Opinions from experience please
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AussieByron
Contributor
Some more black background stuff:
Cheers Mark
Cheers Mark
Art is in the eye of the beholder. I'm a student of Minor White and I don't shoot for the medium of the computer monitor. But I do know what sells in prints, and to the people that get the point of that image, it is very successful. I would say that if your octo image makes a good large print, that they would be very similar, but the ones that like one, would not like the other. If you like a specific type of shot, clearly you should take as many as you want.
But please consider this: Art is not a method or a technique. Those are tools. If you look at a Ansel Adams picture (friend and from the same school of thought as Minor) and all you see is a pretty mountain picture, you missed the point of the photograph.
And while I don't have one percent of the talent that either of those two gentlemen had, having spent time with them, I think I get what they were trying to communicate.
The very nice example of the crab and the fade to black is a great example of a lovely image, but it is not art. The instant the photographer states they used _________ (fill in the blank) method, it is just a lovely example of a technique.
It is funny, as I have a divers on a line, with the sun image, that about 20% of the people seem to really like. It is a formula shot, which looks like 100,000 other images using that method. I did it to show people how it is done for a class. If someone wants one, I give it away.
The point of this thread was about which camera to use, and the fact still is that, depending on what type of images and the conditions one dives in, both types of camera's can do the job.
The picture I posted was not about the animal, by the way, it was about the lighting...
Just take a look at this boring image:
http://www.pc-gallery.net/showPhoto.php?id=1040
QUOTE=AussieByron;5767249]Well I have to disagree with the see 10 bad images with the fisheye before one good one. It comes down to the photographer and their ability to use the fisheye lens. I see far more bad shots taken with a point and shoot for one good shot. There is a difference between owning a wide angle lens and actually using it underwater. I find the Fisheye the only lens to use on largae animals underwater. The 180 degree view of the Tokina 10-17mm allows me to put little water between the subject and myself allowing my strobes to provide ample coverage. I believe the distortion of the Fisheye isnt an issue underwater as often there are no straight lines in the frame and the distortion only really shows when the subject is really close. This also provides some interesting and creative shots.
You have informed us many times that the point and shoot has the ability to shoot a much higher flash sync than the DSLR. Great, it freezes the motion of fast moving fish but I dont see the point of this benefit when most of the macro work in my opinion is on stationary or slow moving subjects. You said yourself the point and shoot is lacking in wide angle compared to DSLR.
In my opinion the examples of your photos so far show a big lack in composition. All the examples are basically having the subject smack bag in the middle of the frame with in some cases alot of boring background behind it. Fair enough if your just doing it for ID work its all you need.
Take your Cowie example above. A little subject shot right in the middle with alot of boring background with no composition. Sure you can have a large file size, but why bother. Lighting wise its a bit boring and the use of ambient light does nothing for it. For a subject like that I personally would fill the frame mostly with the subject and go for the black background and bring those colours out solely with strobe lighting.
Come on Puffer pull out your favourite shots and lets have a look at them. Up to now your talking the talk without walking the walk. I often find on forums people talk about experience with little or no reference to their own work. How many times have you heard "I know how to techincally do it but cant phyiscally do it".
Cheers Mark[/QUOTE]
But please consider this: Art is not a method or a technique. Those are tools. If you look at a Ansel Adams picture (friend and from the same school of thought as Minor) and all you see is a pretty mountain picture, you missed the point of the photograph.
And while I don't have one percent of the talent that either of those two gentlemen had, having spent time with them, I think I get what they were trying to communicate.
The very nice example of the crab and the fade to black is a great example of a lovely image, but it is not art. The instant the photographer states they used _________ (fill in the blank) method, it is just a lovely example of a technique.
It is funny, as I have a divers on a line, with the sun image, that about 20% of the people seem to really like. It is a formula shot, which looks like 100,000 other images using that method. I did it to show people how it is done for a class. If someone wants one, I give it away.
The point of this thread was about which camera to use, and the fact still is that, depending on what type of images and the conditions one dives in, both types of camera's can do the job.
The picture I posted was not about the animal, by the way, it was about the lighting...
