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Parker Clack
- Parker
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- Joined: June 1997
- Post Count: 10,882
Re: Ice Festival
Beautiful pictures of some great work. It think it would be fun just to go even though it is usually crowded.
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- Joined: October 1997
- Location: Navesink, NJ
- Post Count: 4,663
Re: Ice Festival
Love the Mini-Caribou! Would definitly be an interesting subject if you could isolate him from the rest of the chaos going on around it. If I could offer a bit of creative criticism I'd note that many of these seem to have trouble isolating their subject, and when the subjects are isolated they seem to have parts randomly (ie rather than intentionally or artistically) cut off. Edit: Ooops sorry didnt realize there were multiple pages (user error on my part!), so that isolation comment is mostly directed at the shots on page 1, but less so on other pages. Still, I'm not afraid to use the crop tool tho I know some are religious about presenting things 'as shot'. If that's your philosophy I'd try to isolate in camera a bit more, as the saying goes 'you can never get TOO close!'.
Thanks for sharing them tho, especially since it got me off my butt to check out the new SmugMug UI, which does seem kinda cool!
Quote:
| Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded |
--LP Berra
Blog: Navesink.net - My Flickr Stream is here - Click here to Email me - Updates at Twitter & FriendFeed
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"Buncha Savages in this town"
- Joined: May 2002
- Post Count: 6,931
Re: Ice Festival
Looks like a cool event. Good job on the exposure and processing with all that white and glassy subject matter.
There were probably some limits on physical proximity to the artists, but don't be afraid to push the envelope in getting close to the subject. This is not in my nature to do this - I hate feeling like I'm intruding on someone or even being "that guy with the camera." But shots from a wider angle and closer proximity can produce a psychological intimacy that you don't get with a telephoto, which I think is important for this particular subject matter. Also experiment with the "Z" axis for greater depth and dynamic quality in the composition.
He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it. -- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
- Joined: August 2001
- Location: New York City Area
- Post Count: 3,532
Re: Ice Festival
Scott,
Looks like a fun event. Good to see these.
Besides what others have mentioned, I would suggest trying some positive exposure comp during the shoot since there is so much white in most scenes. I probably would've gone for +1EV (or maybe more) in most instances myself. There really is no substitute for getting the exposure right during the shoot. You can only do so much w/ adjusting/processing the RAW files (before the image starts to suffer).
For RAW, I mainly just use Nikon's own software -- the older Nikon Capture that is -- since I shoot Nikon. I don't like Adobe's RAW converter though maybe the latest one works much better than before (for Nikon files anyway). I do use Photoshop CS somewhat for whatever Nikon Capture doesn't do.
_Man_
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
- Joined: October 1997
- Location: Navesink, NJ
- Post Count: 4,663
Re: Ice Festival
Give Lightroom a shot!
Blog: Navesink.net - My Flickr Stream is here - Click here to Email me - Updates at Twitter & FriendFeed
Information Technology Blog: Infotechbuzz - Save The Alamo - Join the HTF Flickr Pool or discuss the pool here
"Buncha Savages in this town"
- Joined: August 2001
- Location: New York City Area
- Post Count: 3,532
Re: Ice Festival
If you're interested in trying some other affordable, high quality RAW converter, have a look at this one:
RAW Magick
I don't know how the Canon support is now, but it was originally created for Nikon RAW files a few years ago. The original project started out w/ the introduction of the Nikon D70 -- and part of the work involved dealing w/ the moire issue of the D70 on top of taking fuller advantage of the custom tone curve feature of Nikon DSLRs. Unlike most (all?) other converters (and editing software), this one has a high quality mode that uses floating point math for maximum quality (ie. virtually zero issue w/ rounding errors unlike typical DSP implementations) though that mode does run substantially slower. Most users seem to use more "mainstream" software for most of their processing and switch to this for the more difficult situations for best results. And the demosaic algorithm used was also supposed to be more advanced than you typically find (eg. like in Adobe's converter) though I'm not sure how true that is nowadays.
I actually bought the software when it was still beta (back when I was using the D70), but have not gotten around to using it.
BTW, the RAWMagick creators used to frequent dpreview forums and NikonCafe. Not sure if they still do.
_Man_
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".
- Joined: October 1997
- Location: Navesink, NJ
- Post Count: 4,663
Re: Ice Festival
Lr is just $200, but you can get it as cheap as $98 if you can qualify:
Photoshop Lightroom at Academic Superstore
Blog: Navesink.net - My Flickr Stream is here - Click here to Email me - Updates at Twitter & FriendFeed
Information Technology Blog: Infotechbuzz - Save The Alamo - Join the HTF Flickr Pool or discuss the pool here
"Buncha Savages in this town"
