Butterflies and Plants and things (Oh! And one of the daughter!)

[Bend The Light]

HI,

I have a few images I would like critique-ing please. Any feedback will be gracefully accepted even if it is of the negative variety! I ALWAYS listen to the opinions of others and NEARLY ALWAYS act on their advice!

*Apparently it's not showing all my photos. There should be 8 of them (this is the max for embedding isn't it?). They are:

1. Boats
2. Big Moth
3. Seedpods
4. Daisy like flower
5. Spotty Butterfly with ragged wings
6. Black (?) butterfly
7. Ruby eating jelly
8. Cow.

Many Thanks
Craig

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4364155821_6a4f16e20c_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4361435113_66e3ed5312_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4362190952_f426285902_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2704/4362198676_ea721e96c2_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2711/4362085182_8e77b8a84b_b.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2707/4361280057_aa06d8b16e_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4360534756_e91acaf60b_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/4360510808_351691c610_b.jpg

[joedlh]

Unless your daughter is a butterfly, I'm not seeing her.

The white petals of the daisy are blown out. There's little detail.

Nice detail on the butterfly in #1. Did you sharpen it? The reason I ask is that there's a lot of noise in the background. Sharpening can make it worse. To avoid this, I usually apply sharpening to just the things I want sharpened. I might even put a gaussian blur on a background that looks too busy.

The movement blur in the last one can't be fixed in my opinion. We all have shots that we've loved, but which we've had to toss because of technical flaws. It cuts out a little piece of your heart every time. After a while, you get heartless.

[Bend The Light]

Unless your daughter is a butterfly, I'm not seeing her.

Ha ha - she's not. Is she still missing? I'll repost as a new thread if she is...

The white petals of the daisy are blown out. There's little detail.

Yes, I thought so...probably can't save it as it was before I started playing with RAW.

Nice detail on the butterfly in #1. Did you sharpen it? The reason I ask is that there's a lot of noise in the background. Sharpening can make it worse. To avoid this, I usually apply sharpening to just the things I want sharpened. I might even put a gaussian blur on a background that looks too busy.

I did sharpen, but don't remember doing the whole image...I did adjust the wings of the moth a little, too, but it rerally was (nearly) this bright!

The movement blur in the last one can't be fixed in my opinion. We all have shots that we've loved, but which we've had to toss because of technical flaws. It cuts out a little piece of your heart every time. After a while, you get heartless.

Do you mean the Black Butterfly? If so, I know - I only saw it when I uploaded it here. Strange that i'd never noticed it before!


Anyway, Thanks for the feedback.

Craig

[Levina de Ruijter]

The first shot is a clutter of stuff with nothing to draw one's attention. The butterfly in the second shot is very nice. However, the wings of the insect are very speckled, which you could get from too much sharpening. The greenish-blueish butterfly is blurry and can't be saved. Your daughter is lovely but the image needs some light. The last shot needs some light as well.

Best shot of this set to my mind is the branch with the seed pods. It's really nice and with a bit of PP could be great. If it were mine I would remove some distracting bits from the background, desaturate the background a bit so as to make the branch stand out more, increase contrast on the branch (not the background obviously) to make it pop a bit more, selectively reduce noise (only the background) and selectively sharpen (only the branch). And I would crop it a bit. Something like this:

[Bend The Light]

Ok, thanks. I like your take on the seed pods...

Cheers

Craig

[Bend The Light]

A retake of COW...

any better?

Thanks

Craig

http://bend-the-light.smugmug.com/Photography/phototips/cow-bright/796279659_ECUwz-L.jpg

[Bend The Light]

Thanks for your comments so far, guys.

As a new dSLR user, and a novice photographer before that, I use your C&C to improve both with PP and in taking new photos. Any further comments on these shots would be greatly appreciated...:D

Cheers

Craig

[vk2gwk]

The thing is to watch your histogram.... In some of your shots you got too many highlights that should be tuned down a bit. And the same goes for most of the other shots. Once you try and succeed to get the original raw file within the dynamic range (without blow outs or too dark patches) you'll be more flexible in getting it right in post processing.
Like the cow: in the second version you blew the top bit (or almost) and sort of lost the "softness" the head had earlier on? If you are really on to a good scene than it pays to take more than one shot at different exposure levels or different DOF so you got some choice when you start post processing.
I do not know how many shots you took but do you have at least five different versions to work from?
If not, keep that in mind for next time.

[Kleppy]

#1 - what's the "story" what are you asking the viewer to see

#2 - great color but I think the flash overcooked it a little, crop a tad tighter on the wings

#3 - I would darken the background and sharpen up a bit. Well framed.

#4 - Maybe my favorite of the bunch. the petals are blown out but if you fixed that you have a gem on your hands.

#5 - the cyan to green on the wings is great, just with it was a bit sharper. Great DOF.

#6 - Should have gone wide open for a short DOF and that would have gotten you a faster shutter/ cleaner image. Looks like the wind might have got you on that one.

#7 - Cute photo, too dark.

#8 -see above.

Your composition is well placed. If you look at #2-#8 you can see why #1 is missing something.