Landscape September 2012

[Autobot]

1 - The simple things in life



2 - Morning sunrise lights up Olympus



3 - The Rolling Hills of the West



4 - Out of the Clouds



5 - Mt Banks sunset



6 - Sarah Anne Rocks Stormfront



7 - Charlesworth Bay



8 - Sunbeams over Tunkalilla Beach



9 - Evening Shadows



10 - looking back on terrigal haven



11 - The Steamers (Qld)



12 - Wattamolla


(This post/poll automatically generated by the Photo Competition system)

[tom_brennan]

Maybe it's just my monitor, but I feel like there's a lot of weird post-processing going on this month!!

[MJD]

Could be my monitor as well but they look alright to me.

[tom_brennan]

Looks the same on my work monitor, so I'd say it's me. Maybe I'm being harsh, but it looks to me like quite a few people found the sliders in Photoshop and pushed them a bit too far.

[stepbystep]

Looks the same on my work monitor, so I'd say it's me. Maybe I'm being harsh, but it looks to me like quite a few people found the sliders in Photoshop and pushed them a bit too far.

There is never enough colour in the world Tom, well almost never

[eggs]

Of the 12 entries - only 3 look a bit colour saturated to me.
A few more show some blown out sky - but that is a common occurance off any camera.

Its curious, but digital cameras can actually be setup to produce such effects automatically.
ie they can come that way straight out of the camera.
In the end, it comes down to what people like.
If folk vote for colour saturation, then probably the photos submitted will drift that way to suite.
There appears to be very little on the winning photos this year, but I am more concerned that the voting base appears to be dwindling.

[tom_brennan]

There is never enough colour in the world Tom, well almost never

Ha ha, that’s what I thought too when I first discovered HDR!

Of the 12 entries - only 3 look a bit colour saturated to me.

There’s 5 that for me look to have either excessive saturation or excessive lightening of shadows or darkening of highlights. Plus one with vignetting. You can’t always tell what changes (if any) have been made. For all I know they might have been straight out of the camera and I might be barking up the wrong tree.

In any case, I’m all for post processing since I shoot in RAW. Unprocessed RAW images are almost always flat, washed out and a bit soft. That said, when I look back at photos I processed a few years ago, I tend to find them a little oversaturated, so not sure if I’ve changed, or my monitor is a bit better quality.

[Vern]

I've noticed some of my images look totally different on other computers so I think the screen has a lot to do with it. I've got a crappy computer so not sure how that changes things.

That being said, colour can be altered easily these days with all the settings on the cameras so its hard to know what is actually post processing. White balance is a big colour changer as is using a polarised lenz. But still nothing seems to beat getting the photo at the right time of day.

[stepbystep]

Another thing I've noticed is that the pic I submit/upload looks quite different(usually flatter in colour) than the file I've linked too.
I'm assuming this is due to the compression for the comp page. So I have deliberately cranked the colours a little trying to get it to the original, with mixed results

Viewed on the same screen I'll add. Anyone else noticed this?

[Son of a Beach]

Another thing I've noticed is that the pic I submit/upload looks quite different(usually flatter in colour) than the file I've linked too.
I'm assuming this is due to the compression for the comp page. So I have deliberately cranked the colours a little trying to get it to the original, with mixed results

Viewed on the same screen I'll add. Anyone else noticed this?

Yes, this issue has been raised by photo-philes before. We do need to investigate using a better conversion mechanism that keeps the scaled down images truer to the original images.

[stepbystep]

Another thing I've noticed is that the pic I submit/upload looks quite different(usually flatter in colour) than the file I've linked too.
I'm assuming this is due to the compression for the comp page. So I have deliberately cranked the colours a little trying to get it to the original, with mixed results

Viewed on the same screen I'll add. Anyone else noticed this?

Yes, this issue has been raised by photo-philes before. We do need to investigate using a better conversion mechanism that keeps the scaled down images truer to the original images.

Perhaps give us the full image!? Have I mentioned this before..?? Apart from the compression issue, a fine detailed landscape is not given the chance/representation it should.

[Son of a Beach]

There are other problems with that approach but I won't rule it out, either.

[north-north-west]

Another thing I've noticed is that the pic I submit/upload looks quite different(usually flatter in colour) than the file I've linked too.
I'm assuming this is due to the compression for the comp page. So I have deliberately cranked the colours a little trying to get it to the original, with mixed results

Viewed on the same screen I'll add. Anyone else noticed this?

Yes, I've noticed mine often look both flatter in colour and sometimes a bit . . . well, fuzzier, for want of a better term. I blame Telstra.

[biggbird]

Not to seem silly, as you probably have all considered this, but could your flatter images have to do with colour space? I know that I kept finding my photos flatter, more washed out, less vibrant when I uploaded them to flickr etc, and eventually worked out that it was because they were still in the adobeRGB colour space when I uploaded them, as opposed to the internet optimised sRGB. It was a frustrating few hours working out what exactly I needed to change, and how I needed to change it, but seems to have worked in the end! Anyway, just another option

[iaindtiler]

A circular polarised filter will automatically bring out a richer colour in a certain part of the picture, straight from the camera. And while i shoot mostly in RAW format, i feel sometimes the images arn't sharp enough. Hence , sometimes i oversharpen images , oops

[Autobot]

Congratulations to the winner of the Landscape September 2012 competition, with 11 votes:

• Pteropus - The Steamers (Qld)

The key to all entries for this competition is below.

1 - The simple things in life
by ILUVSWTAS.

2 - Morning sunrise lights up Olympus
by iaindtiler.

3 - The Rolling Hills of the West
by mjdalessa.

4 - Out of the Clouds
by tsangpo.

5 - Mt Banks sunset
by Vern.

6 - Sarah Anne Rocks Stormfront
by stepbystep.

7 - Charlesworth Bay
by iandsmith.

8 - Sunbeams over Tunkalilla Beach
by eggs.

9 - Evening Shadows
by north-north-west.

10 - looking back on terrigal haven
by rockterrigal.

11 - The Steamers (Qld)
by Pteropus.

12 - Wattamolla
by johnw.

[Pteropus]

I have waited till the competition was over before I commented on the saturation issue. I do believe that it is a monitor issue, and that we are all seeing the same image with different colours and tones. My computer on which I process photos, and view this competition on, is a crappy four year old laptop with a fairly poor lcd screen. ALL the photos in this competition look perfectly fine on my screen. When I looked at these photos on a mate’s high-definition Mac-book, all photos are much more vivid than on my computer, but still look fine and natural. However, if I view the photos through my high-definition television, the colours look unnatural and photos can look hideous.

I don’t know about everyone else, but for competition purposes, I play around with the RAW image and make several versions of the photo I intend to enter, then compare them and submit the best one. Post processing the RAW image is analogous to the dark-room of film days of yore. Apparently, famous American landscape photographer Ansel Adams re-processed his photographs many many times, using different techniques to achieve different effects. I think that an aesthetically pleasing photo is just that, and will attract people’s attention regardless. And after all, the photograph is a just a representation of the reality, and nothing will ever look as good as crisp, clear and vivid as what the reality does through our eyes. So thanks for all the votes!