|
mitguy
Mar 1, 2006, 9:57 PM
Post #1 of 25
(3700 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 22, 2006
Posts: 84
|
I took this photo on Mt. Baker in the Cascades last summer. I wasn't sure I had anything really interesting from this last week, so I'm reverting back to my archives :) . This is one of my favorites, what do you all think?
http://www.rockclimbing.com/...p.cgi?Detailed=70049
|
|
|
|
|
mitguy
Mar 2, 2006, 2:49 AM
Post #3 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 22, 2006
Posts: 84
|
sorry dude...apparently I went wrong somewhere. Give me a break and critique my photo, not my posting skills :) .
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 2, 2006, 4:57 AM
Post #4 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
It's a good photo ... I had to pick on something :lol:
I just went through about 3 hours of class critique so I'm not giving you any tonight. I'm all critiqued out ...
|
|
|
|
|
mitguy
Mar 5, 2006, 5:04 AM
Post #5 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 22, 2006
Posts: 84
|
I thought this was the critique forum...not the view and be silent forum. Come on...somebody say something, even if you flame it to all hell.
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 5, 2006, 6:07 AM
Post #6 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
ok it's too big ... i have to scroll around my screen to see the whole thing. so your image thus far, is mostly just aggrivating :lol:
|
|
|
|
|
mitguy
Mar 5, 2006, 6:25 AM
Post #7 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 22, 2006
Posts: 84
|
ok, well at least that's something I can fix for my next post. Thank you! (hint hint everybody)
actually, I partially did that because I felt that at the smaller dimensions it lost a lot of detail in the snow and ice, which made the large white space on the screen much more flat and uninteresting. Is there a good way to keep small detail at smaller resolutions (since browsers view everything at 72 dpi anyway, I think, so no dice there)?
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 5, 2006, 8:45 PM
Post #8 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: I thought this was the critique forum...not the view and be silent forum.
everybody is busy writing critiques to non-climbing related photos, sorry no time for you :twisted:
I second that the image submitted is too large, and there are some compression artifacts.
The foreground group is nice, but I would not crop the ankles of the poor guy, or shoot a bit closer to him. A fillflash would worked nice here too.. The background is nice and all, but a bit too much distracting stuff. Maybe a smaller crop with less elements would work better. There is not much color in the picture anyhow, you try b&w, i think it would work better than color.
here, let me try. I convert to b&w, burn the sky, dodge the glacier around the climbers, burn the climbers into silhuettes. quick and dirty, i am sure you can do a better job.
http://people.cs.tamu.edu/...5/critic/glacier.jpg
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 6, 2006, 1:04 AM
Post #9 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
Nice job melek, now that is much a stunning image. (I do think you overdid it on the sky a little - a gradient adjustment layer would have been much better than burning.)
Mitguy, you're always gonna lose "some" detail but when you shrink an image it generally comes tighter and looks much better. The 72 dpi doesn't matter, resolution is relative. Pixel size is the only thing that matters when talking about images on the computer. dimension/pixel ratio can be anything you want it to be.
So yeah, it's a damn good image now that it's been brought down in size and turned into b&w (which always looks more stunning).
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 6, 2006, 4:58 AM
Post #10 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: I felt that at the smaller dimensions it lost a lot of detail in the snow and ice
and because of the larger size, it lost more information by the rc.com-evil-resizing-code.
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 6, 2006, 7:10 AM
Post #11 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
why not post it on one of those image hosting websites ? I don't know much about them since I have no need - I have my own server and I use my schoo's server as well - but I know there are services out there that let you do that. You'll be beter off doing than than trying to upload here. This site compresses the living daylight out of pics ...
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 6, 2006, 7:54 AM
Post #12 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: This site compresses the living daylight out of pics ...
only if it does not match the width, height AND filesize specs
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 6, 2006, 1:25 PM
Post #13 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
no. This site compresses the living daylight out of pics (or requires you to so before submitting). 800 x 800 @ 48K, that's some pretty harsh compression. Now that I'm complaining or anything, it keeps the site and the photo gallery running fast. However, almostall of my are at least a 100 k, and usually less than 800 x 800 in pixel size.
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 6, 2006, 7:16 PM
Post #14 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: 800 x 800 @ 48K, that's some pretty harsh compression
thats the LOW size, ingeniously called as prefered size. Its for camera phone pictures, daily snapshots, etc, which is the majority of the pictures on this site if you pass a couple of pages down the front page. It used to be called low resolution, but by renaming it prefered size (and renaming the medium size as super size), i think they manage to keep the majority of the submissions in the low resolution. As a side effect, many good pictures are also submitted as low resolution, and are eaten by the evil-resizing-code.
Any decent picture could and SHOULD be submitted as super size, which used to be called as medium, which is 1024x1024 at 128K. I think this is pretty good size, and most (if not all) of my pictures are submitted as such.
