Author Topic: Results and Feedback for the "Specular Highlights" Assignment  (Read 1436 times)

keithsnell

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Results and Feedback for the "Specular Highlights" Assignment
« on: December 13, 2009, 04:29:06 PM »
Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Specular Highlights" assignment.  The guidelines for this assignment were to compose an image that contains specular highlights, taking care to properly expose the primary subject in the image.  (Specular highlights occur when light is directly reflected off smooth surfaces such as glass, chrome or water.  The term specular means that light is perfectly reflected in a mirror-like way from the light source to the viewer.)  

About half-way through the week when I was still trying to figure out what to photograph, I realized how difficult this topic might be.  I appreciate all of you that made the effort to find an appropriate subject.  One of the primary reasons for this assignment was to highlight one of the "exceptions" to the general rule that we should expose our digital images to "protect the highlights."  As I noted in the assignment description, we should understand that specular highlights are typically too bright to bring within the exposure range of our sensor without significantly underexposing the rest of the image.  Instead, we should let the specular highlights go to pure white (clip), while recognizing that they may be bright enough to affect our exposure meter, and thus require us to apply positive exposure compensation to correctly expose the primary subject.

Congratulations to Rick Pepin, whose Crystal Christmas Ornament won the vote for People's Choice and was selected as Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.


Crystal Christmas Ornament
People's Choice and Editor's Choice for Technical Merit
Photographed by Rick Pepin


I did think this image could benefit a little from sharpening.  I thought the little bit of sharpening I added in Photoshop (Smart Sharpen, radius 0.4, amount 100%) helped emphasize the dimensionality of the crystal.


Crystal Christmas Ornament
People's Choice and Editor's Choice for Technical Merit
Photographed by Rick Pepin, sharpened by Keith

Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Specular Highlights" assignment.  

Viewers are encouraged to respond to this thread describing why you like a particular image, or think it was particularly successful at meeting the guidelines of the assignment.

Keith
« Last Edit: December 14, 2009, 08:24:56 AM by keithsnell »

TrvlRick

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Re: Results and Feedback for the "Specular Highlights" Assignment
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2009, 05:26:25 PM »
Thanks everyone. I had to do some research on what "Specular Highlights" are because I had never heard of them before. Thank you Keith for coming up with some very challenging assignments. I agree that the sharpening you added did make a better picture. Have a Merry Christmas.