Sunday, January 31, 2010

Really Big Flag

Taken this past weekend at the Homes for Our Troops Sporting Clays event in Fulshear, Texas. I was invited by an old friend to attend this event and take photographs as the official event photographer. The shot posted today took a lot of work in Photoshop in order to get it like I wanted it. Maybe you think I did too much work on it? Or not enough? The only thing I'm fairly sure of is that no one will tell me they like the "before" better than the "after" shot. Maybe! :-)

Title: "Really Big Flag" (rollover)


Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm L zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin > Nik Viveza plugin

7 comments:

Cindi said...

I love it! I think you did a fabulous job! Do you give Photoshop lessons? I wish you could fix the problem you have with this blog though, so I could click on the image and see it bigger. But your editing is perfect, and it is really interesting how much better the flag detail shows up with the texture added.

Doug Haass said...

I agree with Cindi. Nice job on taking a bad looking photo (sorry Barry) and creating something nice out of it. Obviously that's not the usual route you would want to take, but it works here. I like the texture and processing used. Good job reclaiming an important shot from the event.

Larry said...

Nice save Barry! Be careful though, it's a clinically proven fact that too much cloning can make you go crazy.

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Cindi, Doug, and Larry!

Cindi - It's not really a problem with the blog; I just try and keep the file sizes down to help the web page load in a reasonable amount of time. I did mean to make these (rollover = two photos) photos larger but I was tired when I was processing them and I guess I punched the wrong keys (operator error :-) when I did the resizing.

Doug - This shot was one of the event planners' requests and since I couldn't seem to do anything with it in camera, because of the flat grey sky and cluttered foreground, I knew when I took it that I would have considerable Photoshop work to do.

Larry - And I thought it was the aluminum from the Diet Coke cans making me crazy! :-)

Cheers!
Barry

David A. said...

My wrist is tired of mousing over so many times. I just wanted to keep looking! You did a real good job and they should be proud. I can see a photoshop tutorial in the making.

Barry Armer said...

Thanks David!

I do the same thing you do with my mouse! I guess I'll eventually get tired of the rollover gimmick but right now it seems pretty cool! :-)

Cheers!
Barry

Larry J. Patrick said...

The texture definitely adds to this photo. Good work removing the various distractions.