Hi, grateful for your views, please.
Conscious of the various discussions elsewhere on the forum about the necessity for post-processing and the need to get the shot right in the camera, and the point that the most important client is myself and what I wanted to get from a shot, I am still interested in your opinions, particularly as I often find that I am out on a limb when choosing preferred pics from other people's sets (maybe more on this in another thread one day).
Anyway, I was out on Monday evening and thought I saw the opportunity for a nice shot of a swan on the Thames in the sunset. In my mind's eye I was intending the swan to be silhouetted, but only had moments to get the shot before it drifted out of position and found when I got home I hadn't exposed it as I would have liked, being neither dark enough to be a silhouette nor light enough to show the swan in detail. I currently shoot jpeg, but am girding my loins to leap to raw. My post-processing skills are pretty basic as you will see (and despite my signature block I am temporarily without Elements) so I thought I'd have a go at both lightening and darkening the image in iPhoto to see which I preferred.
EOS 50D, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/50 sec, 300mm
As it came out of the camera:
Sunset Swan unedited by AlexR!, on Flickr
Lightened to show more swan detail:
Sunset Swan lightened by AlexR!, on Flickr
And darkened to make more silhouette-like:
Sunset Swan darkened by AlexR!, on Flickr
Personally, I prefer the 3rd version, but worry it will look too artificial to some. So, grateful for any thoughts/opinions/suggestions.
Thanks.
Conscious of the various discussions elsewhere on the forum about the necessity for post-processing and the need to get the shot right in the camera, and the point that the most important client is myself and what I wanted to get from a shot, I am still interested in your opinions, particularly as I often find that I am out on a limb when choosing preferred pics from other people's sets (maybe more on this in another thread one day).
Anyway, I was out on Monday evening and thought I saw the opportunity for a nice shot of a swan on the Thames in the sunset. In my mind's eye I was intending the swan to be silhouetted, but only had moments to get the shot before it drifted out of position and found when I got home I hadn't exposed it as I would have liked, being neither dark enough to be a silhouette nor light enough to show the swan in detail. I currently shoot jpeg, but am girding my loins to leap to raw. My post-processing skills are pretty basic as you will see (and despite my signature block I am temporarily without Elements) so I thought I'd have a go at both lightening and darkening the image in iPhoto to see which I preferred.
EOS 50D, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/50 sec, 300mm
As it came out of the camera:
Sunset Swan unedited by AlexR!, on Flickr
Lightened to show more swan detail:
Sunset Swan lightened by AlexR!, on Flickr
And darkened to make more silhouette-like:
Sunset Swan darkened by AlexR!, on Flickr
Personally, I prefer the 3rd version, but worry it will look too artificial to some. So, grateful for any thoughts/opinions/suggestions.
Thanks.
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