What I am Working On: Flexing the Rules

When it comes to photography there are some rules worth thinking about. Rules tend to make a good starting point when you are photographing and editing. Whether you keep to the rules or not will hopefully vary. This is a post about almost keeping the rules and the technology that can help you refine your photographic vision. The photo I was editing was this one:

ISO 400 19mm f/16 1/250sec

Rules Broken: Shooting during the middle of the day and shooting in Jpeg format.

Verdict: Guilty and unrepentant. You only live once and go live your best life. You can tell them you read it here if you feel the need to pass the buck.

During the editing process, the first edit I did was a crop. I used the rule of thirds overlay within my crop tool, so this is what was on my screen:

This gives you an idea of how close to the Rule of Thirds this photo is.

You can see how I’ve taken some liberties with the rule of thirds here while keeping the spirit of the rule. I do this a lot, start with the overlay and then go from there. There is a simple reason for this “almost” rule of thirds image. It’s the other elements in the photo. There are some distracting yellow flowers at the top that are being cropped out and a few purple ones near the bottom. An element deliberately kept in was the white flowers that are a color match for the butterfly.

Rules Broken: Rule of Thirds.

Verdict: Just a bit out of bounds.

Next up is sharpening. I’ve approached this in a bit of a different way. Firstly, I did not want to sharpen the whole image. I was only interested in the butterfly and the blooming flowers. The rest of the image had enough detail for my liking. In Luminar, instead of using the clarity slider, I’ve used the details enhancer. I prefer this slider because it breaks it down into three separate sliders, small, medium, and large. I’ve boosted the small and medium details.  I also used a mask to apply the filter to only the area I wanted the change. I use to hate masks, but over the years the technology behind them has improved making them much easier to use:

This shows what area the details have been given a boost.

Rule Broken: Always sharpen your image.

Verdict: Managed to both keep and break this rule, how annoyingly clever is that?

The last edit was the vignette. The default in editing software is the center of the image. If your editing software allows you to change that, I would encourage you to give that a try, it’s a way of highlighting your main subject which may not be in the center of the image. In this case, I put the vignette center on the eye of the butterfly.

Rule Broken: Vignette is centered in the middle of the image.

Verdict: Guilty and also guilty of encouraging others.

Here is the final image with all the mentioned edits:

ISO 400 19mm f/16 1/250sec

What is your verdict? Do these edits work, with the rules flexed and even broken in places? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to A Photo A Week Challenge, Rule of Thirds and Tuesday Photo Challenge, Technology.

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Golden Hour

In the early morning, I sometimes take my camera out to my hedgerow. We have a lot of wildlife living there.  But on the morning a few weeks ago that I got this photo, I went out because from my kitchen window I could see this robin fledgling:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5 1/100

Since it is learning to fly, there is still the opportunity to get fairly close them.  I will show the original photo at the bottom of the post, so you will see that by cropping the photo I made it seem like I was even closer.  I also mention the cropping because when I saw this through the view finder I knew that I would crop it.  First because some of the surrounding detail was distracting and secondly because this robin is pretty much exactly on a point for the rule of thirds.  The rule of thirds is a photography rule that I don’t always follow, but I almost always consider.

The weekly photo challenge this week is the golden hour. This photo was taken in the early morning of an overcast day.  The challenge was to get the robin at such an angle, so that it was lit enough to show the detail in the feathers.  I also like to be able to see at least one eye, preferably with a catch light in it.  This photo was the one where that came together.  I have several other versions that went into the trash bin.  Because it was still a bit dark, I used an ISO of 800.  I think that my camera can handle that with almost no noise in the final image.  I set my shutter speed to 1/100 with the thought of freezing any motion in the bird.  I have my f-stop at f/5, because I thought I would get enough detail in the bird, and as I had said before, I knew I was going to do some cropping.

Here is the original image:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5 1/100

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I like to follow the robins that live in my area.  While our nest by the kitchen this year had a bittersweet end to it, I have been glad to see that we do have several robin fledglings that seem to be doing well in the hedgerow.

Thoughts or questions about how I got the photo? Feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!

For the Birds

Or, thanks to the birds that hang out nearby so I can take their picture:

ISO 160 f/3.2 1/200 50mm

I took this photo right when you are not supposed to take pictures, that is, the middle of the day.  Harsh light and shadows are an issue that is certain.  I shot this at ISO 160 but then had to lighten the bird in Aperture so that you could see some detail.  I will try this again using a higher ISO to see if that makes it possible to edit less.  I will be working on trying different angles to shoot from as well.  I did use a tripod, but this is about as high as is goes.  I will have to think about other ways I might get a nice shot.  Any thoughts on that?

Cheers!

Happy Accident

I was at the park and got this shot with my iPhone:

ISO 64 4mm f/2.8 1/1193

I was really pleased with the way it turned out.  I have cropped it, darkened the right corner, and sharpened it in Aperture.  It was taken at noon, which I know is against the photography rules, but it was a cloudy day, which kept the lighting from being too bright.

Cheers!

Cranes and “the rules”

Photography rules that is.  One of them, that I only heard a few months ago, was that you have to have an uneven number of objects.  Two of something would be “wrong”.  Here is my wrong photo:

ISO 160 f/5.6 1/40 135mm

I think two works in this case.  Given the distance the birds were from me, this is the sharpest shot I was able to get.  It is fine for this format, but I can tell you that it wouldn’t work very well as a large print.  I did crop this photo.  I also changed the saturation values and sharpened it.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge decided to go “wrong” this week.

I thought the St. Louis Blues might win the Stanley Cup, but I was wrong:

 

The city got all decked out in support of the team this spring though, that was nice to see.  Here is a flag flying outside the art museum.

Also wrong, trying to take this picture in the middle of the day with my iPhone.  That breaks a few “photography rules”

Cheers!

Penguin, breaking the rules

Technically this photo breaks some “photo rules”.  In this case, the whole subject is not in the frame.  Of this series of photos I took of Humboldt Penguins, this was my favorite shot.

ISO 500 132mm f/5.6 1/125

Cheers!