Just take a look at this boring image:
http://www.pc-gallery.net/showPhoto.php?id=1040
QUOTE=AussieByron;5767249]Well I have to disagree with the see 10 bad images with the fisheye before one good one. It comes down to the photographer and their ability to use the fisheye lens. I see far more bad shots taken with a point and shoot for one good shot. There is a difference between owning a wide angle lens and actually using it underwater. I find the Fisheye the only lens to use on largae animals underwater. The 180 degree view of the Tokina 10-17mm allows me to put little water between the subject and myself allowing my strobes to provide ample coverage. I believe the distortion of the Fisheye isnt an issue underwater as often there are no straight lines in the frame and the distortion only really shows when the subject is really close. This also provides some interesting and creative shots.
You have informed us many times that the point and shoot has the ability to shoot a much higher flash sync than the DSLR. Great, it freezes the motion of fast moving fish but I dont see the point of this benefit when most of the macro work in my opinion is on stationary or slow moving subjects. You said yourself the point and shoot is lacking in wide angle compared to DSLR.
In my opinion the examples of your photos so far show a big lack in composition. All the examples are basically having the subject smack bag in the middle of the frame with in some cases alot of boring background behind it. Fair enough if your just doing it for ID work its all you need.
Take your Cowie example above. A little subject shot right in the middle with alot of boring background with no composition. Sure you can have a large file size, but why bother. Lighting wise its a bit boring and the use of ambient light does nothing for it. For a subject like that I personally would fill the frame mostly with the subject and go for the black background and bring those colours out solely with strobe lighting.
Come on Puffer pull out your favourite shots and lets have a look at them. Up to now your talking the talk without walking the walk. I often find on forums people talk about experience with little or no reference to their own work. How many times have you heard "I know how to techincally do it but cant phyiscally do it".
Cheers Mark[/QUOTE]
AussieByron
Contributor
Puffer do you have a point in quoting that your a student of Minor White's? Cause your underwater examples of "Frozen fish" you are providing in this post fail to follow Minor's White's "Equivalents" which is all about providing a emotionally symbolic charged image. One of Minor White's quotes is "When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence". I think you have failed to understand what they (others with the same of thought as White's) are trying to communicate and this is shown with your examples so far of frozen fish.
I can fully understand why Minor White didnt use the medium of computer monitor or use with the Digital age..........thats because he died in 1976 and no one had personal computers. But I would believe if Minor was living in this current age that he would be grasping the digital age by both horns.
Is this an excuse for you to not show any more of your images on the medium of the computer monitor. You havnt had a problem with "frozen fish" so dont let that stop you now.
As you said art is in the eye of the behold and what emotion the image gives to the viewer. The photographer can tell me everything about how they took the image and what school of thought, technique, camera setting or whatever but if that image gives me a emotional reaction I would indeed call it art.
Warren's example of a Porcelain Crab with fade to black gives me the feeling of frustration (of the little bugger not coming out in the open) and even a feeling of warmth as the crab is bathed in a warm light. To me this is an example of art and not just a technique.
You may think that this image is boring (â - ?) But I actually like it as it makes me think of the smell of fresh rain and the feeling of wet grass between my toes. I take that over "Frozen fish" anyday.
The point of this thread until recently was to provide unbiased information to the OP regarding which way they should start. Honestly I would not recommend a DSLR to them and would suggest a nice point and shoot or geting their flip video housed.
Providing generalised, biased and often regurgitated information copied from the internet without having any personal experience in the area often makes one look like an arm chair expert to those that have experience in the field but to those who dont have experience provides information which they can take as gospel.
Puffer I would be glad to see any of your underwater images taken with a DSLR if you have any or any of your underwater images which are more artist than "Frozen fish". Especially anything with some composition. This might mean you have to enter into the digital age and post images on that wicked format of the computer monitor.
I would like to see that "divers on the line with sun shot"......maybe then I can comment why on 20% of people like it.
Regards Mark
I can fully understand why Minor White didnt use the medium of computer monitor or use with the Digital age..........thats because he died in 1976 and no one had personal computers. But I would believe if Minor was living in this current age that he would be grasping the digital age by both horns.
Is this an excuse for you to not show any more of your images on the medium of the computer monitor. You havnt had a problem with "frozen fish" so dont let that stop you now.
As you said art is in the eye of the behold and what emotion the image gives to the viewer. The photographer can tell me everything about how they took the image and what school of thought, technique, camera setting or whatever but if that image gives me a emotional reaction I would indeed call it art.
Warren's example of a Porcelain Crab with fade to black gives me the feeling of frustration (of the little bugger not coming out in the open) and even a feeling of warmth as the crab is bathed in a warm light. To me this is an example of art and not just a technique.
