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Getting details in white subjects
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Oct 28, 2018 16:10:23   #
Bipod
 
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.

Reply
Oct 28, 2018 16:45:40   #
Bipod
 
To sum up: today images are disk files -- infinitely malleable. These heavily
retouched files compete for attention on computer monitors. They are not
photographs--they are digital attention-grabbers.

If an image file could talk: "Look at me! I've got more saturated colors
than he does! I've got a more striking composition! More contorted poses!
My subject is a cuter puppy, fatter cat, fluffier bird, more colorful sunset, or
sexier model! My image has bigger eyes, sharper claws, or a bigger bust.
Look at me! Look at me!"

The image with the most clicks wins.

The virtues of a good photograph only become apparent on lengthly and considered
viewing. What is good commercial advertising photography is different from what
is good photography.

Reply
Oct 28, 2018 17:25:45   #
E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
 
Bipod wrote:
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.
I'm critcising an image, not a poster. The defect... (show quote)


I don't believe all the dark commentary about the craft of photography kinda going to hell in a hand-basket what with the advent of digital photography and modern printing technologies or with the absence of all the great iconic photograhers who are no longer with us. I m no Richard Avadon or Yosef Karsh but simply a work-a-day professional who takes pride in his craft and likes to share and exchange ideas.

It's rather sad that you stereotype wedding and portrait photograhers as folks who limit their scope to "kids on ponies" and passport pictures. That has got to be the height of snobbishness. There is nothing wrong with professional competition- it tends to raise the bar and stimulate competitiveness and resourcefulness among professionals and aspiring pros. You don't need a Pulitzer Prize to stay on your toes and aspire to improvement and progress in your work. There is a plethora of fine photography that will never hang in the Louvre of end up featured in "glossy" magazine or in famous galleries.

By the way- I shared a city with Mr. Karsh- right here in Ottawa, Ontario-Canada. Although he charged his celebrity and high profile corporate clients thousands of dollars for a sitting, he made his services available, at nominal fees, to many of the local residents here in town- those families who he gave him his start as a local portrait photographer.Upon his retirement, he donated his entire collection to the National Archives of Canada.

True enough, oftentimes a photographer's popularity and success is based on WHO they photography as opposed to HOW they photograph but that's a subject for another thread.

Just because digital printing technologies are not as messy and painstaking as the were in the wet darkroom- I know- I spent half my life in one- there is no reason why fine prints can not be produced- the aesthetics are the same. Custom printing is till alive and well in the computer age- you just have to get used to it. As I alluded to previously, I don't encourage sloppy shooting and endless remedial work but sometimes saving an image is required. If you want to talk about famous photograhers of the past, think about W.Eugene Smith- who spent days in the darkroom creating masterful prints from negatives that were made under insanely difficult conditions and needed to be burned, dodged and bleated back to life.

I respect the history of photography but I refuse to live in the past and pine for times that will never return. I don't engage in hero worship and I was never a "groupie". We shoud all learn from the past and the work of our predecessors but I don't wanna dwell there! The future of photography looks pretty good to me from a technological, artistic and business point of view. For whatever time I have left to spend around theses parts and work, I prefer to look ahead with optimism! Sour grapes are for the green-bin!

Reply
 
 
Oct 28, 2018 19:22:10   #
E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
 
More philosophy? Nowadays there is more of a merger of the graphic arts and traditional photography. In retrospect, however, "special effects" were always part of photography even in the old analog days. Some of it was. frankly speaking, kitsch or chintzy and some of it was effective and tastefully done. Please- spare the references to the f/64 group vs. William Mortensen and the pictorialists and company- too old!

Photography is a visual medium and it can be utilized in a myriad of ways. Some of it may be art for art's sake, its a great means of communication and folks are free to practice it and apply it as the wish. If some photographers wish to apply there artfulness and creativity to business and commerce, there is noting wrong or immoral about that. Some of us want to serve industry, business and ordinary folks who want photography for personal reasons or to commemorate stages of their lives and auspicious events. Not all of us get to photograph movie stars, captains of industry and political leaders. Regular folks are entitled to good work too. Some photographers are artists, many are more like technicians, some are documentations, othere are fantasists, there are just snap-shooters and some just love to buy and play with the gear. It's all good

Id any of y'all don't like all the "FLUFF"- just post some of you REAL photography and show us all how it's done. It's easy to post! I'm all ears and all EYES!

A word about retouching and post processing! It supposed to be invisible and not call attention to itself. If you can see the retouching, the sharpening, the dodging or burning- well that's bad! Problem is, when there are deficits in shooting or the file has already been "corrupted" with over-sharpening or lost some integrity in transmission all the gremlins come to the surface when attempting to restore detail, correct density or even correct color. That's when images begin to look like "cut and paste" jobs, noise or grain is exacerbated and color crosses over.

A larger problem is when EGO trumps experimentation and learning. It's easy enough to cull unsuccessful shots or failed attempts at post processing (or worse post-post- processing) and sweep all our mistakes under the carpet. Learn from mistakes and verifying theory by actually posting all kinds of stuff is a great educational experience. You can write you head off and profess, preach and pontificate 'till the cows come home but visualizing photographic successes and failures is a more powerful lesson.

A long tie ago, when I entered in the business, our bosses would always start us off in the darkroom, long before we did any serious shooting. When we had to deal with difficult negatives that were due to a photographer's carelessness, erratic exposures, bad lighting management etc. and had to go through all the shenanigans to pull off some acceptable prints- well, we all became pretty meticulous shooters. Besides, the careless shooter got fired!

