Tips, tutorials and discussion of photography, cameras and accessories.
13 posts Page 1 of 2
I posted my bee shot in several other forums and in one a person said that is was a nice SOFT shot. Question, what makes this a soft shot and is that a good or bad thing?? Oops that was 2 questions.
link to image
http://www.prestophoto.com/photos/image/1016901
What makes it a soft shot is the shallow depth of field( the plane of sharp focus is short). Means used an aperature probably 5.6 or less. In this case that's a good thing as having too much sharp would lead to a "busy" photograph and distract from the main subject(the bee). This is very subjective as to when it's just right. Someone else might prefer to have a little more of the bee sharp, but that would mean needing to use a slower shutter speed to off set a smaller aperature and may well have led to motion blur if there was a breeze.
Thanks, Linda. I didn't know if he saw saying I did something wrong or not. There was a wind blowing at the time. I was also using my telephoto lens to get the bee, left my marco lens at home.
Suzi, I think it is a soft shot also. Meaning the entire image is not tack sharp. But in this case that is a good thing. I do think the bee could stand out a little more.
I worked with it. I sharpened just the bee. Making a selection around it with the lasso tool and adding a feather of 100 pixels. put that on it's own layer. I ran the highpass filter on the bee and changed the blend mode to soft light. Duplicated that and thought it was too much, reduced the opacity of that layer to about 50%.

I used curves to darken the entire image then masked out just the bee.
Then used curves on top to lighten just the bee. you can see the top one is grouped.

Hope you don't mind?

Image
~kimi~
Gone Crazy... Back Soon...


Gallery ~ a la kimi

My Blog

kimboustany.com
Thanks, Kimi. I downloaded the picture of your layers. I will work on it.
suzib, i love the shot you were able to get, looks great.
Suzi,
I like the softness of this shot. Too make the bee stand out more, I would not change the sharpness of the bee; rather, I would crop off the right and bottom sides slightly to get the bee's head nearer to the sweet spot defined by the rule of thirds. Right now, as it is, IMHO, the bee is too close to the top and left sides of the image. Just a thought. Great shot, these are not easy to get, it takes a lot of patience.
Joe
Joe

Joe's Place
My Zenfolio


Life is too short to drink cheap wine!
Suzi,

It's the Bees Knees!
John
Thank you, John, Judy and Joe. The 3 J's!!!

Here is the less cropped version, which is better. Joe, could you crop your way so I can see what you are talking about.

Image
Suzi,
I did not think about it at first, but Linda's explanation is probably the best one. A matter of 'soft focus'. I like the image as it is, without additional sharpening or cropping. What I saw at first is the general warm hue.
BeeHue.jpg
BeeHue.jpg (138.8 KiB) Viewed 954 times

If you look at the HSB histogram (with smartcurve), you notice how the hues are very concentrated in the yellow sector, with touches of green and brown to add some colour contrast. Otherwise, the brightness is evenly spread which produces an excellent black and white conversion, and the saturation is largely above average. Try the black and white, the softness is still there.
Michel B
PSE6, 11,12,13.1 - LR 5.7 Windows 7 64 - OneOne Photo Perfect Suite - Canon 20D, Pana TZ6 - Fuji X100S
Most used add-ons: Elements+


Mes Galeries
13 posts Page 1 of 2

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests

cron