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Opinions

Postby Gill » 23 Jul 2021, 19:37

I've uploaded a photo which has been edited using a technique that's completely new to me. Without inviting the trolls to run rampant (I know you folks wouldn't do that anyway :) ), I'd be interested in knowing if you like it. I'm not fishing for compliments, more trying to find out if this sort of effect could add interest to standard sports photography. I trust your opinions and I have confidence in your kindness.

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Re: Opinions

Postby Andyp » 23 Jul 2021, 19:47

I guess the editing technique is the background?

Personally I do not like it. An image like that, of I guess a village cricketer, deserves a village cricket green type background. If the background was not all green fields, picket fences and trees then edit in some nice scenery.
Can you show us the image before the edit?

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Re: Opinions

Postby AJB Temple » 23 Jul 2021, 20:03

I'm a quite keen photographer too, and have not seen that effect before Gill.

For me, when I look at an image, I always wonder what the photographer, having chosen this picture, wants me to see. In this case I am not sure. The effect reminds me of algae, as if the batsman is surrounded by a storm of it. Perhaps he is trying to swat it away?

I would look at an image such as this and think about it, but would not buy it in an exhibition.

However, progress and art requires trying different things, so I say well done for bringing this to our attention. I could see it working really well for seascapes and things like forest mist scenes.

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Re: Opinions

Postby sunnybob » 23 Jul 2021, 20:25

It leaves me puzzling as to what effect you were trying for.
But no, as a picture I dont like it. :eusa-hand: :lol:
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Re: Opinions

Postby Mike G » 23 Jul 2021, 20:27

For a sports photo, I hate it with a passion. I'm sure it could be used in circumstances that would make a wonderful photo.

Decent technique in that shot, particularly with the back foot pointing to point indicating a batsman staying sideways on. He's played it through gully/ backward point with a straight bat, stayed on top of the ball, and is well balanced. I'd prefer to see him grip the handle towards the top, and the picky might say his front elbow has dropped a little early indicating a bit too much bottom hand in the shot, but all in all this looks like someone who can bat.
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Re: Opinions

Postby AJB Temple » 23 Jul 2021, 21:59

Just shows what an expert can see in a picture.
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Re: Opinions

Postby Robert » 23 Jul 2021, 22:10

He's in focus and the whites are well exposed but I doubt you'll find many that like the obviously added effect. The batsman also has that look you get when the jpg quality is set a bit low. That may be from the original or the special effect is degrading the subject as well as the background.

I dislike any obvious processing and my biggest hate is HDR when it is so over done and obvious. Some people love that effect so maybe you'll find someone that likes artificial looking ageing in a picture.
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Re: Opinions

Postby novocaine » 23 Jul 2021, 22:14

From a photography point of view, im afraid i dont really like it. Its created a very busy fore ground with a wishy washy background and the exceptionally hard boarder to the player which looks false and distracts from overall image. Id suggest allowing a bit more feathering to the subject and ditch the foreground masking. Given that sport photography is a very specific field,it can often be hard to add some artistic flare,as its often a record of an event rather than an opportunity to express yourself. Could you try a similar edit on a more appropriate subject? Perhaps a candid street shot where the background doesnt add context.

The subject however is sharp and the DOF wide enough to keep focus across the entire body (although for the subject and his "subject"this might not be his favourite shot). Id like to see the unedited version too although o suspect the background was exceptionally busy.
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Re: Opinions

Postby novocaine » 23 Jul 2021, 22:27

Adding some thing on the subject matter, this used a very similar post processing method but the subject was completely different. It's a very different feel.
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Re: Opinions

Postby Gill » 24 Jul 2021, 07:47

I'm so very grateful for all your thoughts on this photo. I didn't think it would be popular with everyone but I never anticipated such a passionate rejection. I'm delighted!!! I won't post the source material of this image because it would be tantamount to a chef being asked to post his ingredients after cooking a meal or a woodworker being asked to post photos of his stock after he posted a picture of his project.

For me, the success of this picture is in the passion it's aroused. You all hate it and that's wonderful! Please keep up the good work and let me know what you honestly think if (when) I post future pictures and ask for your opinions. I adore your honesty, which is what I hoped you'd give me. You folk are the bees knees!

