Opinions on these images please

[jforkner]

The biggest problem for me is none of the images are sharp; they all slightly blurry. I think #1 would have benefited from being taken earlier or later in the day when the shadows would have been longer. Similarly, earlier or later would have reduced the glare in #2. Finally, I think #3 would benefit from having some of the horizon in the frame; as it is, it looks like a crop from a larger image. Of the three, I think #1 had the most potential and offers a more "artistic" POV. Number 2 is a close second, but the glare ruins it for me. The last one is the more typical aerial image, but not as artistic in my view.


Jack

 

[swisser]

Thanks for all the comments.

I'm well aware that the images break various conventional "rules". That's why I was interested in what appealed to other people; each of these is a work in progress to deliver something a bit different. The diversity of the opinion about each one rather confirms the tricky aspect of doing something unconventional. Clearly a good way to go yet.

Denny, none of this is about print media though in my experience as a studio portrait photographer it's most definitely not necessary to use Quark just to get a professional working understanding of the print process, but each to their own. You've obviously been at this a long time; I'd love to see some of your UAV aerial shots - can you send me a URL?

Colour space is a good point - they look vibrant on my calibrated Mac monitors, but it's a great reminder that that won't be the case for everyone and I should change them.

I'm really glad this thread didn't dissolve in to a "what props did you use and was it 3S or 4S?". I was all ready to reply saying that we shouldn't worry too much about equipment - the photos on this thread were taken using three different craft: one that cost under £500, one that was about £4,000, and another about £150,000 (and burning £120 an hour of avgas).

One thing that I must concede is that the glare in the second one seems to offend almost everyone - it was one of the reasons I liked it, so clearly that's very much a minority view!

Jack - not sure why they're not sharp for you. The third one is a touch soft, but the others are pleasantly sharp for me. I really don't enjoy seeing over-sharpened images though, so maybe it's just a subjective thing. You're right about some horizon in number 3 but alas, the geography didn't work that way.

 

[DennyR]

Swisser

The reason that we use publishing tools a lot is that other publishers like to use PDF files to communicate.WYSIWYGView attachment 6505Shot with canon 85/1.2 and a large quad model known as the *****.

As you're a Londoner here is an image from the UK which was one of my best sellers for the last 20 yearsView attachment 6510. I must get back there a do this one again with a UAV. Here is another one that also was not done with a model, this is Cyprus well into the descent at about 60,000 feet.View attachment 6511
To the North is Turkey

 

[kloner]

man, these are some serious photographers i'm rubbin elbows with here. you guys know you how to take pictures

Denny, in your pic like his of the over water, the reflection was a million times softer. Was that a filter or a time of day thing?

Now you got me wanting to check out 60,000 feet, lol.....

 

[swisser]

Denny, you're spot on about reproductive/transmission quality and have certainly proven your point - I'm sure your images look fabulous when printed on good quality stock, but those scans seem to have really limited dynamic range and look rather flat on my Mac I'm afraid.

Are you still shooting these days?

 

[DennyR]

Heres a few more that are the type of image that I sell to other publishers View attachment 6519View attachment 6520View attachment 6521View attachment 6522View attachment 6523View attachment 6524View attachment 6525View attachment 6526Something like this has political news value and is a different marketView attachment 6527White space at the top for print overlay.
Those are very small highly compressed files, the full size images will knock your eyeballs out on a calibrated screen. (120 MB/16bit CMYK or RGB). I never put out high res. anything in this day and age as it will be copied in minutes. Even high res samples need to be water marked before you send em out to a client for approval. Google Earth and I have a regular dispute going on. Mostly from people who scan my books and then upload them under their own name. Yes I still do a little work, I will never retire, this is what I love to do. Tried putting my feet up and got bored after a week. At least two more books in the pipe and another film.

 

[DennyR]

man, these are some serious photographers i'm rubbin elbows with here. you guys know you how to take pictures

Denny, in your pic like his of the over water, the reflection was a million times softer. Was that a filter or a time of day thing?

