I had a great adventure this morning, ending up with several nature shots, but wanted to do something different. I'm loving the nature opportunities, but feel like I need to push myself a bit here and there to try new things. I'm posting about our adventure in my extras album.
What fantastic processing, Taffy. Love it. I opted to not process my flower. Tried a bit with it but did not like it but works great on yours. I love the edge of this flower and the black petals. I will not even ask what you did as you are beyond me so far in processing photos. FAV
@dibzgreasley Thanks Debs...the processing was more fiddling so I'm not sure exactly what I did re settings, but I can give you a sense of process...Started by using Aperture slides and just upping contrast and balancing lighting. Then exported into Color Efex Pro which is an Aperture (and other program like PS and LR) plug-in. Using that program, I played with a few filters -- Graduated Neutral Density to balance lighting vertically, pro contrast, etc. I ended by using a solarization filter which is what gives it the inverted color palettes. I used the slider in that to get the tones to where I wanted them to be. It sounds more complicated than it was -- it took about a half hour of fiddling and then forcing myself to stop when I had something I was happy with and that passed the "Jim, do you like this?" test.
@taffy Hahaha - only half an hour! No seriously, thanks for taking the time to explain, I know how hard it can be to remember the process. I'm so glad that other people also use multiple apps to get a end result. Lucky you have a Jim test - my son thinks that everything should be SOOC! A perfectionist!
@dibzgreasley Glad to help...interesting position your son takes for if you are shooting in RAW as you would be posting in effect RAW data. If shooting in JPG, he's essentially saying that you need to let your camera make your decisions about final look, rather than you doing it. To me, not a perfectionist, except when it comes to composition, perhaps. For color, contrast, structure, etc., if you use RAW, you have to be the one to tell the image what it needs to look like before publishing it!
@taffy I wholeheartedly agree! Yeah, I've explained that to him ... He's still young - you know what teenagers are like, everything is black and white... but I keep trying, something will stick!
Lovely processing Taffy! It sure is different to see you you post nature shots rather than architectural shots that you posted this winter......they are spectacular as well.
Fav
Taffy, I like that you have a " if Jim likes it test" I have much the same with my husband! I like that you can identify what flowers you have you used yet the processing removes from their original setting and gives them a completely different feel. They look beautiful.
Love this processing! Very cool and fav!
On another note, I noticed you're doing a mentoring group? Is this a private thing, or is there info somewhere on the project about it? Just curious. :)
@kareenking Thanks Kareen! The mentoring group is something that got started on a thread about a month ago, and people volunteered to be a mentor and indicated they wanted a mentor. I know there are other mentors/mentees on the site now. I had a few people ask me (Ruth, Ryan, Pam -- @newbanklass, @pamknowler, @sullivar) and we just are starting up. It's a bit of amix as all of my mentees are great photographers who I will learn from, so it's sort of evolved into me being the organizer. For the next two weeks, we're focusing on HDR. You're welcome to join the group as we are basically agreeing to serve as critique friends to one another and I'm facilitating. Or you can just be a lurker and follow along as we're tagging one another when we post something to critique (only one a week -- we don't think we can handle more than that -- tho this week I suggested posting a realistic and an overprocessed version, as well as the originals so we can see what each other was working from). The other thing we're doing is when we post a regular photo, if one of us has a comment that is a friendly critique, we post it, but indicate we're wearing our 'mentoring group' hat so that others don't take offense.
Really really like this processing. Even after reading all the comments, I'm still at a loss as to what you did (far above my skills yet) but know when I see something that stands out from others.
Congrats...as you say: quite rare nowadays to get a PP...sorry I'm late to the party. This has been quite a processing journey, and obviously successful!
I wasn't going to ask, but I love processing too and love playing, so how did you do it? Some kind of glow or HDR and inversion perhaps?
Fav
On another note, I noticed you're doing a mentoring group? Is this a private thing, or is there info somewhere on the project about it? Just curious. :)
@friend2303 Thanks Vijay -- you are such a great supportive friend on 365!