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Action Shot -- constructive criticism please
Oct 18, 2020 09:05:03   #
RickH Loc: Toronto, Canada
 
Tone down the blacks?
Noise reduction?
any suggestions greatly appreciated...


(Download)

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Oct 18, 2020 11:59:56   #
R.G. Loc: Scotland
 
Soften the background and make it just a bit less contrasty.

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Oct 19, 2020 06:42:18   #
dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida
 
R.G. wrote:
Soften the background and make it just a bit less contrasty.


Agreed. Use blur and then mask to remove blur from the action ... how depends on your software.

This shot grabs the action including the pusher being off the ground. aaa to be kids again!

Also, there is a photo in the photo, crop so only the girl on the swing is the photo and clone out any fragment of the pusher.

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Oct 19, 2020 06:46:51   #
kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy
 
Unfortunately the busy background sucks all the energy out of the very nice moment foreground. I would mask the subject and apply gaussian or lens blur to focus attention on the action, but to do it right would require a lot of work on the ground itself to make it look natural.

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Oct 19, 2020 14:30:04   #
captivecookie Loc: Washington state
 
1. Shoot wide open (f/1.4 or 1.8) to blur the background.

2. Back up so very slightly.

3. Square crop.

Just one possible set of ideas.

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Oct 22, 2020 11:49:01   #
Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)
 
RickH wrote:
Tone down the blacks?
Noise reduction?
any suggestions greatly appreciated...


I agree with all the comments on the background.
To my eye the one thing you could do to set the image apart would be to lower the camera’s perspective until the head of the girl in the swing is caught at the apex of swing when it is above the roof/line of the BG.

Dave

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Dec 5, 2021 23:56:49   #
User ID
 
Yes it’s a year old but I just stumbled into it today ... surfing UHH to see if anything really interesting ever happens here. In your shot I found a rare example :-)

The sharp background is terrific, a very important element. Those who say to soften it haven’t caught the great visual interaction between the background and the very active subjects.

The very bold action, expression, and body language of the subjects does hafta battle just a bit to emerge victorious. But every time that I immerse myself in the scene, that battle is easily neatly won. Momentary visual uncertainty quickly resolved itself. That is a reward for the viewer. Don’t disable that !

If you subdue the background you would eliminate that experience in favor of just a well executed cutesy cliche. You have a rare catch here. Don’t let the shallow vision of others convince you to turn it into a common hack greeting card !

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Dec 7, 2021 00:22:26   #
Hip Coyote
 
I know I am late to the party. A few thoughts

The main subject's face is blurry. When I downloaded the shot her face also had a lot of noise compared to the rest of the photo. Can that be cleaned up? I did a bit in Topaz Sharpen...kinda worked.

The new LR and PS makes masking the subject easy as one click. Can you mask the subject, invert it and get rid of the pipe coming out of the subject's head?

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Aug 10, 2022 13:12:43   #
RickH Loc: Toronto, Canada
 
totally agree, thanks so much for this

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