You may think that this image is boring (â - ?) But I actually like it as it makes me think of the smell of fresh rain and the feeling of wet grass between my toes. I take that over "Frozen fish" anyday.
The point of this thread until recently was to provide unbiased information to the OP regarding which way they should start. Honestly I would not recommend a DSLR to them and would suggest a nice point and shoot or geting their flip video housed.
Providing generalised, biased and often regurgitated information copied from the internet without having any personal experience in the area often makes one look like an arm chair expert to those that have experience in the field but to those who dont have experience provides information which they can take as gospel.
Puffer I would be glad to see any of your underwater images taken with a DSLR if you have any or any of your underwater images which are more artist than "Frozen fish". Especially anything with some composition. This might mean you have to enter into the digital age and post images on that wicked format of the computer monitor.
I would like to see that "divers on the line with sun shot"......maybe then I can comment why on 20% of people like it.
Regards Mark
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Hi Puffer, I'm a bit confused by your comments regarding what one considers to be art. As you allude to, what is art is a personal point of view. What you or I would consider to be art may very well be different than what someone else believes. What I'm not clear about is that (based on your comments about a photographer talking about the techniques or methods he or she may employ in taking a photo) one's photo is not art when the photographer talks about how the shot was taken? Given this position, I would have thought what is art and what isn't wouldn't be something that could be defined in such a manner.
gungagallunga
Registered
Puffer fish, how are you making these adjustments afterwards?
To add to Herbdb's excellent post, here is the original and adjusted versions of a shot taken at around 90 ft (where there is just a tiny bit of red light):
I could make the background "Bluer" on the second pictures, but just wanted to show a simple white balance change.
Hi Gungagallunga.
I'm impressed that you would take the time to read this terrible thread.
First off, you need a camera that shoots in raw (where there is a lot more data available than you can see).
Second, you need raw processing software. Surprisingly, some do more adjustment that others... for example, Lightroom is about the least and After shot is about the most. Not sure why that is, as you would think they were all working with the same information.
Third, doing an auto white balance adjustment (actually a grey scale adjustment) can make a larger adjustment than you can do, if you do it manually (again, not sure why that is).
Fourth, You then can make minor adjustments to correct (as the images picked need to have done) any off shade problems from not having a true grey to do the color balance one.
Have to change computers to get images to show, so will be in another post.
PS Some camera's that shoot raw come with fairly good software...Canon's is not bad, Panasonic and Fuji both use the same software, and while not the easiest to understand, works very well. Olympus sucks and one should get better software. Don't know the Nikon stuff.
---------- Post Merged at 07:51 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:06 PM ----------
Warren, Let me give you an example. A several years ago, as my wife's birthday present, I got her a Canon 50D and several L lenses. She wanted to learn as much as she could about photography, so she joined a Canon Forum and would post images, discuss technic's and talk about what was good and bad. About a year into the forum, one of her images brought out a discussion regarding how great DSLR's were over all other digital camera's. Lovely Bokeh, controlled depth of field...etc, etc.
So she asked me why only a Dslr could do that, and I explained to her that these are just tools, and if you care more about the technology, you are missing the whole point of photography. So I went out, took an image, stripped of all the camera info and gave it to her to post. Just under 100 people made glowing comments about this lovely Dslr image.....and then she told them it was not taken with a Dslr.. and she got banned.
Minor taught us that by shooting one day with a brownie box camera and took better images than I have ever seen (or personally taken). If you care about the technic, the method, the tools, then you don't care about the object.
In the older days, if you shot with a slr, you were not really a photographer (in an art sense)..because real photographers (except for New York studio people) use large format cameras. Today, we have that same snobbery, only it has switched to DSLR's.
When you look at "art"...if you see the technic, think about the method, consider the tools, then it may be a lovely image, it may be something you really like, but it stopped being art this instant you switched your thinking from looking at the image to thinking about how it was made. As the image's message just became one of what tools were used...
In painting, for example, it would be the same as thinking about the type of pigments, the specific brushes used and how they were applied when you look at say the Mona Lisa. Even more so, if you were to judge the final image based whether or not the specific tools used were ones you have decided at the only ones that can make "art".
---------- Post Merged on July 3rd, 2012 at 06:27 PM ---------- Previous Post was on July 2nd, 2012 at 07:06 PM ----------
Found one to adjust:
There, a before and after shot, done with software.
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