SP reader Nomeesh Dubey from Madhya Pradesh has sent us this picture for evaluation.As a general guideline, we must ask ourselves as to what is it that has prompted us to take the picture? The answer will tell us where to focus the lens and the prominence we need to give to that element.
In your picture, Nomeesh, I take it that the temple “gopuram”, along with the red flag, is your focal point. That’s fine.
You have used the tree overhang as a frame, which is good. But observe that the picture is underexposed and the dark areas, which cover almost 60-percent of the entire picture area, are devoid of detail. This makes the picture appear ‘gloomy’.
So the first step is to brighten up the picture. (You could have done that with your camera exposure; I did that in post-processing).
Secondly, the “gopuram”, which is your center of interest along with the red flag, is too small in the picture. Hence I have re-composed the picture to show greater emphasis to those elements.
Finally, I used Auto Contrast because I still wasn’t happy with the overall scene contrast.
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Edited Image |
The Snail
SP reader John Philip has sent us this picture of a snail on a vertical wall. The picture has been shot in soft light, as can be deduced from the soft shadow under the snail.
The EXIF data shows that the lens used was 105mm, and hence I assume that it was a 105mm Micro Nikkor. This lens is capable of very sharp pictures, so why is this picture not sharp? I’ll tell you why.
You have not used a tripod! With hand-held shots, it is very difficult to maintain the exact point of focus because we invariably move forward or backward (even up or down), ever so slightly, as we press the shutter release button. This movement is responsible for the lack of critical sharpness at the focused point. With a slow-moving creature like this snail, there is hardly any chance of subject movement.
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 Edited Image |
Nature photography requires patience. If I were you, I would have waited till the snail was reasonably out of its shell and then focused sharply on the snail. The aperture that you have used (f/5.6) is not adequate for this type of photo. Note that you have mentioned the aperture to be f/10, but the EXIF data says that it was f/5.6. The EXIF data also shows that at the magnification you were at, the effective aperture was f/5. Hence you could say that you used the lens at almost wide open aperture, which can not give you the depth of field that you would require. You shot the picture at ISO 400, but you could have gone to ISO 800, which would have given you one stop faster shutter speed for reducing camera movement during exposure, or 1-stop narrower aperture for better depth of field. I take it that you must have felt that ISO 800 would be ‘noisy’. This brings me back to the use of a tripod. If you had to use one, you could have narrowed down the aperture to f/11 with a corresponding shutter speed of 1/40 sec. And since the snail is a snail, there was no question of subject movement even when using that particular shutter speed.
The next problem is about your composition. Why did you choose to have so much of the wall on the left? Observe the composition in the edited image.
I also brightened the snail using Levels in Photoshop, and sharpened the main subject.
 Original Image |
 Edited Image |
The Coca Cola Loving Monkey
Most people love Coca Cola. And so does this monkey! SP reader Kaushik P from Bangalore, Karnataka, was quick enough to snap this brief moment. The monkey seems to be sitting by the side of a rough road. Observe how his right foot grabs and balances
the bottle.
The picture was shot late in the evening. This is not a flash photograph. The illumination is from the setting sun. The composition is quite okay and I don’t mind the tail being cut off in this case. I wish the monkey’s face was turned somewhat to the left so that we could have seen
his eyes and possibly the expression on the face.
So, is there any way to improve this un-posed picture? What would I have done if I were you?
I first re-composed the picture as shown. This makes the subject more prominent. It also shows a small portion of its eyelid which was otherwise difficult to notice. You can now also see some cola that has dripped onto his leg.
The light blue highlight on the road, next to the monkey’s seemed disturbing and so I toned it down in Photoshop. And finally, I added a bit of sharpening.
The Spillway
This picture, of what appears to be a spillway, is sent to us by SP reader Dr. Mousam Jefferin from Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh. He wants to know how the picture could be improved. He says “I feel something is missing. After much thinking I can only find that the shadow details of the tunnel needed to be opened up. What is your opinion?”
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You are partly right. The photo is underexposed. The light meter in the camera is designed to turn whatever it is pointed at, into a mid-tone. The camera ‘saw’ the predominant white water and turned it into a mid-tone. Hence the lower values (the arch and more so, the insides of the tunnel) got further darkened.
The solution is to ‘open up’ the shadow details (in Photoshop) till you are happy with the rendering. This action will cause the water and the archway to become too light in tone. Hence, after the tunnel area was brightened, the required tonality was brought back in the water and the archway.
Here’s how you can do that:
1. Using Levels in Photoshop, open up the dark shadow area (move the middle slider to the left) to get the required details.
2. Click in the white mask in the Layers palette (just to make sure it is selected) and press ‘B’ on the keyboard to select the Brush tool (the foreground color should be black), and paint away on the areas that got too light in step 1. You can control the density of the brush tool by adjusting the Opacity from the Task Bar at the top.
TIP: Be careful when you open up the shadows as too much detail in the tunnel will look false.
