Moose, thanks for responding nicely to my tonal rant. :)
I find your comment about postcards to be very interesting and from that
perspective the adjustments you made were both logical and proper. Why?
Because the traditional color postcard typically had tremendous masking
involved to reduce the dynamic range of the image to fit within the confines
of the output medium. Picture postcards are typically mass printed via a
form of offset press which required the range to be compressed within the
maximum and minimum dot. Other cards which were actually optically printed
were nearly always printed from a duplicate. Either way, there was a lot of
masking involved for both tonal adjustment as well as sharpening. Masking
and sharpening techniques which you performed in a nearly identical manner
within Photoshop.
Your comment about your memory and impressions of the scene are also quite
valid. I just ran into this AGAIN Sunday afternoon. Corey and I went
shooting and photographed this one vegetation engulfed dilapidated barn. As
we photographed it, I was quite excited about what I was seeing and so was
Corey. We shot it with the E-1, E-3 and the OM-3Ti loaded with Velvia.
Later that evening we both processed our digital shots and neither one of us
got anything even remotely interesting. As I told Corey, had the scene
actually looked like that, I wouldn't have even bothered to take the picture
in the first place. No amount of contrast, masking or saturation adjustment
made shot barn look like anything more than just another noisy, busy yawner
of a photograph. If we cranked things up too much it just looked ugly.
Desaturation? Hah... That only made it worse. I look forward to how Velvia
deals with the scene because I know that it sees the visible spectrum
differently than digital does. There was a reason why we spent half an hour
photographing the thing, and I'm hoping that at least Velvia managed to
capture it.
Wow! My images may not be as good as St. Ansel's, but they are as
> crunchy! Taste good too!
>
Oh, you've taken one or two interesting shots. ;) But don't get too high
on yourself--I dislike a lot of Ansel's stuff too. :)
I believe I see what you are getting at. I suppose I simply disagree
> artistically. Then, I may try a PG rated version, too.
>
LOL, well it is true we do see things differently. That's why we both take
different styles of photographs. I'm naturally inclined to shoot abstract
to begin with and it usually pains me to take the vista shots.
> In any case, I very much appreciate the time you took to look, think and
> comment.
I'm trying to make it where we have an environment where we all learn from
each other. I'm learning from you and trying to apply certain things in my
own work. Some things work, others don't, but at least it gets me to
experimenting. As an engineer, I'm constantly trying to "improve" upon
things and find solutions to problems that don't even exist. But alas, I
must recognize that without stretching my own photographic horizons I will
end up narrowcasting my own work and end up outside the wall of relevancy.
AG
--
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