you want to get into printing at home and calibrating your own paper/printer profiles, then you need the more expensive one. I send out for printing myself.

In the meantime you could go to someplace like bay photo or white house custom color and get a set of free evaluation prints ordered with them doing no correction. Hold them up to your monitor under good light (But shield the monitor from light) and judge if the brightness looks like a match. If they are too dark then lower your monitor brightness. If too bright then raise the brightness. The colors also should look reasonably close to your monitor.

In actual practice you can add color correction when you send out to print, so they will fix most errors even if your calibration is a little off, until you trust your setup enough to turn off them doing color correction.
 
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bleirer said:
Ideally you'd want to calibrate about once a month or so and have a monitor that covered 99% Adobe RGB. But 100% srgb is very good too. Sending out for fine art printing on a wide format printer can benefit from Adobe RGB, but for regular prints srgb is fine. The lower cost xrite is fine unless you want to get into printing at home and calibrating your own paper/printer profiles, then you need the more expensive one. I send out for printing myself.

In the meantime you could go to someplace like bay photo or white house custom color and get a set of free evaluation prints ordered with them doing no correction. Hold them up to your monitor under good light (But shield the monitor from light) and judge if the brightness looks like a match. If they are too dark then lower your monitor brightness. If too bright then raise the brightness. The colors also should look reasonably close to your monitor.

In actual practice you can add color correction when you send out to print, so they will fix most errors even if your calibration is a little off, until you trust your setup enough to turn off them doing color correction.
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This is so valuable to me. Thank you
 
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bleirer said:
I'd say. You can still tell the subject is around trees, but there is more emphasis on the subject.
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I think you have improved the blur enough now, if you overdo it, it can look very false. I am wondering if you have processed from the raw files? Then the highlights in photos 1 and 3 would be readily improved, and I suspect the saturation level might be more natural than in the jpeg. Photo 3 is my pick!
 
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