Introducing myself.

[Tim]

Just to introduce myself.

My PixelPost (great s/w!) site with the clever title: The Subjective Lens

Photos from El Chico Norte, Chile

[Joe[y]+]

it would help if you chose 1 or 2 photos in particular you want a critique on.

[Tim]

OK, how about this one (be gentle, it's one of my favorites). Also, I added a few more from my back catalog.

[jkn]

This is such a neat photograph - I love the feel of it. Has this been processed in some way? Or is it just in how you took the shot? The color is so golden in the water and the grasses near the bank - and the reds, and then those great muted grainy greens in the background trees. The color and grainy feel alone make this a very cool shot to me.

The heron is nice - but it's probably in the one spot in the photo that my eye isn't drawn to naturally - which is kind of odd since it's the only object and being fairly white among all the muted colors... my eye is either drawn up to the golden then red grasses - or down to the brighter gold at the bottom.

I really like this shot.

[jkn]

...wow. Some really great shots in your photoblog. Love the cormarant diving and several others.

[lopp]

i like it. the colours are so rich.

has it been manipulated in any way? i see some of your other images have been tweaked a bit so i thought.....

[Tim]

Yes, the colors have been manipulated. Levels, color temperature and saturation have been tweaked to bring out the color which I find to be pretty much uniformly necessary for pictures at this location. My mind's eye remembers the scenes as much more colorful than do my cameras. Finally, using The GIMP, I editted out the rock in the water and a couple of other details that I didn't like.

The original looks like this:


Thanks for the positive feedback,

Tim

[Joe[y]+]

i think it's a beautiful image - i just think the noise in the background (clear around the trees) is a shame and not helped by the changes you made to the image - ie, the higher saturation/contrast

[lopp]

wow. it makes a huge difference. obviously some skillful tweaking has been going on.

i'm ambivalent on where i stand with image manipulation like this. it seems quite heavy. i do only work with film though, and have never been in a darkroom, so know little about this, hence will not comment further, yet.

[Tim]

Well, I love to play with my "digital darkroom", and sometimes get quite carried away. I don't see much reason why there shouldn't be an artform between a blank artist's canvas and the unretouched print. The former comes entirely from you, the latter entirely from what you see.

Now, if one were photographing a work of art...

As for the noise in the trees, yes, I know, but in the end I decided that (a) there was nothing I could do about it and (b) I felt that it somewhat contributed to the ethereal quality of the image.

T