Thank you to everyone that participated in this assignment. I've been a bit too busy to photograph for myself lately, but seeing your wonderful images keeps me wanting to find the time. The guidelines for this week's assignment were simply to compose an image that answered the question, "is it Spring yet?"
Lorin answered that question very well with is wonderful image of a nesting dove. The exposure and focus were spot on. The clarity of the dove's eye (and catchlight) made the image seem full of life, and definitely engaged the viewer. Technically very well done and deserving of
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.
Spring DoveEditor's Choice for Technical MeritPhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter)
I had mixed feelings about the fact that Lorin included so much of the surrounding scene in the image. While on the one hand it provided context for the dove, there is something to be said for editing your scene more tightly. The difference between painting and photography has often been described as the difference between an "additive" art and a "subtractive" art. The painter starts with a blank canvas, and adds elements to the scene to convey meaning to the viewer. On the other hand the photographer starts with the overwhelming context of everyday life, and subtracts elements from the scene until they have isolated the elements needed to clearly convey their message. In addition to editing for "context" the artistic photographer also edits from an aesthetic perspective, including elements in the image that contribute to the overall design, and eliminating elements that detract from the design.
When I looked at Lorin's image, there were several areas that I felt contributed to "context" and several others that contributed to the overall design and aesthetic beauty of the image. The nest of course, was critical to effectively telling the story. The small branch just above and to the right of the dove (from the viewer's perspective) was aesthetically appealing, as were the leaves in the background to the left of the dove. I felt that many of the other leaves and branches included in the composition either didn't contribute to the aesthetic appeal, or were distracting. With that in mind, I propose the crop below, with the goal of including only those elements that are important to telling the story, or adding to the aesthetic appeal of the image.
Spring DovePhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter), alternate crop by Keith
With those same goals in mind (including only those elements that are important to telling the story, or adding to the aesthetic appeal of the image) I proposed an alternate crop to Lorin's image titled
A Mother's Love. (This crop also helped eliminate blown highlights on the left of the image that were potentially distracting.)
A Mothers LovePhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter)
A Mothers LovePhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter), alternate crop by Keith
In a similar vein, I proposed an alternate crop to Lorin's image titled
Beauty in the desert to eliminate potentially distracting high contrast out-of-focus needles on the left side of the image. I also felt this proposed crop provided a composition that better balanced the flowers with the green cactus in the background on the right. (The colors and clarity in this image of the cactus flower were stunning!)
Beauty in the desertPhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter)
Beauty in the desertPhotographed by Lorin Schroeder (wildshutter), alternate crop by Keith
Michele's image of
Spring was definitely one of the more evocative answers to the question, and I could imagine the smell of the flowering trees as I viewed the image. I admired Michele's rendition of the scene, with colors and contrast that weren't "overdone," which helped preserve the delicate feel of springtime flowers. Dave said it best with his comment that "It's a really beautiful celebration of texture and subtle Spring colors."
SpringPhotographed by Michele Bollhalder
Jaime's image titled
Yup, it's definitely Spring down here was one of those great captures that just makes the viewer smile. Timing was everything with this image, and Jaime did a great job capturing the expressions and infectious joy of the girls. Jaime mentioned that if he had enough time he would have switched to a smaller aperture (f8) to get enough depth of field to render both girls in sharp focus. Given enough time, I would have also shifted my focus point to the girl in front, since it typically looks more natural to have slightly soft focus on more distant objects. Those are just minor tweaks to an otherwise wonderful image. Thank you for sharing these wonderful smiles Jaime.
Yup, it's definitely Spring down herePhotographed by Jaime Dorotan (girod)
Michele's
Springtime image was another fun creation that tells the story of her daughter Lauren dreaming about Spring. This is a wonderfully creative and fun image Michele, and full of energy!
SpringtimePhotographed by Michele Bollhalder
Jaime captured amazing clarity in the owl's eye in his
Spring Look image. Jaime wisely chose a relatively wide aperture of f4, which helped focus the viewer's attention on the eye and provided a very smooth background blur that complemented the subject extremely well. Nicely done Jaime.
Spring lookPhotographed by Jaime Dorotan (girod)
Carol's image of
Eva the Unhappy Easter Bunny was fun and expressive. I love the expression she captured on Eva's face. I did notice the white balance seemed to be a little off in this image, imparting an overall greenish tint to the image. I pulled it into Photoshop and used the middle eyedropper in the Curves dialog to snap the mid-tones to a neutral color balance. This eliminated the greenish tint, and resulted in much more "pure" and saturated looking colors. (The colors of the basket were perhaps a bit too saturated, since they tended to dominate the image.)
Eva the Unhappy Easter BunnyPhotographed by Carol Burkett
Eva the Unhappy Easter BunnyPhotographed by Carol Burkett, neutral eyedropper in curves
Lars' image was another very artistic creation, illustrating that good photography is as much (or more) about artistic vision as it is about technique. The image is an amazing illustration of the title.
After You Gone - Winter walks out -Spring has come- The light is blending whitePhotographed by Lars
I love the expression and sense of motion Michele captured in her image titled
Gotcha!. Definitely a Spring (or Summertime) image! Great framing as well, to show both the boy and the sweep of the water.
Gotcha!Photographed by Michele Bollhalder
Michele's
Moments image is a wonderful snapshot in time. She captured Lauren's expression of joy beautifully, and the water droplets frozen in the air help set the context and reinforce Michele's comment that sometimes you wish things would stay frozen in time, and stay exactly as they are. The light in this series of images was wonderful. How did you do it Michele? This image has the most "heart" of any of the images submitted for the assignment, and truly captures the joy of Springtime. I've selected this image as
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit.
