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Mushroom Cap With Dogwood Leaf

Mary Bull

New member
On the morning of November 1, the light was subdued by a moderately heavy fog. I thought perhaps it was a good time to shoot my front lawn in macro, since the harshly contrasting shadows of bright sunlight would not be something I'd have to adjust the G2's settings for--the fog was veiling the rays of the sun that fall on this lawn about an hour after sunrise.

A red dogwood leaf had been blown by the wind near this mushroom cap. Here's what the camera caught. I enhanced the image in LightZone by reducing the noise--pushed the radius slider as far as it would go and also pushed the color intensity as far as it would go--and downsizing it.

I put it into Irfanview to get a copyright notice on it and uploaded it to my Flickr account. I'm embedding the image here:

Mushroom With Dogwood Leaf

288376533_95e0386805.jpg


I sent the RAW files of this photo to Stuart Rae, because he has been counseling me by PM e-mail about my macro photos. His rendition brightens the image so that it looks almost like the same little scene appeared to my eyes on the morning of November 2, in bright sunlight.

And, since I was already in correspondence with Joe Russo about the trees I shot in the fog of this same morning, I sent him the RAW files of the mushroom/leaf image, too. He applied a bit of sharpening to the image--which, he said, had the unexpected effect of making the colors "pop."

I have uploaded both Stuart's and Joe's renditions to Flickr. They may be seen in my gallery there at these links:

Stuart Rae's rendition:
http://static.flickr.com/110/288378645_673fcaee74_o.jpg
288378645_673fcaee74_o.jpg

Joe Russo's rendition:
http://static.flickr.com/102/289279371_3f158fa105.jpg
289279371_3f158fa105.jpg


I will be happy to supply the RAW files, if anyone else would like to work with this image.

Or you are welcome to modify my embedded jpeg from this post.

Critiques and suggestions for improvement will be most welcome.

Mary
 
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StuartRae

New member
I enhanced the image in LightZone by reducing the noise--pushed the radius slider as far as it would go

Mary,

I wonder why you felt it necessary to reduce the noise? When I processed the RAW file I didn't see any worth speaking of, and even the most sophisticated noise reduction software will lose some detail.

In fact I was pleasantly surprised to see the lack of noise at ISO 100; much better than my G5, but maybe not so surprising after all considering the larger photo-sites.

Regards,

Stuart
 

Mary Bull

New member
On my machine reducing the noise seems to make the image look sharper as it appears on the monitor screen.

So I thought I had found a safe way of sharpening edges without risking the creation of halos.

If I'm mistaken, I will stop using the noise reduction tool for this.

Also, in LightZone, on the noise reduction tool there is a slider labeled "Increase color intensity." And it seemed a safer way to me to enhance colors than the saturation tool.

I am more or less learning by experimentation.

Mary
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Mary Bull said:
On my machine reducing the noise seems to make the image look sharper as it appears on the monitor screen.

Actually noise reduction works by blurring - the image becomes less sharp.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Mary,

You brought the fall to Los Angeles! I'm glad to see the color. The mushroom? what is it?

If it is still there, can we have one from the ground?

Great work.

Asher
 

Mary Bull

New member
Noise reduction works by blurring not by making sharper

Then it's all my imagination*, that using the noise reduction tool makes the images clearer, with better defined edges of objects. So I'll stop that useless activity with the noise reduction tool.

*I do have a pretty big imagination. (Gets me in trouble, sometimes.)

Mary
 
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Mary Bull

New member
And the mushroom is ...

Asher Kelman said:
Mary,

You brought the fall to Los Angeles! I'm glad to see the color.
I'm so pleased to have pleased you.
The mushroom? what is it?
It's an immature shaggy parasol mushroom.

Edible, but only barely so.

I don't eat them. I just capture them with the G2.
If it is still there, can we have one from the ground?
It's still there, but badly shriveled from three nights of hard freezes. I think the small brick patio it's near must keep a little warmth going to the underground mycelium. So far there have been three incarnations of a handful of shaggy parasols in this area, this fall.
Great work.
I'm so glad to have pleased you.

Mary
 

StuartRae

New member
Mary,

It's interesting to see the different renditions of the mushroom and leaf.

I concentrated on the leaf, admittedly at the expense of some texture detail in the mushroom cap, which Joe has picked up.

I'd really like to know if the leaf was as red as I've made it? RSP definitely makes it much redder than the other two versions, and then I added a touch of vibrance.

