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I did get to go to the Tulip Festival last Friday. No big crowds, but crowded enough. Going over my shots, I seemed to lack any knowledge of my camera gear or the subject matter. A partly cloudy day and I thought I would use a CP to take some shine off the tulips, except it was a "Moose" CP/warming filter. Totally over saturated the reds. DUH!!!! Didn't even see it on the reviews while shooting. I metered wrong, camera was set up wrong. I haven't done any outdoor shooting in a long time and it showed. The last image was my favorite, as there was a cloud over the tulip field and that caused a color shift. There are only two colors of tulips in reality. A bunch of editing to get these. So, for you C/C. Thanks for looking.
Lou, like Jake, I also noticed that all your photos are from a standing height. Getting lower will really help present the flowers. I'm not on my photoshop computer so I cant tilt the photo but I think this crop can help show a little bit what emphasizing one thing will do. Definitely use the background but add emphasis to one thing by giving it more space in the frame.
Lou, thanks for posting. It can be tough to post something and say "this didn't work", we all like to show off our good stuff, but not as anxious to post the rest.
First of all, we all have bad days, for many reasons. Sometimes I'll come home with a bunch of nice shots, other times I just totally strike out.
Jake has already covered a lot of what I'd suggest. Shooting in RAW will avoid the color shift issue, since you can change white balance after the fact. It will also allow you to correct exposure, within reason. I suggest shooting in raw for just about everything, except if you have a very specific reason to go jpg, such as wanting to print on site, or to make processing hundreds of images faster and easier.
As for the tulip fields. You've discovered what a lot of us have found out. They look incredible in person. Brilliant colors, huge fields that seem to go on forever, scenic backgrounds. Unfortunately, capturing that isn't as easy as it would seem.
Why is that? A couple of reasons... The flowers become fairly small at print size, and lose a lot of the effect. That's one challenge. The other is that your eye tends to filter out the objectionable stuff and notice the picturesque things. So you see the rustic old barn, but overlook the newer industrial looking one, and the other junk that tends to clutter up the fields.
There are ways around it, but you have to be creative and it's a challenge.
Here's my suggestion. Ideally, you'd do this "in camera" by using an aperature that's large enough to create a shallow depth of field, and thus focus people's attention on the subject while de-emphasizing the background.
This is something that most people have to get used to. As photographers, we often tend to want to have the entire scene in sharp focus. Isn't that why we buy those fancy lenses and mega-mega pixel cameras?
Selective focus can be quite useful. It directs the viewer to what you want them to see, while also including the other elements but in a way that allows them to not be distracting.
I faked it in Photoshop, but here's what I'm suggesting:
Wow.. Thanks for the feedback. It's always good to get it. I generally get mentally prepared before I go to a shoot, but somehow the mental quit working. Lou
Lou, I think we all have days like that. Or most of us do. If you do the same thing every shoot, then you don't need inspiration. But if you're out trying new and different things, you'll have days where you just don't get the shot. It happens to everyone. I've even had it happen when I had a shot pre-visualized. Sometimes what you see in your mind and what you see in real life just doesn't sync up.
As an example, I wanted a shot of the Lady Washington with her masts sillouhetted by the full moon. Standing on the dock, the shot was easy to visualize. The moon in the midst of the rigging, illuminating the masts and lines. You could easily see it with the naked eye.
What you couldn't do was get the shot. Did I mention the dock? The floating dock that was gently, but constantly, moving, shifting, flexing? Oh, and of course the ship was also rocking in the gentle waves as well. Try as I might, I simply could not get the shot I could easily see.
So it happens, and happens more often than you might like. The trick is get right back out there shooting and try again!
Sometimes having large areas of color like in your images work because the viewer doesn't have to focus on the detail. In most of the images you show, I'd crop out even more of the sky in most of them and make the almost solid areas of color more prominent rather than just a section along the bottom. You might also try playing around with using a water color, canvas or any of several image manipulation filters in Photoshop or Painter to turn it into more of a impressionist type painting.
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