Composition and PP, criticisms are welcomed

[alainpascua]

Hereunder are three pictures (or just one picture from which two pictures are produced) taken in our birding sortie with Ka Mastah, Arnold, Rey, Bong and Mando the yesterday in San Juan, Batangas.

The two processed pictures differ in composition, cropping, sharpness and brightness. It's my first try using DPP to make adjustments, then converting the RAW file into TIFF which I further processed in PS CS3 where I used patch, clone and cropping. The TIFF files are then converted in JPEG files in DPP. Hence, the pictures below.

May I solicit the criticisms of fellows in this Forum. My concern to learn is on two points.

One is the composition, which picture is better composed, or can anyone please offer another composition, and the reasons or opinions why.

The other is the PP processing in producing sharp, correctly colored and best presentation. Teach us how to PP better and more efficiently.

The original picture (3rd picture) may be altered, cropped, etc in order to present one's alternative output. Please post your output in this thread, and please indicate the step by step process that is undertaken to arrive at the output, if this is not so bothersome.

This is a learning process, criticisms, no matter how harsh, will be very much appreciated.

I hope I have posted this rightly in this section, or the Moderators may just transfer it to the correct one. I would have love to place it under the section Romy Ocon'c Critique Corner, but only the two of us can post therein. But I earnestly seek Ka Mastah's and all the other Masters' advice on this query.

Thank you.

[Edu Lorenzo Jr]

hi Alain,

I am no mastah at anything but here is my 2cents:

Photo 1 - I believe this is the best crop. The bird sits right in the middle and the removal of the extra branches/twigs made it nice.
Photo 2 - The sky color here is better than Photo 1 but the bird is too much on the left third and is "looking away" from the center. I find pics where the bird seems to be looking towards the center of the frame as better. Also, the branches are all pointing away from the bird and guides the eyes away from the subject. So I guess you can call them distracting. if there will be branches, and we had the luck to choose them, they should be pointing towards the subject to guide the eyes there.

With these points, I will say the crop of photo1 plus the color of the sky in photo 2 if combined, would make it a whole lot better. As for sharpness, it is tack sharp. For color, I can't comment as not only am I colorblind, my laptop's display is not and poorly calibrated.

Congratulations on the OBS Alain!

[Neon Rosell II]

Hi Alain,

Here's my two centavos, what I'll do with the composition, I would have placed more head room and placed the bird a little bit to the right so it would make it appear that the bird would be flying off towards the the upper left corner of the photo.

Cloning out the obtrusive and clattered twigs was alright as no part of the bird was touched making it acceptable for majority of nature photogs.

What a waste, the spider is a good species for fighting!!..hahahaha ;D

[Toto Gamboa]

Aug 1, 2009 4:44:14 GMT Neon Rosell II said:

What a waste, the spider is a good species for fighting!!..hahahaha ;D

OT: lols ... the spider is a preggy female though. usually it is a bit slow and its huge belly can easily be bitten by its opponent. ;D When I was a kid, I usually prefer the hairy and long legged ones. female spiders are deadly I have known when I was a kid. It was believed the heartshaped bodies are females. ;D

At Alain, I prefer the first crop Looks more balanced to me than the 2nd

[Elvin Sansona]

I like the 1st photo too, the color is well-balanced and the picture is clean. Its a very nice composition.

[Romy Ocon]

Wow.... I thought sunbirds eat only nectar from flowers, great shot Alain! I like the composition of the first photo posted. Light was a bit harsh, good that the bright underbelly was in the shade. I'd expose the shadows a tad more in RAW conversion and/or PS.

[Ronnie Dominguez]

Hi,
I think the third photo is too small to work on. Refocused, rotate and cropped