how does this look, paragliding, french alps 05

[mark_r52002]

im pretty new here so forgive me for posting in the wrong forum.

can someone please give me some advice on what i can do to this image to make it look better in general, sharper and emphasise Mont Blanc in the background? also the image looks as if it was taken through a blue/green filter.. can i change this.

thanks in advance.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/18.jpg

[Robert_Lay]

If you shot RAW, then you can change the color temp and the Hue as you do your RAW processing. If you shot only in JPEG, then you can still do it using the appropriate PSCS adjustments.

However, the "haze" is not objectionable. What really impresses me is the fact that the shroud lines are visible - that is an important attribute for this subject.

Unfortunately, due to the vantage point, you suffered some tonal merge between the pilot and his background. I don't know how you could fix that, unless you change the color of his clothing, which could be done in post processing.

I take issue with your desire to give Mont Blanc more emphasis. For me, it is exactly as it should be - present and interesting but not intrusive on the main subject.

If you wanted to improve the composition, you could crop some of the sky (say 10%) and another 5% at the bottom in order toget rid of that distracting gray triangle in the lower left corner. That would change the aspect ratio of the picture from about 1.5:1 to about 1.333:1.

[johnchapel]

Not sure how to make Mont Blanc any clearer but heres my try...

33930

[mark_r52002]

hi there, thanks Robert and John,

Robert - i took your advice and cropped 10% off the top and 5% from the bottom to remove my knee from the image. i also played with the contrast and burned the parachute to make it not so pale. what do you think, i think it has improved considerably and holds much more colour in comparison to the origonal:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/jump1cropped.jpg

below it is cropped to 900x900. by increasing the contrast too much i noticed i started to loose the defination, (also in the above image), of the already unclear, pilot. just wanted to experiment.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/cropped.jpg

thirdly i found this image, taken after jumping out of the way of their flightpath. any comment welcome on this one, its one of my favourites.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/crop.jpg

experimentation again..thought it really adds texture. critiques welcome again.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/highcontrastcrop.jpg

finally. two images, this was origonally a very wide shot, i cropped the land and the sky 20% each. i wanted to make the landscape clearer.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/paracropped.jpg

frame or no frame??
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v234/mark_r52002/paracroppedframed.jpg

all comments and critiques are more than welcome. thanks guys.
john, thank you for your input.n not sure if i did the correct thing by darkening some of the images..

[Robert_Lay]

hi there, thanks Robert and John,
Robert - i took your advice and cropped 10% off the top and 5% from the bottom to remove my knee from the image. i also played with the contrast and burned the parachute to make it not so pale. what do you think, i think it has improved considerably and holds much more colour in comparison to the origonal:


Naturally, I think you have improved that one.


frame or no frame??


I like the last picture in this group very much. Whether it's the best in the whole thread, or not - hard to say, but it has nothing to do with the frame. I never include the frame in my judgement of a picture unless I'm taking off points for a negative effect from the frame.

johnchapel has a very nice re-posting of your original image. He got the pilot to stand out much better, and you can see why I mentioned that. Unfortunately, I think it went a bit too far in lightening of the background.