Your Own Photography

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Drek again.

those last two are awesome!

Thank you!

I've been shooting a lot lately. I made a point to go out as often as possible and post on my Facebook page several times a week (soon a website shall come)

Here are a few more:

From a recent trip to Colorado

A couple from the Super Moon this weekend...

Liszt_sl said:

From a recent trip to Colorado

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Tone down the contrast/blacks a bit

Drek_sl said:

Thank you!

I've been shooting a lot lately. I made a point to go out as often as possible and post on my Facebook page several times a week (soon a website shall come)

Click to expand...

It's a pleasure viewing your photos Drek. This whole thread motivates me to shoot more!


Here's another random landscape shot of the Mississippi:

Drek_sl said:

Tone down the contrast/blacks a bit

Click to expand...

Hey Drek, I agree. The jpg version has much darker blacks than the digital negative version. Is that just part of the jpg compression kicking in?

Should I just boost the blacks/shadows to compensate for the effect?

The digital negative doesn't lose the detail of the tree-covered mountain to the left, which is completely gone in the jpg.

Thanks for the feedback!

Liszt_sl said:

Hey Drek, I agree. The jpg version has much darker blacks than the digital negative version. Is that just part of the jpg compression kicking in?

Should I just boost the blacks/shadows to compensate for the effect?

The digital negative doesn't lose the detail of the tree-covered mountain to the left, which is completely gone in the jpg.

Thanks for the feedback!

Click to expand...

It could be, it could also be from uploading. I know that when I post shots on my Facebook page, it destroys the quality. I would try to bring the blacks and contrasts down (make them less pronounced) and reupload and see. It could also be your monitor calibration. I know a few pages ago my black and whites were very gray, someone brought it up to me and I made the necessary adjustments. I was going a little crazy on the Recovery feature in Lightroom while keeping the brightness and exposure low.

A lot of it is practice, I'm still learning. Lately I have been doing a lot of black and white stuff again, this time I am getting much better feedback.

Practice, practice, practice. Be open to criticism, as long as that's what it is.

black and white?

a lot of my pictures might be good with a black and white filter, but i took this one that way...maybe not the best choice...but it looked good when i saw the opprotunity

Drek_sl said:

It could be, it could also be from uploading. I know that when I post shots on my Facebook page, it destroys the quality. I would try to bring the blacks and contrasts down (make them less pronounced) and reupload and see.It could also be your monitor calibration. I know a few pages ago my black and whites were very gray, someone brought it up to me and I made the necessary adjustments. I was going a little crazy on the Recovery feature in Lightroom while keeping the brightness and exposure low.

Click to expand...

I always take commentary on my photos on the internet with a grain of salt due to the monitor calibration issue. You just never know how someone else has their monitors calibrated. I have a dual monitor setup with one specifically calibrated for photo-editing. My photos look terrible on my main monitor which is calibrated more for gaming (which is how I am guessing a lot of people on these forums have them set up if they have calibrated them at all). Things like composition can be critiqued, but when it comes to contrast/color saturation, you just don't know if someone elses setup is accurate.

Also, when I post to Facebook I make sure to to any size/resolution reductions in Lightroom before posting. Facebook still messes them up, but it helps. If you are overly concerned, post them to another website then link that to Facebook.

Got a bunch of new shots, will post throughout the week. Here are the first two:

A couple from the July 4th Tucson Padres game.

Here is Gregorio Petit and his son before the game:



...and a firework. Damn tough to shoot since they didnt allow tripods in the stadium:

Great shot of the firework. I had a great view for the fireworks, but the wind was blowing towards me, so the smoke made the majority of my shots hazy. Probably not something that's easily accounted for, but something to think about for next time.

Damn guys, love those shots. What exposure time did you use?

Double post, apologies. Will post a shot here once I upload more.