There is also magazine quality, but it is for the immortals i guess....
|
|
|
|
|
jakedatc
Mar 7, 2006, 6:53 AM
Post #15 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Mar 12, 2003
Posts: 11054
|
melz thats some sweet work i've just started dabbling with the dodge and burn tools
has an ansel feel to it that way
|
|
|
|
|
sonyhome
Mar 9, 2006, 10:33 AM
Post #16 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jul 5, 2005
Posts: 337
|
melekzek's tweak makes the photo really stand out more. B&W is the right way to go...
As for submitting, I think it is allowed to submit "super size" with 800x600 photos. That allows good quality compression at 128KB.
|
|
|
|
|
krillen
Mar 10, 2006, 3:09 PM
Post #17 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jul 19, 2001
Posts: 4769
|
two minor comments:
Mel: there seems to be a halo along the ridgeline. Is there any way to make this less pronounced without making the photo look fake? I know it''s the natually but I find it somewhat distracting.
MIT: the comment above about cropping the guy's feet off is right. Let the man walk!
When you need to crop out portions of people, try and do it between joints. It's more pleasing to the eye. maybe it's something to do with our minds knowing that those pivot points are the ends of bones? I'm not sure? But elbows, knees, wrists etc. hinder the flow, wheras croping mid thigh allows your eye to follow the "suggested" line of the leg in/out of the photo.
Sorry if my paragraph is a bit jumbled, I'm exhuasted.
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 10, 2006, 4:50 PM
Post #18 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
The halo appears because he burned the sky -> burn tool doesn't allow you to get use a sharp edge for it will look like you used a brush to make it dark.
I'm swamped at work but on my lunch break I may post one with a gradient fill layer + mask. That should add a lot to the sky.
Hadn't noticed the leg/cuttoff part but that's a very good observation.
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 10, 2006, 5:06 PM
Post #19 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
The halo appears because he burned the sky -> burn tool doesn't allow you to get use a sharp edge for it will look like you used a brush to make it dark.
I'm swamped at work but on my lunch break I may post one with a gradient fill layer + mask. That should add a lot to the sky.
Hadn't noticed the leg/cuttoff part but that's a very good observation.
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 10, 2006, 8:04 PM
Post #21 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: The halo appears because he burned the sky
exactly. that was to demonstrate what I have in mind. You can carefully select the skyline and burn after, or add a adjustment layer and play with curves. I tend to use burn tool, because I like painting around with the tablet :roll:
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 10, 2006, 8:53 PM
Post #22 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
i would not go there, thats too much editing for me :twisted:
|
|
|
|
|
mitguy
Mar 11, 2006, 7:25 AM
Post #23 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jan 22, 2006
Posts: 84
|
too much editing for me also...as for the guy at the bottom's feet, that's the bottom of the photo, it hasn't been cropped at all. It was just a mistake in framing it, since I was trying to snap the photo off quick while there was that great continuum between the person in the foreground and the line of people walking the other direction in the background.
on the editing issue, I do some amount of editing to make things look better, but really try to leave the natural feel of things. I am really more of a climber than a photographer, and so the pictures I take are taken on the moment, on the fly. I really just do not feel comfortable asking people to pose or change anything about the way they are climbing for the shot. I guess that's why I'll never be a photographer for Climbing Magazine :lol:
There are a couple things I am not sure I like about the B&W shot. First off, the snow is just too white looking. It becomes very flat to my eye. The other thing, which to me is perhaps the more important one, is that the ice really loses something when you take away the blue. There is something almost creepy and otherworldly about glacial ice - if you have ever been in a crevasse you will know what I am talking about, and part of it is this erie blue color. I don't know, maybe there's a way to keep that feeling, or accentuate it somehow.
Just my 2 cents.
|
|
|
|
|
boondock_saint
Mar 11, 2006, 3:36 PM
Post #24 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Aug 6, 2005
Posts: 2157
|
oh, the first shot is definitely the better one, nut sure why I did the second one but now that I actually get to really look at it, I don't like it. The grain and perspective of the sky is off.
I mean i made that while holding a bologna sandwich in the other hand ...
as for the flatness of the snow, I don't know how pic number one could be called flat? I also think the heightened contrast on the upper part of the crevasses adds to that meanacing "feel"
|
|
|
|
|
melekzek
Mar 11, 2006, 5:20 PM
Post #25 of 25
(3692 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Nov 16, 2002
Posts: 1456
|
In reply to: the ice really loses something when you take away the blue. There is something almost creepy and otherworldly about glacial ice
i hear you... how i miss snow and ice, living here in texas... oh, its already summer here btw..... for the next 8 months..... oh my...
|
|
|
|
|
|
