melev

After publishing my article about the extension tubes, I got some immediate feedback and a few suggestions to apply. Gary Parr of ReefThreads offered to take a look at one of my RAW files, the original photo taken of an acan. I emailed him the 12 meg file so he could see what I was working with, and he replied with excellent pointers for me to try next. He also included a cleaned up version of my picture:

The first thing I noticed was that I liked his version so much better than my own. The acan is red with green borders in real life, but this looked really nice. I checked to see what my version of this picture looked like:

Huh, kind of drab. This got me wondering: #1) How did he do it? and #2) Could I do it too? You can tell by comparing the two pictures that he cropped off some of the bottom. Matter of fact, his image was 1000 pixels wide, which looks even nicer on my monitor. (Resized to 770px wide for Reefaddicts)

In Lightroom, I found my original which shows the history of my edits. From the point I left off, I tried to mimic some of the changes Gary has applied to see if I could match his skills just for the heck of it. Here's the original image, then what I'd shared recently, and finally what was closer to his version.

A couple of things are worth noting. First, what you download from your camera may not look good at all at first glance. It may look washed out, too blue, or worse. The beauty of post processing is you can fix an image to look better, so the picture can be enjoyed. No one likes looking at cellphone pictures that are all blue, and the iPhone is terrible about aquarium photos. Taking pictures outdoors or shooting indoors with a flash is easier than what we try to photograph in this hobby. The point: If you can clean it up, everyone benefits. Look at the stunning images coral vendors post online every day... people buy those corals because the pictures are great.

My image wasn't ideal. Gary would have framed it better to avoid any sand that throws off the sensor. He would have stepped it down more, so it wasn't blown out. He would have increased the depth of field for more of it to be in focus. But here's the kicker. He used my picture, and fixed it to look significantly better, vastly beyond what I'd released originally as my final edit.

I find the comparison interesting. I always try to make my images look like what I see with my eyes. If Gary had seen the coral in person, would that have changed his final version? Perhaps the colors would be a little different... I don't know.

I'll keep working on it.