Photography Fails

[brewmaster15]

Hi all,
By now I am sure you guys have figured out that I like taking pics. No doubt about it, I really enjoy photography. There is something about using that camera to try and capture a moment or a feeling. As you raise the camera to your eye and compose the image and then press the button. Its a mini adrenaline rush most of the times, sometimes its more than that.. Taking the image is only part of the process though... after the image is taken it usually needs some fine tuning. Most of the time a good image needs very little "work" but its still called "working an image" But sometimes an image is just so bad, you just want to delete it. Thats what happens to vast number of images people take. You can always try again or tell that person to smile and not close their eyes. But what if its an image you really can't take again, something that was unique to the moment. Sometimes you can "salvage" it. It won't be as good as it could have been, but it may be good enough. Digital editing software is amazing stuff. And though you have the most latitude when you start with a "raw" image, Jpegs today carry alot of info and can also be edited to improve the outcome.

I'm a hobby photographer here and even though I take and post alot of pics, my skills in the editing Dept are amateur at best... but enough to show you here whats possible.

There is a herd of deer that had been feeding in the field across from my house. I have never been able to get a decent picture of them.. They are too wary and see me coming a mile away. They are only there in the early morning hours, so the light is terrible. Today I got off a few shots before they bolted but the images were really bad, like delete them bad. The lighting was terrible due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires, and there was alot of haze off the ground which makes shooting with telephoto lens very hard...

This is the original un-edited image as an out of camera Jpeg

_DSC1415_original by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

Its soft, the light is bad, theres no contrast and its hazy and washed out. My finger is inching towards the delete button.


Enter a good image ediiting software.. I use Darktable which is free, but theres many other ones, some free and some very expensive. I worked this image in Darktable from both Raw and Jpeg here to show you can even improve a Jpeg..

From Jpeg ..
_DSC1415 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

_DSC1415_01 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr


From Raw...
_DSC1415_raw by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

_DSC1415_01_raw by Al Sabetta, on Flickr


Now if you blow that image up you will see it really isn't that sharp, you will not printing that as a 24 X36 print, but all in all its not bad.


You may be thinking that it must have been alot of editing and work to get the image to look better, but really it was not in this case... This attached pic shows the software I used and the Steps

darktable.jpg

shows all the steps I took. each step is listed on the left. I have no doubt I could improve these images even more if I really got into the software tools or used some paid for software. But this is enough. I hope to encourage you to try editing some of your images ..play around with software and give it a try. When I am out taking pictures I hear people say all the time that they are really bad at taking pictures, which may be true, but they may also just be not so great at post processing images.

Hope this helps someone out. I used deer as an example but its the same with all images.

Al

[LizStreithorst]

Once upon a time that seems like not real long ago, but is, I used to go out with the camera and play all the time. Too much standing, walking, plus getting and staying in awkward positions has made it difficult. I'll try to start trying again. I used to love taking pics. I've been using an ancient photo editing software from windows office 2010! I just downloaded your Darktable software. If it's easy enough for my feeble brain to figure out it will have to be better than what I'm using now. Unlike you, I am not a good photographer. I'm sure the software will be more helpful to me than it is to you. It's amazing what you were able to do with the picture of the deer. Our deer down here are not nearly as large as the ones up north but they're still beautiful. I'd consider it a feather in my cap if I were able to capture a shot of one of our pied deer.

[LizStreithorst]

what does base curve mean?

[brewmaster15]

Cool Liz, glad you are trying it. The nice thing about Dark table and others like it is you cant accidental mess up your original.. when you open an image in you are making a copy and you save that.. so basically you can literally try every tool and just undo it. For instance in that history list you can select any point and try something different.. thats how I learned what the tools do.

Base curve is a way to adjust the over all lightness or darkness of an image.. if you put your cursor on the line and pull down it will make the image darker..pull up on the curve and it makes it. Lighter.. the point you select on the curve will have a different effect. I use base curve alot to change exposure.. theres also one called tone curve which is similar in affect but changes the tones of the image.. sharpen makes it look more crisp but if you over do it..it adds noise...

Once done with the edits you switch tabs to" Light Table"and export.. you tell it the file format and where to save it..

[brewmaster15]

Darn Deer are still playing hard to get.... another hazy night...high ISO shots.. But getting a little better. Practice makes perfect.

_DSC1865 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

_DSC1903 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr

_DSC1906 by Al Sabetta, on Flickr


al