MomentsEditor's Choice for Artistic MeritPhotographed by Michele Bollhalder
Again, the light was very beautiful in Michele's image titled
Just one more, I can't help it. What made it so beautiful Michele? Was it the angle of the light? It looks like there was a huge reflector filling in the shadows?
Just one more, I can't help itPhotographed by Michele Bollhalder
Jaime's
Spring embrace was another image where timing was key to capturing the shot. Nice job capturing the moment Jaime.
Spring embracePhotographed by Jaime Dorotan (girod)
Alan's picture of the Hosta leaves sprouting was a wonderful symbolic image of Spring. There were a few areas in the image that competed with the sprouts for attention (like the green out-of-focus area in the upper left of the image), so I added a bit of a vignette in Photoshop to tone down these competing areas and help focus the viewer's attention on the sprout. This was a wonderful image of Spring Alan.
Question answered. Spring is herePhotographed by Alan Albrecht (ribot)
Question answered. Spring is herePhotographed by Alan Albrecht (ribot), vignette added
It seems like a secondary theme of this assignment was "capturing the moment," and Luc wonderfully captured the moment in his images of
Love under the lilac tree and
less lilac but more action... Wonderful job capturing the expressions and the emotions Luc, especially in the image titled
Love under the lilac tree.
less lilac but more action... during a family reunion at EasterPhotographed by Luc Bigler
I did try correcting the white balance (skin tones) in
Love under the lilac tree but just couldn't get the colors to look right by correcting the JPEG image. It's usually much easier to correct white balance in a raw file, and trying to correct an already rendered image (to JPEG) can sometimes be a challenge. If Rebecca and I are shooting portraits in mixed lighting like this, we try to remember to include a white balance card in one of the scenes, so it becomes a matter of simply clicking the "eyedropper" on the gray card when post processing to get the correct white balance. (This can be done with JPEG images too, but not quite as effectively as for a raw image.)
Love under the lilac treePhotographed by Luc Bigler
Marilyn captured a wonderful portrait of friends in her image titled
Spring: A time to try out new faces. The framing, composition and exposure for this image are all outstanding! Very, very well done Marilyn. This is an image that I'm sure will bring a smile to Ashlynn's and Jenna's faces for a long time to come. Wonderful!
Spring: A time to try out new facesPhotographed by Marilyn McKinney
Marilyn made great use of an ultra-wide 10mm lens to create her dramatic image titled
Bursting with the beauty of yuccas. The image did seem a little dark in the mid-tones (that sometimes happens with high contrast scenes) so I used an automatic curves adjustment in Photoshop (enhance per-channel contrast) and then adjusted the midpoint to brighten the mid-tones just a bit more using a Levels adjustment.
Bursting with the beauty of yuccasPhotographed by Marilyn McKinney
Bursting with the beauty of yuccasPhotographed by Marilyn McKinney, curves per channel contrast + mid-tones in levels
Inspired by Lars camera phone images, Marilyn decided to try an image with her iPhone. Unfortunately I think the dynamic range of the scene was a bit more than the Iphone could handle. I used a shadows and highlights adjustment in Photoshop to bring up the shadows and mid-tones, then reduced the blue color tint using the color balance adjustment, and then finally lowered the white point in Levels to bring up the exposure even more. (I think I like the ability of a larger sensor to capture a high dynamic range scene without so much post-processing.
)
Iphone capture of red yucca 2Photographed by Marilyn McKinney
Iphone capture of red yucca 2Photographed by Marilyn McKinney, shadows and highlights, reduce blue color tint, levels (lower white point)
Dave's image of
Grandma's Bed was one of my favorite images submitted for the assignment, and makes me think that the creator of this whimsical garden has a wonderful way of looking at the world. The wonderful backlighting in this scene contributed to the vibrant colors and outstanding texture and detail in the grass. The aperture of f8 was very well chosen, providing outstanding detail in the flowers and grass, yet letting the grass in the background fade to a soft blur and helping to keep the background trees from becoming too distracting. The slight vignette around the periphery of the image also helped to keep the viewer "contained" within the scene. Very well done!
Grandma's BedPhotographed by Dave Leiker (prairiedust)
Rick's image of
Springtime at the denver Zoo was gorgeous, with wonderful clarity and colors, a pleasing composition and aesthetically blurred background. Beautiful image Rick.
Springtime at the denver ZooPhotographed by Rick Pepin (TrvlRick)
Wow, a lot of you liked Rebecca's image of McKenzie
Patiently waiting for Spring and selected it as
People's Choice. Rebecca had been trying to photograph Evan and McKenzie after Easter service and they were not cooperating. McKenzie kept asking to sit on the swing, and so when Rebecca gave up trying to photograph the two of them together her perseverance paid of with this nice image of McKenzie. Rebecca had been using manual exposure to balance the ambient exposure with fill flash, and so was ready with an appropriate exposure setting for this quick shot on the swing.
Patiently waiting for SpringPeople's ChoicePhotographed by Rebecca
Like Chris, I found it interesting how using the flash affected the colors so significantly in his two images of Creeping Phlox. (Chris used flash for the first image, and ambient light only for the second image titled More Phlox). Typically the camera has to "guess" at the white balance for overcast light, but "knows" the temperature of the flash, so the colors are usually a bit more accurate with flash in these circumstances. I agree with Michele that filling the background with green also makes the first image more appealing. Nicely done Chris.
Creeping PhloxPhotographed by Chris Franklin
More PhloxPhotographed by Chris Franklin
Thank you again to everyone that participate in this assignment, your images continue to inspire me. Thank you also to those of you that took the time to vote. The photographers that submitted images always appreciate your feedback on their images.
Keith
