Crawling Mayhem (aka tickles) and the tree.

[biggerry]

I am doing my bit to keep the forum active with Baby photos, quick frankly I like inflicting these images now, years ago when i did not have kids I would have never dreamed of it but that was in another life lol

Just as peace offering I will also include a non-baby photo

Tickles has somehow found the use, or should say effective use, of her legs to 1) crawl every where 2) prevent anyone putting clothes on her 3) attempt to climb on anything within reach.

Crawling Mayhem by Gerard Blacklock, on Flickr

The second image has a bit of history, it was certainly a tricky image to process, it is a 3 shot panorama with each shot bracketed (+0-), there were no filters used and as such the dynamic range was still fairly high and I really wanted to preserve the shadows on the mud yet maintain that pastel pink in the sky, which I find is exceptionally easy to lose even when the frame correctly exposed (hence why i often use minus0.5 bais on the exposure).

However, the fun only started when trying to stitch this bracketed shot, even with some good overlap between images it always resulted in some serious mismatch in the tree resulting in multiple tree trunks ;( Thus an alternative method was needed, I loaded each bracketed shot into a stack and manually blended the frames, this had to be carefully done to maintain a nice even exposure over the three frames of the panorama this was then flattened and then pano merged with PS photomerge, alas some parts of the horizon were a bit wonky, luckily in PS with the photomerge it lets you adjust the actual parts of the photomerge blends, consequently after some manual blending of the panorama frames it was looking better, ie straight horizon etc

Whilst processing this image it got me thinking, I think I now have had pretty well complete control over the image, from the actual dynamic range blending through to the stitched image blending - in this case I knew what I wanted it to look like at the end of the day (close to what I saw with my eyes, with a touch extra ), it was simply a matter of the process to get there with the tools I have.

Anyway, comments, critique, as usual good bad or ugly welcome - I am particularly interested in the composition, I deliberately centred the tree and the horizon, I personally like this but know it goes against some conventional composition rules.

Beachmere Panorama by Gerard Blacklock, on Flickr

[TonyT]

She growing up.

With the pano I love it, I have no problem with the composition, I can see what you wanted and it works fine for me but I fine the water on the left not right, it leads my eye up there. It is adding a distraction, I would crop it out if this was mine but each to their own

[Geoff M]

Tickles looks very cute with a mischievous look. nice and sharp where it's needed but then you would not expect any different.

The tree pano looks good too. I see where Tony is coming from and an alternative crop may well suit. It would have been nice to see the full reflection of the tree but I guess that was not possible from your position. Moving forward would have achieved it but then you would lose the ripples in the sand which is needed as another point of interest.

[biggerry]

She growing up.

Tickles looks very cute with a mischievous look. nice and sharp where it's needed but then you would not expect any different.

yeah living up to the name now too

With the pano I love it, I have no problem with the composition, I can see what you wanted and it works fine for me but I fine the water on the left not right, it leads my eye up there. It is adding a distraction, I would crop it out if this was mine but each to their own

The tree pano looks good too. I see where Tony is coming from and an alternative crop may well suit. It would have been nice to see the full reflection of the tree but I guess that was not possible from your position. Moving forward would have achieved it but then you would lose the ripples in the sand which is needed as another point of interest.

I can see what your saying here, upon a revisit cropping out a large portion of the left does help and makes for a pleasing composition - i do have another image where the reflection feature better (complete) however it is a portrait orientation since at the time there was just not enough water in this bit to get a pano version in without getting some of the other mangroves off to the left in the frame.

thanks for the comments and thoughts guys, very helpful and appreciated.