E.L.. Shapiro wrote:
It's too bad when well meaning attempts to assist an OP has to (as oftentimes) include snide comments and inflammatory remarks. Nobody posting in this thread claimed expertise- they just stated their ideas and opinions and provided food for thought. Even in a academic setting, in formal technical classes, their can be different opinions and approaches to the same subject or issue. It is always up to the student or reader to sort things out, experiment and adopt the best method based on actual results. Also- the site provides a downloaded image and the OP approved editing so...if you have an improved edit, why no show it and explain what you would have done?- SHARE!
My own expertise is certainly not in bird photography- I have no knowledge of ornithology- I'm lucky if I can tell a chicken from a duck! I don't know if the bird in the OP's image is actually pure white- oftentimes subjects are perceived as pure white but in actuality contain many other tints and colors some of which are reflected from surrounding objects and other environmental elements.
My actual expertise is in commercial, portrait and wedding photography where the detailed rendition of white fabrics, subjects and products is a frequent requirement. Of course precise exposure is one of the important requirements as is the direction and angle of incidence of the light. Theses elements are easily controlled in a studio or more contrived situation- not as easily coped with in a wildlife environment.
I certainly don't encourage sloppy an or haphazard shooting that requires radical post-processing, however, a photograph made under spontaneous conditions, has an interesting subject and good composition deserves some remedial work, or at least an attempt, to create a higher quality rendition to maker's satisfaction. Theses casual re-edits are usually experimental in nature and again, are just suggestions and are not intended to represent finished salon quality work.
As others have stated, in the effort to preserve highlight detail in "whites" it is important expose accordingly for the highlights and either fill the shadows or depend on adequate dynamic range to properly record shadow and middle-tone detail as well. Under ideal conditions, spot exposure readings are best- as opposed to matrix or integrated readings.This would entail making the spot reading and locking in that exposure setting and then recomposing the image for good composition. Other suggestions such as the use of a CPL filter are all reasonable suggestions, however, in wildlife settings, their may not be time to incorporate all of theses techniques and still capture the subject. This all depends on the photographer's experience and savvy in controlling all theses elements in very small widows of opportunity. Practice makes perfect! As one's skills improve, more attention can be dedicated to focal length usage, depth of field or lack thereof (bokeh) and selective focus can be applied. Folks who are more familiar with the behavior of various birds and animals get to know how long a particular bird or othere animal may remain in place and if there s time to make precise or substitute readings, check out their histogram or even take the time to rotate a polarizing filter. I refer to their expertise.
I have long experience as a custom printer and have participated as a print judge in many professional competitions. I have seen many prints which have scored poorly only because the information on the negative (or file) never made it to the final print- a simple case of minus density. I have also seen many washed out prints because the maker was trying to purify the whites in a subject that is actually not pure white or fake a high key effect where the lighting ratio or contrast is not truly high key.
It's too bad when well meaning attempts to assist ... (
show quote)
I'm critcising an image, not a poster. The defects I pointed out are quite real. So is the improvement--
but while some things improved with digital processing, other things got worse. That's typical.
Of course there's nothing wrong with a little color correction or minus/plus density--that's always been a part
of photography. But when that doesn't produce a usable result, it doesn't stop there, does it? Today's digitial
images are infinitely malleable -- which is a big disadvantage. Tennis needs a net, and the essence of wood
carving is that you don't glue the wood back on. Limitation stimulates creativity and promotes honesty.
With experience, one learns that some shots are not gettable. Unfortunately, there's a temptation to try to
salvage something out of them. That temptation should be resisted. (I would have deleted the image.)
I'm afraid I don't put much stock in "professional competions". None of the photographers whose work I
admire ever entered one. I go by gallery shows, muesums, and Pulitzer prizes.
It's like those "fiction writing contests": Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Melville, Conrad, Twain
Stevenson, Carver, Woolf, never entered one. Almost nobody famous did. Or "poetry writing contests": you
won't find Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Pound, Roethke, Merwin, or Pinsky.. But you will find a bunch of people you
never heard of (and never will hear of again).
In a contest, one has to pick a winner. But in reality, sometimes there is no winner: it's just the best of
a bad lot. The goal of photography should not be to find the best of a bad lot -- whether it's a batch of
contest submissions, the contents of an SD card, or processed versions of a single image.
Wedding photographers can't come home with no usable picture of the bride and groom. So they have
to salvage. Fortunately, photography isn't limited to or defined by weddings, passports and kids on ponies.
There's no shame in earning a living. Even Edward Weston did that stuff. But when he no longer had to,
he stopped: no more retouching moles and pimples. He didn't lower his standards--he raised them.
Portrait photography is a staple of the profession. But frankly, almost no one could afford to hire
an Annie Liebovitz, Richard Avedon or Yousuf Karsh for a private sitting. They ended up doing
celebs for glossy magazines (publications that no longer exist, for the most part).
And that's the problem: the market for very high quality images is much smaller than it was 30 or 50
years ago.
Life and
Look are gone,
National Geographic belongs to the fascists
at Fox, and
Rolling Stone is a shadow of its former self.
Arizona Highways still exists
(and in a paper edition!) only because it's published by a goverment agency: the Arizona Department
of Transporation (but its standards have slipped somewhat). Conde Nast still has
Vogue, but it's
slipped into a cliche sort of dramatic lighting against a white backdrop -- the photos in the articles now
look just like the photos in the ads. And the politicalization of body image has created a minefield
for fashion photographers.
Meanwhile, digital printing has killed the market for new fine photography, since there is no longer
any such thing as an "original print", and even the good ones don't look much better than a high
quality lithograph, and the permance of computer inks is open to question. How much are you willing
to pay for a computer print-out?
The truth is that there are good periods and bad periods in any art or craft. American photography
led the world in the first half of the 20th century, thanks to Stieglitz, Strand, Steichen, E. Weston,
Adams, Lange, etc. This tradition has continued up to the present but is struggling to survive.
The next great center of serious photography could be in Asia.
Or maybe in the future there will be nothing but pimple retouchers and contest-enterers. More's the pity.