Incidentally, I also showed this picture to the marketing director of one of the big 5 accountancy firms after I'd posted it here. Her reaction was the exact opposite to the consensus here, saying she'd never seen this editing technique before and she loves the results. I guess Marmite is a double-edged sword, albeit a sticky one. I'm not averse to sticky fingers.

:)

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Re: Opinions

Postby sunnybob » 24 Jul 2021, 08:10

Follow the money, ignore the poor people. :lol: :lol:
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Re: Opinions

Postby sunnybob » 24 Jul 2021, 08:12

I think you might find a definite "women are from venus, men are from mars" result if you widen the consulting base. :eusa-whistle:
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Re: Opinions

Postby Lurker » 24 Jul 2021, 11:19

It's a fine photo, but whatever you did detracts from the action.
It's a no from me.
Can we see the shot before you mucked around with it please?
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Re: Opinions

Postby droogs » 24 Jul 2021, 11:29

Looks like it is trying to make a slow and mostly boring sport into an action movie advert where the star appears out of an explosion. Not to my taste

The second image is better but both have a very strong advertising feel about them. Like they are created to be used in posters or flyers
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Re: Opinions

Postby AndyT » 24 Jul 2021, 11:32

I'm a bit late to this but am trying not to be influenced by previous posts.
For me the background is a bit odd - do they play cricket in old quarries nowadays? - but the main problem is the way that his left shin has disappeared like a ghost's leg. Once seen, I find that very distracting and it does look like a digital imaging artefact.
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Re: Opinions

Postby Andyp » 24 Jul 2021, 12:46

Please do post more Gill.

I am neither an expert in cricket nor photography but as a consumer of sports material I would still like to see the unedited image. Your analogy about chefs and woodworkers does not add up for me. I have often posted images of the lump of wood and the finished bowl.
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Re: Opinions

Postby novocaine » 24 Jul 2021, 13:27

droogs wrote:Looks like it is trying to make a slow and mostly boring sport into an action movie advert where the star appears out of an explosion. Not to my taste

The second image is better but both have a very strong advertising feel about them. Like they are created to be used in posters or flyers

Second image is mine not Gills. I posted it as an example of context making an image. Funny you should say advert, it is exactly what it was for.
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Re: Opinions

Postby SamQ aka Ah! Q! » 24 Jul 2021, 15:45

What's Agassi doing playing cricket? :shock:
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Re: Opinions

Postby Andy Kev. » 24 Jul 2021, 17:27

I think that it was clever of you in your OP not to suggest what the image was trying to convey (assuming that the manipulation is meant to lead us down a particular path of appreciation).

As it stands, I have two reactions to it:

a. The image as such is harmless but does not communicate anything as the cricketer has been effectively taken out of any sporting context.

b. Cricket is highly specific both in sporting and cultural terms. Therefore it is very difficult to break out of traditional shots - and you'd have to have a pretty good reason to want to do that given that the game is dripping in tradition. Therefore it seems to me that you can go for the Victorian style of formal pose: standing mid-stroke in front of the stumps or you can try to catch the cultural character of the game. A village setting perhaps? Maybe a sun-glinted pint of ale on a table in the foreground?

The technique itself might lend itself to specific interpretative purposes but I can't for the life of me think what. I suppose that's why we have creative types.
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Re: Opinions

Postby Pete Maddex » 25 Jul 2021, 08:53

I find the background and the disappearing extremities distracting, the lack of stumps makes me think it’s posed shot not taken during a game.

Give me nice bokeh balls any day.

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Re: Opinions

Postby Eric the Viking » 26 Jul 2021, 09:54

I've done a fair bit of commercially-used photography, but never had the patience (nor the kit!) for sports.
It's a nice photograph, but it's not the background for me. It distracts from a well-made image, which for me would have more merit.

That said, I am right with you about not showing people my "out-takes" and rejects. If I do any sort of photo session, be it product, portrait or anything else, they get the shots I want them to have.

It's one reason I don't do wedding photography (that and the stress involved). After one Covid wedding recently that my wife attended, the bride and groom announced proudly how delighted they were with the 750 shots the photographer had produced (despite the difficulties).

