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“This is for the birds! Oh wait – I AM a bird!”
The challenge:
A photograph can be technically perfect, and have a great composition – that’s already hard enough to achieve sometimes! But for me, a photograph really stands out if it touches me. If it conveys a feeling, or stirs an emotion within. A really great image is one that evokes a mood and pulls the viewer into the scene. That’s what this week’s challenge is about: capturing emotion and feeling.
My process:
This is not the image I thought I was going to take this week. I started off the week thinking I would need to make a difficult and heartrending decision. The rainy weather forecast looked like it would match my mood and I planned to see what I could capture during a downpour. As it turned out, the sun appeared during a break in the clouds at about the same time I got the news that all my worry was for naught. In an effort to calm my frayed nerves, I turned to my camera and started taking photos of birds in my back yard.
I take a LOT of photos of birds – thousands upon thousands of photos often of the same exact birds. Sometimes I question my sanity, but the reason is because I’m hoping to capture the rare instance when a bird seems to express an emotion that we humans can identify with. I’m pretty sure we anthropomorphize the emotions, but we identify with them nonetheless.
Grackles seem to be particularly expressive – maybe because of their bright yellow eyes. This particular grackle has a bum leg that he never puts weight on, but the wind was making it particularly challenging for him to stay upright while perching on the post. He was using his tail as a rudder and he looks like he’s had just about enough! (We’ve all had those days buddy.)
The lighting helped to further enhance the mood of the photo as well. There was a small shaft of sunlight on the bird, but the background was in shade and was especially dark because of dark clouds overhead. The sun highlighted the iridescent colors in the wings and lightened the overall dark colors of the bird to help differentiate it from the dark background.
Lesson learned:
As you probably know, I strive hard to capture technically perfect images. However I am slowly learning (as Maaike said in her opening paragraph) that even though an image might be technically perfect, if it’s void of emotion the technical perfection doesn’t make up for that. Conversely, an image with emotional impact can make technical imperfections almost irrelevant. Perhaps this is because emotions connect us to the deepest parts of ourselves. Technical perfection is about what the eyes see; emotion is about what the heart feels – and it is entirely possible for our eyes to overlook something that our heart feels strongly about.
Another bifurcation diagram made over breakfast. This one is for the function f(x) = cos(pi(x-0.5))-0.1sin(16x)(1-x).
An experiment with split toning in Adobe Lightroom, creating a cross-processed look very easily and intuitively.
I didn't shoot this, just did the post processing. For the HDR group and the HDR Showcase thread setup by SSAP_OK,
Check out his photostream www.flickr.com/photos/ssap_ok/
I did this at work, so I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix 3.0 Beta, which left watermarks on the image.
As for processing in photomatix I used all 3 RAW files, and tonemapped.
Tonemap Settings:
Strength: 94
Sat: 60
Light Smoothing: Med-High
Luminocity: +5
White Point: 1.055
Black Point: 0.002
Gamma: 1.41
Micro Contrast: +8
Micro Smoothing: +0
When I processed I got this:
www.flickr.com/photos/mattdevino/2330858753/in/photostream/
Photomatix tends to make the image flatter once you process it than how it looks in preview mode. So I took the file into photoshop 7 to do more tweaking.
In photoshop I straightened the file, and cloned out the photomatix watermarks as best as I could. I then made 3 layers, the top layer was made B&W and raised the luminance pretty high. I set the blend mode for this as multiply, which brought out the clouds even more. I then applied a levels and color pass to the 2nd layer down. I then did another levels and color pass for the third layer down focusing on the tower and how I wanted it to look. I merged the top 2 layers, then with a very soft eraser got rid of the tower in the new top layer to show through to my bottom layer which was color corrected just for the tower. I then added a vignette and output the file. Here's what I got.
This is the thread with the files if you want to play with them...
www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/discuss/72157604102882908/
Thhis made it to explore on March 13, 2008 at #62
#37/365 Post Process Fridays episode #2: Today's feature is a photo from the lovely Corinne aka şkinful.
This is a great shot...I love portraits that are more natural and not posed. Corinne picked the perfect time to capture this moment. I really love the blue wall, so for the post I wanted to bring them out more. I also brightened up the subject which also brought out her shadows (To correct this I did a lot of cloning and healing). I don't mind the shadows on the right so much (and lets face it, I'm lazy). Hope you enjoy this photo as much as I did! Happy Pee Pee Friday!
9.23.07
Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.
-Barbara Sher
I'll admit it. I hate to feel vulnerable. Things out of my control make me very uncomfortable. So, I look all around and look like crazy and get confused and more confused and then all of a sudden it hits me - all I had to do was look up. When will I learn?
This one is also dedicated to sweet Tricia today. Some positive thoughts going into her 35th year.
The photo is about ship recycling process. Where dockyard worker break old ships and make them totally new. This is risky work. But they have to do it for earning money.
These are preview images for the talk I am giving at UCLA tomorrow.
Made with Processing and runs in near realtime (anywhere from 5 to 30 fps). The entire system is dynamic, and with a zippy computer, could probably be audio responsive with little extra overhead.