backlit photo and other questions

[ginger_55]

I did this after midnight: way after midnight. I did most of the workup in RAW. The cropping in PS, and maybe something else. It is pretty naked as far as work is concerned. I forgot to sharpen it, but I did sharpen it a bit in RAW, I did not want it over sharpened.

This drew universal criticism when I put it up on a forum. I like to do backlit shots. One, because they are there, and two, because I like certain effects of the light like the rimming around the object. In birds I like whatever translucent qualities show up in the wings.

So I did immediately think I would post this so we could talk backlit. Am I the only one who wants to do it? If I do it, well, from reading I do know that it would be magic if the bird had turned its head to the sun, but the bird didn't. If you have shots like this, how do you work them up? If you don't trash them.

The background, that is what gives me the willies and why I cropped it so tightly last night. Any suggestions on that?

I am sure I will think of other things if you all would only respond. This is different from the one I first posted. One, I know a bit about using RAW now that I didn't before. Plus I thought about it, and I have "learned" in the past that to try to force a photo just brings disaster, so I let the dark parts stay dark.

This is the link to smugmug, access to the orig is there.

Another question I have is that when I crop I lose pixels. In order for that not to happen, do I do 100% crop, and if I do, I still don't understand how to do that, though it was explained to me. I didn't quite get it, as to how. So how do you all crop a photo, technically what do you all do? I have just used the crop tool, but it does come down smaller than a full size does.

ginger, thank you. (I hope I have not broken any rules by actually showing three versions: it is the same photograph)
http://gingerSnap.smugmug.com/photos/26726931-L.jpg

as brought up from RAW, after "improvements" in RAW

http://gingerSnap.smugmug.com/photos/26726932-L.jpg

The one I did recently, the one everyone loved to hate.......or hated it in their face, whatever.

http://gingerSnap.smugmug.com/photos/26157539-M.jpg

http://gingerSnap.smugmug.com/gallery/626041/1/26157539

there it all is. I have a doctor's appt this afternoon, but I expect to spend some time discussing this when someone comes who does do backlit photos, for whatever reason.

If no one does................................well, we can discuss the crop, at least.

[Shay Stephens]

I like back lit subjects. I think it works well for the birds.

About cropping. Think of it like a cake. How in the world could you possibly cut a cake and yet keep it intact without loosing anything? You can't. When you cut/crop you are discarding portions and there is no way around that.

But in the bigger picture, that loss can be more than made up for in the now better composition. Your final print size/presentation size will determine if a crop was too severe.

A 100% crop is merely a crop that has not been resized up or down and is typically used in online display. It means that the photo you are looking at is at the pixel level, one pixel of the image is the true pixel captured.

If you crop a photo and then resize it down for web display, it can never be considered a 100% crop. Likewise if you crop and then blow the image up in size, it can never be considered a 100% crop, because one pixel of the image is now x% bigger than what was captured.

If your image is 3000x2000 pixels originally, and you crop a small 640x480 portion of the image and post that with out resizing it, you are looking at a 100% crop.

If instead you crop a 1024x768 portion of the image and resize it down to 640x480 and post that, it can not be called a 100% crop because the pixels no longer represent the pixels as captured by the camera.

One typically posts a 100% crop to show some aspect of the sensor, noise, dust, artifacts, etc. When you resize an image, those characteristics get hidden by the process of resizing. For example, high ISO noise tends to be minimized when you resize an image smaller that full size. So if one wanted to try and quantify the noise you would want to see a sample showing the 1:1 ratio of the pixels. A 100% crop would let you do that as there has been no resizing done.

[BenA2]

I think the first picture looks great. Both the backlighting and the crop work for me. That tight of a crop, however, may not make for the best print. Compositionally, though, you've done well.

As for backlighting... I think most people have a negative perception of backlit shots because most of them look bad. And, they often look bad, not because there's anything inherantly wrong with shooting them. It's just that they can be very, very challenging to shoot well (I know I'm no good at them). In my opinion, you've pulled it off in this shot.

-Ben

[ginger_55]

Thank you, Shay, that was worth blowing my week on this photo right there.

The crop info, and it is nice to know that someone is not against backlit. I am sure that there are still people who don't like it, or who could offer their experiences with handling backlit subjects.

ginger

[ginger_55]

Thanks, Ben.

I appreciated the "good" opinion!

Trying to get facial detail of a person in a portrait, in a backlit shot, it can be a real problem, to say the least. I prefer the easy route, sun right in their face and they had better open their eyes, DARN it!

But for artistic purposes, I really do enjoy the rimming effect of light, and with birds, the translucent quality that often shows up in the wings, the real subject of some of my shots.

I have a series I have been working on called, "wings".

ginger

Thanks again for commenting.

Dissenting opinions are also solicited.................... it might give me ideas of things to work with. Or, things not to work with. Or PS ideas. I learned a lot about PS in the week between originally showing the shot and posting the "improved" verson here. Actually, I learned a lot about RAW, more than PS.

I do think a tutorial on RAW might be a good idea, or buy the book: Camera Raw. I put mine in a drawer for a long time. It might be a better idea to read some of it, particularly starting with page 73, or slightly before or after.