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| The hawk was about 250 feet away [Click to enlarge] |
Unfortunately, about a half-second after the sixtieth click or so, the hawk flew off—and so was a good way toward its prey by the time I could have clicked again. Actually, I did click again...but the camera recorded an empty limb. My disappointment was heightened by the treasured mental image of the hawk's coming toward me in the first split second after take-off All that was left for it (besides trying the experiment again another day...and again, if necessary) was to just use one of my best images for today. I chose the one that best reveals the hawk's open beak (amid call?)
And, today, I mean by "use" more than just cropping and resizing the original and perhaps adjusting the tone (a preset adjustment in Photoshop). I mean more than those things now because of the recent commentary on "Dahlia delights" between photographers Ken Marks and Motomynd (a professional of many years' high standing). Their comments together made me realize finally (it was about time) that digital editing is as fully part of the artistic process that is photography as putting on more oil paint or adjusting the color is a part of the painter's art.
Why hadn't I gotten it before? Well, I think I had been at best ambivalent in thinking that digital touch-up was even "acceptable." When I indulged in an artistic filter, it had always been with some sense of trespass. Isn't "indulgence" one of the original sins?
But Motomynd's comments on film photography helped me realize that doing digital touch-up is no more cheating than using physical filters on a film camera, or holding up a white card to a close subject to reflect sunlight onto a shadow. Different scenes, different light conditions—all require adjustments for the results sought.
After returning from his latest trip, Ken spends considerable time editing his photos to achieve the pure, uncluttered image he values. His flowers and seascapes and mountains and valleys and buildings and cats are stunningly wonderful. Moristotle enjoys the honor of the privilege of displaying a link to "Ken's Photo Treasures" in the sidebar.
Motomynd's galleries reveal a wide range of still and action and special-effects photography to satisfy a wide range of paying clients.
That said, I didn't do that much with my hawk photo. I tried a number of things, but most of them didn't seem to help. And I'm pretty sure that my severe limitations in using Photoshop effectively held me back. So...
...another result of the conversation between Ken and Motomynd is to drive me back to my volume of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies.
I'm hoping to be less dumb soon. Good retirement project.
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So you can see how much I cropped the original photo, here it is:
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Thank you, Morris, for your generous comments and the space you give to my photos.
ReplyDeleteAs to the place that image editing has in photography, I'd say that my camera work contributes 30% to the quality of the picture and my editing contributes the rest. In my mania for editing software, I decided to supplement what I do with Photoshop by using Lightroom as a preprocessor. It offers sliders that let me control tone, contrast, and sharpening much more than if I used Photoshop alone. I can afford such toys because I know a teacher (my son) who can buy them at a discount.
A note about the camera you use... Megapixel count is important to quality because cropping is important to quality. The shot-to-shot delay is also important in photographing quickly moving objects. (Have you tried using burst mode?) Your Coolpix may not be up to the task.
Ken, you're welcome.
DeleteBut thank you! I'll re-check my Coolpix's features. Of course, my D60 has "continuous" mode....
And, too, I could gather a lot more pixels with the D60 by shooting in raw.
By the way, I've corrected the statement (in the photo caption) about how far away the hawk was from the camera. Nearer 250 than 150 feet (and I think I said 200 in a reply comment to you—a different post).
Maybe I should go out and measure the actual distance to the usually suspected trees....
Yes, RAW would give you all the size your sensors can offer, but there's another critical benefit: your camera won't make default changes to your pictures. You'll get exactly what the sensors capture. You'll be editing from scratch.
ReplyDeleteYes, of course, as the JPG condensation accounts for the pixel loss. I appreciate the impetus to go back to shooting in RAW (at least on some occasions) and experimenting with editing at that level before migrating to Photoshop. In fact, I took a RAW photo out back this morning, but I realized later that the "30%" contributed by photo selection and settings wasn't worth any editing effort, so I deleted them.
DeleteIn fact, I more significantly realized that if I'm going to invest the time and effort in editing, the 30% factor becomes critical, if only in order to guard my time from avoidable effort.
I also realized, as I took a few cell-phone photos of a tiny frog I discovered next to the garbage bin handle this morning, a "good enough photo" depends entirely on what it's supposed to be good enough for....Ha! And I'm thinking now that maybe I should take my DSLR back out there to see whether the little guy is still posed. While beautiful enough for sentimental reasons sufficiently served by a cell-phone photo, he (or she) is also worthy of the best artistic treatment of which I am or might be capable. We can second-guess "good enough."
Sorry to natter on philosophically. I find myself doing that at times.
A further thought came later, that at some point making a photograph "better" actually has the opposite effect, and the photo starts to attract more attention as medium than the subject photographed does.
DeleteOf course, this understanding of "good photograph" assumes that a photograph is for featuring the thing photographed rather than the medium; that choice provides the gauge.
Does someone react to the photograph (of a flower, say) by saying, "Oh, what a beautiful photograph!" or by saying, "Oh, what a beautiful flower!"?
This rumination was in the context of my becoming aware that I wish to spotlight the subject rather than the spotlight.
This isn't jibberish, is it?