Reply
Oct 28, 2018 23:51:34   #
Bipod
 
E.L.. Shapiro wrote:
I don't believe all the dark commentary about the craft of photography kinda going to hell in a hand-basket what with the advent of digital photography and modern printing technologies or with the absence of all the great iconic photograhers who are no longer with us. I m no Richard Avadon or Yosef Karsh but simply a work-a-day professional who takes pride in his craft and likes to share and exchange ideas.

It's rather sad that you stereotype wedding and portrait photograhers as folks who limit their scope to "kids on ponies" and passport pictures. That has got to be the height of snobbishness. There is nothing wrong with professional competition- it tends to raise the bar and stimulate competitiveness and resourcefulness among professionals and aspiring pros. You don't need a Pulitzer Prize to stay on your toes and aspire to improvement and progress in your work. There is a plethora of fine photography that will never hang in the Louvre of end up featured in "glossy" magazine or in famous galleries.

By the way- I shared a city with Mr. Karsh- right here in Ottawa, Ontario-Canada. Although he charged his celebrity and high profile corporate clients thousands of dollars for a sitting, he made his services available, at nominal fees, to many of the local residents here in town- those families who he gave him his start as a local portrait photographer.Upon his retirement, he donated his entire collection to the National Archives of Canada.

True enough, oftentimes a photographer's popularity and success is based on WHO they photography as opposed to HOW they photograph but that's a subject for another thread.

Just because digital printing technologies are not as messy and painstaking as the were in the wet darkroom- I know- I spent half my life in one- there is no reason why fine prints can not be produced- the aesthetics are the same. Custom printing is till alive and well in the computer age- you just have to get used to it. As I alluded to previously, I don't encourage sloppy shooting and endless remedial work but sometimes saving an image is required. If you want to talk about famous photograhers of the past, think about W.Eugene Smith- who spent days in the darkroom creating masterful prints from negatives that were made under insanely difficult conditions and needed to be burned, dodged and bleated back to life.

I respect the history of photography but I refuse to live in the past and pine for times that will never return. I don't engage in hero worship and I was never a "groupie". We shoud all learn from the past and the work of our predecessors but I don't wanna dwell there! The future of photography looks pretty good to me from a technological, artistic and business point of view. For whatever time I have left to spend around theses parts and work, I prefer to look ahead with optimism! Sour grapes are for the green-bin!
I don't believe all the dark commentary about the ... (show quote)

Um, this isn't about you, it's about photographs.

The "absence of great iconic photographers" says it all.

Philosophy? Do you even know the meaning of the word? But it's irrelevant.

I'm talking moolah, baby. You can believe what you want, but auction prices are a good guide to contemporary valuations.
Sell any print for $1.2 million lately? An Edward Weston nude sold for that in July at Sotheby's. And you wouldn't believe
what Beth Moon gets for her brand new platinum prints.

But it ain't about the money. It's about trying to keep an art form going--at a high level.

"Celebrity and high-profile corporate clients" --- you mean kissing corporate hiney? I know all about that.
Plato would call it "pandering". And that's what it is.

I guess I missed the book Great Wedding Photography. I'm guessing it sold one copy for each contributor.
Who wants to look at stranger's weddings? True or false?

Living in the past? Art is timeless. If you paint, eventually you get compared with Giotto, Caravaggio, Vermeer
Cezanne, etc. If you photograph, eventually you get compared to the great photographers. And either your are
justified, or you are found wanting.

I hear these excuses all the time -- not just from photographers, but from politicians. "This isn't the Golden Age.
The best we an do is try to make a profit." Sure: let's embrace the Era of Diminishing Expectations.

At all time and all places, there has been mediocrity. And mediocrity loves company. And it has a million
excuses for itself.

Edward Weston was a "workaday photographer" just like you. But he didn't stop there. And that's the crucial
difference.

Maybe it's all bullshit -- nothing matters but keeping the pots boiling. An American or Canadian is just a dollar's
way of making another dollar. But I refuse to accept that. .

Never stop hoping. Never stop aspiring. Never settle for less.

Reply
Oct 29, 2018 09:58:07   #
E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
 
Bipod wrote:


Maybe it's all bullshit -- nothing matters but keeping the pots boiling. An American or Canadian is just a dollar's
way of making another dollar. But I refuse to accept that. .
.


Yup- sorry about that...we do live in a free enterprise capitalistic society. There is no reason why we can't integrate business and art. Sorry again...no million dollar sales in a single print as yet.

I do know the meaning of philosophy- it's LOVE of knowledge! Sadly, some BS does seep into the mix. It's just that we have different outlooks and interests and that's OK.

Be well!

Reply
Nov 13, 2018 00:35:56   #
IDguy Loc: Idaho
 
BboH wrote:
Have read about and used Exposure Compensation set to a +1 or +2 for snow - works nicely. Might this also be something for you to try?


...with spot metering on the white.

The reason is your camera will adjust to make the white gray if you don’t do that. Counterintuitive.

Reply
 
 
Nov 17, 2018 09:16:53   #
IDguy Loc: Idaho
 
Pablo8 wrote:
Plenty of (basic) advice about your picture, and how to improve on it, even at the taking stage. Get that right, and it might be worth adding your name to the print. To me, a signature and 'Photography' / 'Photographer', suggests Professional person.


To me defaces a photo.

Reply
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