Had that been video it would, on its own have run for 28.5 seconds, so rapid-fire shooting is the only way I can explain such 'productivity'! The pictures I've seen from that wedding aren't bad, but they are the dozen or so that have been selected from the 750 by the couple.

I think the photographer should have confidence in their own judgment. I cannot believe more is better (unless it is sports, or wildlife, both of which have quite different rules and techniques), and digits don't change that. So stick to your guns, and show people what YOU want them to see - because you are a photographer, not a human dash-cam!

Aside: When, in 1927, Ansel Adams took the famous photograph "Monolith, The Face of Half Dome", he was at the end of a two-week trip into Yosemite. He'd gone in with friends, but taken only twelve full-size photographic glass plates with him. When he set up to take Monolith, he had already used ten. #11 was a flop, as he put a yellow filter on the lens, which didn't darken the sky enough. #12 (with a red filter) is the one that everybody knows (and which hangs over my study fireplace).

Adams devotes a chapter of his autobiography to making that picture, and the thought processes surrounding it. Considering the difference between merely shooting pictures and making photographs, he says,

"The physics of the situation are fearfully complex, but the miracle of the image is a triumph of imagination."

I can only aspire...

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Re: Opinions

Postby Gill » 26 Jul 2021, 14:23

Thank you for your support, Eric :) .

Eric the Viking wrote:It's one reason I don't do wedding photography (that and the stress involved).


There are sooooo many reasons why I'd never touch wedding photography! In fact, I've reached the point where I won't do any photography for anyone else. My photography is a hobby and having 'helped other people out' in the past I now do it solely for my own satisfaction, not anyone else's. In my experience, what begins as 'helping someone out' usually ends up as pressed labour.
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Re: Opinions

Postby Andyp » 26 Jul 2021, 14:44

Probably our most treasured wedding pics are the ones taken by the guest themselves, of each other. We had a pro in to take the usual posed photos then asked all the guests to send us a copy of the photos they took an the day. No digital images back then of course. :) But they were all in colour. :)
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Re: Opinions

Postby novocaine » 26 Jul 2021, 15:24

Gill wrote:Thank you for your support, Eric :) .

Eric the Viking wrote:It's one reason I don't do wedding photography (that and the stress involved).


There are sooooo many reasons why I'd never touch wedding photography! In fact, I've reached the point where I won't do any photography for anyone else. My photography is a hobby and having 'helped other people out' in the past I now do it solely for my own satisfaction, not anyone else's. In my experience, what begins as 'helping someone out' usually ends up as pressed labour.


oh, don't get me started on wedding photography. or for that matter any support to a wedding.
I've only done one wedding on my own (as the photographer) and I helped as a second on a couple. the ease with which you can completely destroy a day is astounding. one of the lads I helped out managed to forget all his memory cards (seems like the most basic of checks but there you go) as it happened I had 9 with me because I'm somewhat weird about this. he took something like 4000 shots in the day and evening, when I asked him why his response was "if you don't shoot it, they will ask if you did" (a shot every 30 seconds pretty much).
he handed them 500, and sure enough they asked if he had taken such a such, I think it was a table decoration (turns out I had :lol: ).

I did the evening photography and day time video for a friends wedding a few years ago. As I wasn't the principle photographer I was under no obligation to get good shots and the video was meant to be an add on for her gran who couldn't be there due to ill health. the brief was simply, please film it so we can show it to her.

what she got was a fully edited wedding video with interspersed shots that the photographer couldn't get because she had a focus of the couple, so I got the family outside the church, the people arriving at the venue while the couple were in the car driving round, the kids in their sunday best, the car from a different vantage point, the entrance to the chapel from outside etc. etc. etc. because I was seen as a guest, I got shots that a photographer simply couldn't get.
she was blown away, the actual photographer took a number of my shots to add to her album and the whole family got a copy of the film.
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Re: Opinions

Postby sunnybob » 26 Jul 2021, 19:38

I attended a cousins wedding. the photographer lined up all the guests in a single line, and went down the line taking mugshots.
Thats it. job done. :o
As above, I wandered round taking shots at random. the brides mother asked for my photos to have copies done for herself.
I never got the pictures back! :eusa-doh:
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