No amount of processing will fix poor composition

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I think this image is a good example of the statement, more so the composition side of things, whilst the processing is pretty minimal, the image lacks impact, direction which can be found in good compositions. The long exposure gives it some interest and the poles add a bit…. however without that it would be on the trash heap.

Single frame, long exposure
Exif/setup love:
D750 coupled with 24-70mm f4 @ 24mm Aperture: f/14 and Shutter Speed: 272.1s
out front – Lee Graduated Filter 0.9x (3 stops) and Lee bigstopper

Emotion

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Tree - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Tree – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
Panorama – 3 frames (non bracketed) stitched together in Adobe PS CC2014
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.0s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

After being fortunate enough to get to the Focus Awards (http://goo.gl/hBQtGQ) on the weekend (Thanks Ray for the tix), there was a very interesting talk by David Oliver (http://www.davidoliver.com.au/) regarding the idea of creating emotion in a image, this was quite insightful but also quite confusing since as a concept, emotion in landscapes is one tricky concept. For landscape images that have a person or human connection this idea of emotion can be more easily achieved, but a landscape with no human elements and true in the sense of a landscape this idea just about escapes me. Looking at the winning images, which are all quite stunning I feel the term mood could be used in place of emotion for a landscape, particularly where there there is no person or human connection.
I also think the mood is something a bit different to the ‘wow factor, for me a image that makes me go wow is often a result a of the initial impact, often generated by distinct processing or colour, the mood however is something which is more on the lasting side then initial impact, for me the wow factor/initial impact often wears off as I analyse a image and dissect it. The mood, however is something that develops and improves with the age of viewing the image, a bit like a good wine 😉 take this example,

Hence, I have promised myself, at the very least for the next few weeks while I remember 🙂 I am going to try and look at a landscape with the specific purpose of capturing and conveying this idea of ‘a mood’ – now exactly how I am gonna do this is, I am unsure of, but it would seem the use of light and selective application of light and often not what you can see but what you can’t is something that can go a long way to getting this mood…. So, here’s a image which i think has no mood in it 🙂 I like it, but I am not happy with it, for me it rates a little better than a snap. It has my favourite element, a single tree but is missing something.. here is a image that I think has mood, but, its created by peeps 🙂 https://blog.avernus.com.au/park-life-2/

How would you generate mood in a frame like this? long exposure it? BW conversion? selfie? I did try a BW conversion, but I can’t bring myself to destroy the colour….

Techie love:
Panorama – 3 frames (non bracketed) stitched together in Adobe PS CC2014
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 16mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1.0s
ISO:100
Out front: Lee graduated filter (0.9x) and Hoya Circular Polariser.

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Float it

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Float it - (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock

Float it – (c) 2014 Gerard Blacklock
3 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 35mm Aperture: f/13
Shutter speed: 0.5s
ISO 100

Somedays photos just leap off the screen other days they teeter towards the trash can, this one was certainly the latter.

what would you have done differently? cause I am outta ideas, I think its also a Opera House fatigue thing too, I just cannot get excited about Sydney Opera House shots anymore.

3 shot Panorama
Techie data:
D750 coupled with 16-35mm f4 @ 35mm Aperture: f/13

Shutter speed: 0.5s
ISO 100
Out front: nothing from memory 🙂

 

 

Layered

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A variation from another very large panorama (https://plus.google.com/100975265940134223422/posts/AA4LF9J1m34) This is merely a slice from the larger pano, but I think it captures the layers within the scene better and portrays finer details like the dunes and sea mist better.
I am keen to know what you think? better or worse?

Techie data:
4 (about there) shot panorama (each frame bracketed)
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm – Aperture: f/13 and Shutter Speed: 1/8s 1/30s 1/3s (bracketed)
ISO 100

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Textured form of love

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big sky

Strangely enough one of my most complex images (bracketed panorama) but I am far from happy with the end result, I looked at this set of images (to become a panorama) on the back of the camera LCD and thought, yeah thats pretty sweet, but the processing and trying to get the final image to match my vision on the day proved impossible.

The scene actually has some brillant golden colours in the sky but I could not get it to work with the dark monotone of the foreground, finally I gave up and opted for a BW image, it retains and accentuates the main elements (texture and human forms) and that seemed like a pretty good starting point – I think it can hold its own without needing brilliant colour.

I welcome any suggestions, comments and thoughts about this image, ya gotta view large too btw.

Techie data:
4 shot panorama (each frame bracketed)
D7000 with Nikkor 85mm f1.4 @ 85mm – Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds ISO 100
out front – a rauchy couple, some coffee and a camera.

Colour or BW

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Fallen

Thoughts? I like the colour, however I feel the BW version simplifies the image and concentrates more on the composition and tree roots which for me was the main anchor poitn of the image. Note, the composition is not that terribly good in my opinion 😉 The intention was to try and utilise the roots to lead up thru the image to the waterfall.

3 shot blended image.
Exif/setup data:
D7000 coupled with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 @11mm Aperture: f/8 and Shutter Speed: 4s, 1s and 15 seconds
out front – HOYA ND filter and screw in HOYA circular polariser

As always, I welcome any suggestions, comments and improvements to my photography, they are always warmly welcomed.

Night to Day

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A fairly simple image 🙂 at f19 and 1.5secs, graduated ND filter on the front to bring the brightness of the sky down a bit. I really just wanted that little bit of movement in the water , however the timing of the waves resulted in these two rather dark bands, which for me create a kind of visual block in the image, the dead stump on the left adds a little interest but also feels like a distraction, thoughts?

Difficult

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Someday images just roll off the screen, other days they need a mallet, an axe and a small construction zone to get them to work – in this case I am still not seeing the result I wanted.

The conditions could be considered epic i guess, brilliant orange burning on the horizon and ominous dark clouds directly overhead, this however, did not make for a easy shot, especially when i messed up the exposures 😉 I really need more than 3 exposures per bracket to give a smooth transition between the highlights and shadows.

Anyway, I used a graduated filter and also bracketed the frames but still struggled to capture the entire dynamic range and the composition certainly looked better in my head than what it turned out on the screen. I think i will chalk this one up to the one that got away.

3 bracketed frame panorama.
f/8 at 1, 4 and 15 seconds

Mist/spray on the filters – probably one of the hardest, if not impossible defects to correct in post processing. There is alot to be said for just taking the 5 minutes in the field to take the filter off and clean it, in alot of scenarios it does not really matter, ie low dynamic range larger apertures etc, however at small apertures pointing into the sun or scenes with high dynamic range it can pretty well ruin a image

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This image I pretty well gave up to the seascape gods but thought i might just process it and see what happens. It was after all just a frame which i turned around and shot while walking to another spot, the sun set was looking pretty nice in that corner of the sky and there was some nice foreground albeit it busy.

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Sugarloaf Lighthouse

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Processing nightmare – if anyone has any good tips for making HDR panos, I am all ears – i usually either use PTGUI to stitch a HDR with blend planes etc (preferred) or HDR individual bracketed images then stitch (in PS with HDRefx) – however the latter is very limiting since the HDR does alot of the work and I prefer to manually blend my exposures..

It also does not help that I had to take it with a UWA, around 13mm, there is plenty of artifacts and I had to spend a overly onerous amount of time trying to fix things, the sun looks crap and the red just seems off aarrghh – oh well, next time..