Photography Thailand Forum

[SimonP]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on the Forum and I woud be happy to receive  any comments anyone might have.

These two photos were taken last Friday at the Water Buffalo Racing in Chonburi.  It was a good opportunity to practise my panning technique but now I wish I had taken a few more shots with a faster shutter speed.  There were quite a few photographers there as well as film crews.  I wonder if any other Forum members made it on the Friday or Saturday?

Cheers,
Simon.

[SimonP]

Futher down the straight...

[bjorn slis]

Welcome,
I love the way this big animal seems to fly in the second shot, too bad head of the "jockey" got cut off
I look forward to seeing more of your work

[Marc Schultz]

Welcome to the Forum Simon and I agree with Bjorn, the second one is a very nicely panned shot. The head being cut off might be salvageable compositionally if you crop the bottom a bit tighter as well to give the image a bit more of a panoramic effect. It wont change the fact that the head of the driver is cut, although it might stylize the composition a bit more and possibly fool the audience into thinking it was somewhat intentional. I played around with the image just a bit and attached is what I came up with. I also thought it might work a bit better in B&W since the exposure seems a bit dark. Lastly, I added just a touch of selective sharpening on the face of the buffalo which seemed to be the area of the picture in sharpest focus anyway.

The artifacts occurring around some of the edges on my version seemed to have come out during the B&W conversion process, not during the sharpening since I only sharpened the face of the buffalo as I said. It is possible the result would have been better if the B&W conversion was done before the image was downsized to low-res, but I am not sure. Hope this helps.

[bjorn slis]

 
Hah, I played with it too, and converted it to BW, didn't post it because I like the original brown/greys of the buffalo so much I didn't want to spoil them, the bw version does push the background back so the focus is more on the animal, and that I do like

[bjorn slis]

ok my bw copy

[SimonP]

Nice to get this quick feedback!  Yes, it would have been nice to have this shot with the rider's complete head.  I guess I posted it cos it still ended up being my favourite shot of the day.

Great idea Bjorn and Marc converting to black and white.  Thanks for you input.  Bjorn I think the black border is really good too (how do you do that?) - doesn't accentuate the cut off head as much as the white border effect.  Marc, thanks for the info about adjusting the image - that is one of the things I hope to learn about by being a regular on the Forum.  I know very little about using Photo Shop. 

For these images I just used the Auto Levels option (from an ACDSee program which was on my computer when I got it).  That seemed to darken it quite a bit which I left in as it seemed to get rid of this hazey effect that was in the original.  I'm guessing tho there's a better way to get rid of the haze without darkening too much?

Cheers,
Simon.

[bjorn slis]

The border I do in photoshop, make the background color black and then the canvas size a little bigger.
It would be a good idea not to use the auto levels function, but adjust the levels manually untill you like what you have.
In photoshop it's always good to make a new level adjustment layer, so you can turn the layer on and off, and change the levels
 

[SimonP]

Thanks for that Bjorn, guess I was a little lazy not adjusting manually 

Started to look at Photoshop but it's pretty daunting for a beginner.  Will try out your suggestions though.

Marc, had a look at your Tutorials section, specifically the one on Selective Lightening.  Looks like exactly the info I need, but I need a bit of time to digest it all!  Was going to post some more pics using some of those techniques but ran into a few problems...
Does it matter what version of Photoshop you use? (Mine is 7.0)  I tried to left click following one of your instructions but nothing happened.  What version of Photoshop do you use?

Simon.

[kinginexile]

The movement and energy in the second shot are well caught, and even better conveyed cropped in B&W indeed. The beast gives such a raw impression that the imperfections like the blur and cut head  become part of the shot. Good effort, and you know excatly what you would have liked to handle better.

[SimonP]

Hi, thanks for your opinion also.  I agree, Marc and Bjorn did a great job.

Have never really tried converting to B/W before.  I'll post some new shots once I've experimented with Photoshop a bit more.

Be good to know what you think about these too.

Cheers,
Simon.

[Marc Schultz]

Your welcome Simon. I am using Photoshop CS2 (version 9). The latest version.