Regards,

Stuart
 

Mary Bull

New member
StuartRae said:
Mary,

It's interesting to see the different renditions of the mushroom and leaf.
Yes, I found it extremely interesting.
I concentrated on the leaf, admittedly at the expense of some texture detail in the mushroom cap, which Joe has picked up.
Well, in your PM to me about what you'd done, when you attached the jpeg, you did tell me that was your goal. To showcase the leaf.

In this composition one does have a choice, to point the eye through the use of color to the leaf, or to point it to the mushroom.

I enjoy all three renditions--I'm including my own work here, also--very much. Although I wish I had been able to make my mushroom edges slightly sharper. But we've sorted my mistake on that, now.
I'd really like to know if the leaf was as red as I've made it?
It was not that red in appearance at the time I took the shot. It was more nearly the color that Joe and I have it--we both kept what the camera presented.

The fog was quite dense. And this sort of dull maroon color is how the fallen leaves and the leaves on the dogwood tree looked. They also look that way in the deep shade of mid- to late afternoon, when the sun is behind the roofs of the two-story houses and their overhanging tree branches.

But these dogwood leaves, although large. are quite delicate. Bright sunlight makes them appear just as red as you made the leaf, and from certain angles they will give the effect of translucence, just the effect that you got with your treatment.

As I said, the very next morning we did have bright sunlight, falling unimpeded from the east, an hour after sunrise, on the little mushroom cap and the leaves in the grass and legumes about it. The grass and the clover and the wild strawberry leaves glowed--as they glow every sunlit morning at that hour--with a green that seemed almost enchanted, and the leaf was a brilliant deep red, with translucent-seeming highlights.

Also, the sun washed the pink out of the tiny cap, just as your enhancements did.

Without ever having observed the little scene in person, you managed to capture it exactly, before it actually happened.
RSP definitely makes it much redder than the other two versions, and then I added a touch of vibrance.
I think it must have been the vibrance that provided the sense of enchantment for me.

Thank you so very much for your work on this photo. I have very much enjoyed having your help and seeing the end product of your work.

Mary
 

Mary Bull

New member
The Incredible Shrinking Shaggy Parasol

Asher Kelman said:
Mary,

The mushroom? what is it?

If it is still there, can we have one from the ground?

Here's a side view shot. It has shriveled up so much, from enduring three nights of below-freezing temperatures, that I shot it in a pretty big frame, and then I had to crop it severely.

Think of this photo as documentary, only, and not as a clear, satisfying shot.

If it rains tomorrow, it will be gone. But, if we get "Indian summer," perhaps yet another fruiting body will appear.

Shaggy Parasol Mushroom, Side View

289929559_0047e38c29.jpg


Hope you will enjoy seeing the stem and gills, anyway, in this side view.

Mary
 

Joe Russo

New member
I'd like to add my thoughts and opinions about the photograph and my post processing of it.

I liked the muted tones of the leaves. To me they were describing the passing of Autumn. Here in MA although technically it is still fall, most of the color is gone and most of the leaves are on the ground. It may still be fall until December 21 but Autumn has passed. In my opinion the muted tones in the leaves provided a nice contrast for the very bright, very white mushroom cap. Being the brightest object in the frame my eye was drawn back to the mushroom cap whenever I would wander off to look at another area of the image. I thought that if I were to be continually coming back to the cap it might be interesting to have some discernable detail in the mushroom to look at, examine and keep a viewer's eye here a bit longer. Lastly the 'unexpected' pop that Mary referred to in her initial post is something that I learned about here initially but have read about it other places as well. I described it as 'unexpected' because it uses Unsharp Masking to add contrast rather than sharpening. Michael Reichmann and others refer to it as Local Contrast Enhancement.

Stuart - I like how you were able to bring out the fall colors in the leaves. This was an option I had not considered and it does lend a different feeling to the image.

I think this is a good example of how each of our own individual preferences come into play with regards to what comprises a 'good' photograph.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
"Snap" and "Pop" versus subtle and real?

Joe,

A very good point about muted colors. I want to extend this even further.

Sometimes we should hold back from automatically adding an S Curve, in Curves, bringing in the white and black points to make things pop, increasing the saturation and sharpening to get the picture to come out of the page and have the leaves attack us!

Why not let the leaves have subtle feaures, allow the eye to do some work. Don't shove it right to us as a polished shiny 3D image.

Mary's shot, IMHO, is nearly there as is.

Add 70% of the unprocessed image back and Joe, tell me it is not more subtle!

Now this is all taste.

Some like everything to "snap" and "pop". They even add gas to their water!

