Reflections * by Canon DSLR Challenge

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21-JAN-2006	Jason

Reflections *

Reflections -- The Supremes

--
through the mirror of my mind
time after time
I see reflections of you and me
reflections of the way life used to be
--

I'd never actually read through all the lyrics of that song until just now. My Lord is that song depressing.

I gave my best shot at capturing the frozen weeping willows, the dirty creek, and the suburban malaise of late winter. I tried angling to get rid of the floating log in the left foreground, but the shot just didn't work as well that way.

Canon EOS 10D ,Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
1/8s f/11.0 at 33.0mm iso100 hide exif

Full EXIF Info
Date/Time	21-Jan-2006 17:44:38
Make	Canon
Model	EOS 10D
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	33 mm
Exposure Time	1/8 sec
Aperture	f/11
ISO Equivalent	100
Exposure Bias
White Balance	(-1)
Metering Mode	average (1)
JPEG Quality	(6)
Exposure Program	shutter priority (2)
Focus Distance

other sizes: small medium original auto

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Guest		24-Jan-2006 18:41
Phil, thanks for posting the two pass USM technique. I hadn't seen that technique before. It's very effective and particularly dramatic on a shot like this where there are white snow highlights on the tree branches and nice bark texture. Delighted to add the technique to my bag o' tricks. -Michael

Canon DSLR Challenge		24-Jan-2006 10:15
Jason Michael gives good advice and was exactly what I was thinking about this and the previous image - it needs a contrast boost with the USM he mentions. I tend to run a 2 pass USM like this (with thanks to Joe for this): 20/50/0 then Edit/Fade USM/Darken then 10/50/0 - it can add a lot of punch to most images and remove the "haze" which is very common in 10D/20D pictures. Phil

Guest		24-Jan-2006 07:20
Love the composition and reflections, really dynamite. I agree with Traveller that the upper part of the image lacks the dynamic of the lower part of the image, but I'm not sure that it's sharpness. Perhaps just a bit more contrast in the upper part. I hope you don't mind, but I tried adding some local contrast to a duplicate of the background layer with unsharp mask 20%, radius 50.0 pixels, threshold 0 and then masked out the bottom of the layer with a gradient so that the unsharp mask was only applied to the willows and not the reflection. I then did some slight burning to the top corners. You can see the results athttp://www.pbase.com/mtpuff/image/55247431. The effect I was going for was to make the upper part of the image as strong as the relection. Again, hope you don't mind but I couldn't resist because I really love this landscape. -Michael

Canon DSLR Challenge		24-Jan-2006 03:40
No forgiveness needed. The little * means tell it like it is. Think Tyler Durden in Fight Club: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." I discovered that I accidently sharpened during the RAW batch convert, and then also sharpened after the rezsize. The version that's up now is the corrected one, FWIW. --Jason

Canon DSLR Challenge		24-Jan-2006 03:04
Jason, forgive me....I've been wrestling with PhotoShop myself and some of my frustration is maybe showing. This is a wonderful composition, you have a decent f-stop, but there seems to me to be a lack of sharpness in the upper branches....this is not unlike an image I took maybe 4 years ago that was equally wonderful in color and composition...but it was not till last year that I could do something really decent with it. I think that's what I am saying...Best Wishes, Traveller

Canon DSLR Challenge		24-Jan-2006 02:34
Jason, I'm going to be a little brutal on this one...I hope you kept the original, untouched, unblimished because eventually with enough PS skills this will make a marvelous image...but...IMHO...it's not there yet, (it is still waiting to be descovered by thou) Best Wishes, Traveller (mainly I think that it is a shapening pr) Thy eye and camera are willing...