Now you got me wanting to check out 60,000 feet, lol.....

Hi Kloner
I don't usually use anything on the front of the lens as the digital workflow software these days can deal with most image adjustments, depending on what it will be used for. You want something that supports non destructive editing so you can keep your original raw files and view as many versions as you want to make. You need to think about backup as well. I lost hundreds of images and video files when I got a virus on one of my Macs. The modern digital camera has dynamic range like negative film had so exposure is also not that critical so long as you don't over expose it. If you burn out the highlights its gone for ever.

 

[kloner]

like photoshop right? got that... understand it a little.

I was watching my videos over water looking at this last night..... i see certain angles even in the same sun have totaly different looks to the wave part and it's reflection,,,,,, it's the angle of the sun to the angle of you being adjusted, yea? I want to do some over water stuff is why i ask, i totally get rc, don't know squat about the camera......

yea, viruses suck... i got images backed up from 1999 and on to my servers,,,,, the rest is print and in a box somewhere......


nature sure has some funny ways of making stuff look like something else,,, this reef is amazing

last year there was a tuilie patch in the river that was a dead ringer for a smillie face from overhead, like them yellow ones with the dots for eyes and a smile,,,,, just the way the wind blew and how the critters livin in it made it shaped.

 

[jes1111]

"Light" is obviously a principal ingredient in any photograph. Understanding light and how it works, how and what it contributes to any particular photograph is key to "being a photographer". One of the habits you develop as a photographer is "seeing the light" just as much as "seeing the subject", if not more so. Put another way, a good subject alone does not necessarily make a good photograph - it needs the right lighting as well: direction and elevation, colour, strength, etc. You'll often see the expression "time of day" used in the context of a photograph: as in "good time of day" or "time of day could have been better" - one of the distinguishing features of a professional or a dedicated amateur is the willingness to wait for the right light for any given subject, including going back to the same scene numerous times until the light is "right".

 

[Dubliners]

"a load of amateur bollocks" Denny, you crack me up. Greeting from the oul sod via Texas. Dubliner.

 

[kloner]

you explained that really well jes, thanks. I kind of stumble on that from time to time flying over water the last couple hours of the day. Alot of the time i'll land, look around and totaly see it, but when your flying, navigating, it's so much going on at once..... Just gotta get the flying invisible and make the job the camera... it'll take alot of practice, but it seems doable. The light on the bottom of the ocean, river, etc seem best mid day from what i've seen in my tapes,,,, the vegetation and subjects towards the first and end of the day...

This is where a super high brightness, resolution and contrast monitor would really help i suppose, especialy when i'm not los through all of it.......

 

[DennyR]

"a load of amateur bollocks" Denny, you crack me up. Greeting from the oul sod via Texas. Dubliner.

Hi ,They selling Guinness in Texas these days?

 

[Dubliners]

They are Denny, and it's not half bad. Apologies for thwarting the thread. I'm going to dive in here in a few days with an S800, Z15 and a Nex 7 so I'm very grateful for all the input and guidance.

 

[DennyR]

They are Denny, and it's not half bad. Apologies for thwarting the thread. I'm going to dive in here in a few days with an S800, Z15 and a Nex 7 so I'm very grateful for all the input and guidance.

Good luck with it, I think you made the right choice. I think it was in 1968 I arrived in Dublin and made the trip to Naas. Raced Formula Ford at Mondello Park and then played golf at The Curragh. They were good days. With some good drinking with some crazy guys.

 

[swisser]

I never put out high res. anything in this day and age

That's a shame as it would be nice to be able to look at the work properly. I'm surprised there isn't some room for compromise - Jason Hawkes who seems to me to be the best aerial photographer working today (albeit from full sized helis) manages to put some beautiful and pretty high quality images online and still make a fortune. I'm more from the Philip Greenspun school of thought whereby you put stuff out there (he lets any of his 10,000's of images be used for free), get known for the quality of your work and you can still make a very comfortable living through sales, books, commissions, prints, etc. Someone who is going to print a 1000x600 pixel JPG for their wall isn't going to spend hundreds or thousands on a beautifully printed and framed version no matter what. And the people who will buy that, say the financial institutions you mentioned earlier, aren't going to print the 1000x600pixel version themselves.

