Despite the title, this is an entry for ETSOOI 35 - Skies. (This is the first time I've tried an ETSOOI challenge, although some might say that certain of my 'regular' photos could well qualify for this tag ;~} )
Frank Hymus @frankhymus made the following comment to the first upload of this photo, which I have since replaced:
"Pretty Richard.
I would have tried to avoid the blown out bokeh highlights, probably best by shooting underexposed and then recovering the shadows. You may be able to tone them back on this one. I think they pull the eye up, and I don't think you want that. The Clone Stamp/Spot Healing Brush combination is usually the most effective "correction" for me if normal highlight toning is not enough Spot Removal in "healing" or "clone" mode in ACR is a bit of a mess I find.
@frankhymus Thanks for your thoughtful comments Frank. The highlights were not blown out so I must have nudged the white slider slightly before saving. I've now corected this - I only had to drop the white level by a couple of points. My second observation is that this is an entry for ETSOOI and compared with others, it's positively dowdy!
So curiosity got the best of me and I went to read the mentor discussion. As I understand it you ask a mentor to mentor you. I have always felt we were doing that so this is me officially asking you to do that. If you have said yes to others and are stretched to your limit than please recommend someone for me. If you say yes do I identify the ones I want help with. Some pictures are just me trying to "take a picture daily" I would also like help in using the site. I recently realized I need to follow more people and need to learn about commenting I feel I spend too much time and then can't see some wonderful pictures.
@joansmor Hi Joan... and yes, you're right, to a certain extent I have been acting as an unofficial mentor, but the idea of creating a more formal mentor system is to allow each 'mentee' (hate that word) to get the level of help that they want and to avoid other 365ers feeling that someone is being over harsh in their criticism - sometimes I draw back on what I might have said, for that reason - and for space considerations.
I would be delighted to be your mentor but you needed to ask! It's for us to work out the details of our mentoring relationship to suit ourselves but I feel that detailed help might be easier to provide by e-mail rather than by posting lengthy comments on here... although I would continue to comment on your photos on 365 in a more general sense, as I have in the past. If you're happy with this approach, I'll post a contact e-mail address on here for you to use. So what do you think?
@lleo@jocasta Hi Gwenllian and Joy - the advice to 'underexpose and recover the highlights' came from Frank @frankhymus and is an alternative strategy to the often quoted 'expose to the right', i'e. expose for the highlights. I have always been uncomfortable about that, and clearly Frank feels the same way, because it only needs a small error of exposure to burn out the highlights and once they're gone, they're gone for good. On the other hand - and you both know this - you have much more latitude with shadow detail.
The reason for this comment is just to add a caveat - recovering the shadow details introduces noise (you can see that in my photo above) so I try to limit underexposure to a stop or so to limit this problem, but you can get away with a bit more if you are shooting at a low ISO. It goes with out saying, but I'll say it any way for the benefit of other readers, that all this applies to images shot in Raw format and not Jpegs. It's lunchtime here... bon appetit!
"Pretty Richard.
I would have tried to avoid the blown out bokeh highlights, probably best by shooting underexposed and then recovering the shadows. You may be able to tone them back on this one. I think they pull the eye up, and I don't think you want that. The Clone Stamp/Spot Healing Brush combination is usually the most effective "correction" for me if normal highlight toning is not enough Spot Removal in "healing" or "clone" mode in ACR is a bit of a mess I find.
Interesting to shoot underexposed and then recover the shadows. I'll try that. Fav
Ian
I would be delighted to be your mentor but you needed to ask! It's for us to work out the details of our mentoring relationship to suit ourselves but I feel that detailed help might be easier to provide by e-mail rather than by posting lengthy comments on here... although I would continue to comment on your photos on 365 in a more general sense, as I have in the past. If you're happy with this approach, I'll post a contact e-mail address on here for you to use. So what do you think?
The reason for this comment is just to add a caveat - recovering the shadow details introduces noise (you can see that in my photo above) so I try to limit underexposure to a stop or so to limit this problem, but you can get away with a bit more if you are shooting at a low ISO. It goes with out saying, but I'll say it any way for the benefit of other readers, that all this applies to images shot in Raw format and not Jpegs. It's lunchtime here... bon appetit!