Found this guy at Chincoteague tonight protecting his babies. I don't think I have ever gotten a good shot of a goose's eye. The black eye surrounded by the black coloring of his head has always been a serious challenge. I was hanging out of the car window, maybe 5 feet from him when I took this. Of the 300 shots I took tonight, this is the ONLY one that came out crystal clear.
@frankhymus Hi! Is your offer for trial mentoring still available? If so, I'm ready! All critique is fair game and welcome!
The story on this shot: The sun was to my left and I was turned towards my right. About an hour and a half before sunset. Processing was my standard quick run thru LR to enable lens profile corrections, remove chromatic aberration, 25% luminance, 25% sharpening. Every photo I take gets that standard treatment.
From there, I increased exposure .85, contrast +25, and whites +11. Quick crop, then ran thru Define 2 to decrease noise, which wasn't much at all, then over to PS to remove a weird piece of grass growing out of his head. That's all I did. This one was a rare shot that was already pretty darn good SOOC.
So, what I'm not sure of is how I got his eye to stand out so well from his face. Obviously the light was strong enough, and was coming from the correct direction into his eye, but I couldn't guarantee that I could replicate this.
So, if your offer still stands, we'll start with critique and teaching on this good one, and tomorrow I'll throw a doozy at you! :-)
@shesnapped I think there is nothing worth commenting negative on here. For the eye, I think it is OK as is, but an easy way in Lightroom is to grab the "Readial Filter" control and set positive exposure and positive (extra) sharpening, place it right on the center of the eye and pull the cirle out to just about cover the eye. Play with the settings, perhaps add some "highlight." The neat thing about the radial filter is that the dialed in effect is full at the center and fades out to zero at the circle border. Make sure you have the control right at the bottom checked to have the effect "inside" and not "outside" the circle..
I enjoy how you chose to not flip the shot. We are 'trained' to read and see left to right and to use opposing structure is a very nice change. Your focus is spot on. Also liked how the background doesn't interfere with your primary subject.
@joysabin Thank you for that observation! I didn't intentionally NOT flip this photo, but interestingly, I was reading up on creating tension in a photo some time ago and learned that leading the eye from bottom left to upper right is one of the ways to do that. Now that you've pointed out the 'opposing structure', I see that the same effect has been created. Neat!
May 27th, 2016
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
The story on this shot: The sun was to my left and I was turned towards my right. About an hour and a half before sunset. Processing was my standard quick run thru LR to enable lens profile corrections, remove chromatic aberration, 25% luminance, 25% sharpening. Every photo I take gets that standard treatment.
From there, I increased exposure .85, contrast +25, and whites +11. Quick crop, then ran thru Define 2 to decrease noise, which wasn't much at all, then over to PS to remove a weird piece of grass growing out of his head. That's all I did. This one was a rare shot that was already pretty darn good SOOC.
So, what I'm not sure of is how I got his eye to stand out so well from his face. Obviously the light was strong enough, and was coming from the correct direction into his eye, but I couldn't guarantee that I could replicate this.
So, if your offer still stands, we'll start with critique and teaching on this good one, and tomorrow I'll throw a doozy at you! :-)