Each to their own of course.

 

[jes1111]

..and you can always put a watermark on it, too

 

[Stacky]

Its a battle, its easy to say just put your stuff out there and get known for the quality of your work and you will be ok but the reality is a different thing. I have been on the receiving end of large companies using my images for their own product sales and its not just a simple case of sending a lawyers letter etc. All that costs money and that comes out of your own pocket. Until you have been through the battle and hassle its so easy to have a casual view of it all.

That's a shame as it would be nice to be able to look at the work properly. I'm surprised there isn't some room for compromise - Jason Hawkes who seems to me to be the best aerial photographer working today (albeit from full sized helis) manages to put some beautiful and pretty high quality images online and still make a fortune. I'm more from the Philip Greenspun school of thought whereby you put stuff out there (he lets any of his 10,000's of images be used for free), get known for the quality of your work and you can still make a very comfortable living through sales, books, commissions, prints, etc. Someone who is going to print a 1000x600 pixel JPG for their wall isn't going to spend hundreds or thousands on a beautifully printed and framed version no matter what. And the people who will buy that, say the financial institutions you mentioned earlier, aren't going to print the 1000x600pixel version themselves.

Each to their own of course.

 

[jes1111]

It depends on the subject matter, of course, but it's not just about unauthorised print usage - these days even big companies (as Stacky says) can and will blatantly disregard copyright ownership for online images used on their own website. "Oh, I found it on the net, so it must be free!", or "I could buy something like this for $1 at a stock library, so why bother?"

Relying on fresh income and not having to worry about squeezing the most out of your back-catalogue is one of the privileges of success and would be a foolhardy approach for most photographers.

 

[swisser]

I definitely don't have a casual view of it. I've been through my share of online and offline legal disputes, despite generally subscribing to this way of thinking.

these days even big companies (as Stacky says) can and will blatantly disregard copyright ownership for online images used on their own website. "Oh, I found it on the net, so it must be free!", or "I could buy something like this for $1 at a stock library, so why bother?"

That's just it though. Say you only ever publish tiny low quality images online because you're worried about them being ripped off. Then, somehow (!) someone finds that you can and do do good work and commissions you to take a gorgeous image for their website and you provide the 120Mb 24 bit colour uncompressed TIFF, which they resample down to 1000x600 and use on their website. Now the same person you mention comes along and rips off your image. Not publishing a half-decent version of your image in the first place didn't help and you've stopped a lot of people seeing and thus knowing your work.

I think there is a real danger of going the way of the music publishing companies who refuse to change the way they do business. I've had enough commercial legal disputes to know that I'd rather taken a different approach. It works for me, but clearly not everybody. I do fear that those that don't adapt will struggle ever more in future though.

Thanks for the interesting discussion.

 

[jes1111]

I hear you, I do. But your example details an original sale followed by a rip-off. I do a lot of speculative work with tourism images (since I live in such an area). So, with an image for which I've never received any income, if I put it on the web without watermarking then I may well deny myself the potential to get a sale later - "Oh, we don't want that image, it's all over the web already." I do agree though about publishing images at a size where they can be appreciated properly - just with a suitably subtle (but effective) watermark on them. Where an image has little or no commercial value beyond, say, the owner of the subject (a house for sale, for example) I have published many at high resolution (in Flickr discussion groups). And, guess what?... I regularly find them ripped off by agents in this area other than my original client. I use that as an "in" and try to convert them into a client.

Edit:
P.S. Just took a look at Philip Greenspun's site - frankly, and without wishing to be rude about him, I saw little of any real commercial value on there - so I might fall back on my argument that such an outlook is easy when there's relatively little at stake ...if I was in argumentative mood