Think of Mary going to the garden and finding this mushroom on the damp lawn.

The leaves were not varnished or coated with polyurethane.

So the skill is to render without it appearing that the images are altered.

One approach is that to do one's best, then go away. Later, blend back as much of the original state as possible!

Just a thought!

Asher
 

Mary Bull

New member
Asher Kelman said:
Joe,

A very good point about muted colors. I want to extend this even further.

... Now this is all taste....

Some like everything to "snap" and "pop". They even add gas to their water!

Think of Mary going to the garden ...

The leaves were not varnished or coated with polyurethane.
Asher, I wonder if the brightened rendition by Stuart would have made this kind of impact on you had you not seen it in company with the renditions that kept the colors as they came from the G2.

If I had had the skills to deal with the harsh contrast of the bright sunlight on the morning following the foggy November 1 scene, I would have captured something very like Stuart's rendition.

Stuart has never seen a dogwood tree or its leaves, in fog or in bright sunlight. I am going to put up here two unretouched--only downsized--images shot minutes before I shot the dogwood leaf beside the mushroom cap.

The first is a full-length image of the tree. Try to ignore the utility wires, please. The second is the close-up I made of the tip of one branch.

That's how it looked to me in the fog.

The third is the enhancement of the close-up, from the RAW files, by Stuart Rae. And this is how that branch looks to me in bright sunlight--over and over through these late autumn days in Nashville, Tennessee.

His insight is so uncanny that I am moved to quote this half of a famous poem by the American 19th century poet Emily Dickinson:
I never saw a moor
I never saw the sea
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a wave must be.
Finally, Asher, I want to comment on this very true insight of yours:
So the skill is to render without it appearing that the images are altered.
To my eye, what Stuart did *does* look unaltered--both what he did with the fallen dogwood leaf beside the mushroom and what he did with the leaves on the closeup of the dogwood branch which I'm posting below, third image down.

They look as unaltered as if I had captured the image myself in the bright sunlight of a clear early morning. Sunlight like that which fell on them the morning of November 2, the day after the morning of dense fog which we got here on November 1.

I like enhancements of photos, well done as Stuart does them, even though i don't drink carbonated water.

Just some thoughts of my own, which I thought might make enjoyable conversation for us. And now, the living dogwood leaf images:

Dogwood Tree in Fog, with Utility Lines and Garbage Containers

290494067_f439e256ea.jpg


Dogwood Leaves in Fog, Close-Up

290495638_1684e4b5e4_o.jpg


Dogwood Leaves Enhanced by Stuart Rae

These look to me as they show in slanting bright sunlight, an hour or two after sunrise or in the very late afternoon.

290497601_a6a2eef4bd_o.jpg


But as you also commented, Asher, it's all a matter of taste.

I will be very interested to hear what you and others think of these three images, all of which were shot on the morning of November 1, 2006, minutes before I captured the wind-blown, fallen dogwood leaf beside the mushroom cap.

Mary
 

Joe Russo

New member
Asher,

I think you make some good points. At a minimum your post demonstrates that your opinions about what make a 'good' photograph are as valid as mine and as valid as Stuart's. We each 'see' and 'want to see' the world differently. With regards to Mary's image I thought the muted colors were perfect so I didn't make any attempt to alter them. The image did seem a bit hazy to me (an inevitable outcome of digital capture) so I used the technique I referred to remove a bit of the haze. I liked the outcome but that was my opinion. Do you think I overdid it?

As a photographer I find myself still trying to settle in on what it is that I want to accomplish. A part of me wants to capture images 'as they exist.' On the other hand I want to make images that others enjoy looking at. In both cases I want to be able to share a moment and a place with viewers of my photographs and hope that in some way they can get a sense of and a feeling of what it was like to be there 'live and in person.' I think it's possible to find a balance point between the two and it is my hope by showing my work to others both here and elsewhere, publicly and privately, that I'll be able to zero in on that point.

Thanks for your comments and thanks for providing OPF for us to share.
 

StuartRae

New member
the colors as they came from the G2.

My mind has gone into free-wheel mode, and suddenly fastened onto the above statement.

The truth is that the camera does not capture colour. The colour is the product of whatever software does the raw conversion. If you use JPG mode then the in-camera software does it (the camera always shoots in RAW). So there is no truth except what we remember from the fleeting moment of taking the shot, when our minds were probably more occupied with operating the camera.


Regards,

Stuart
 

Mary Bull

New member
StuartRae said:
My mind has gone into free-wheel mode, and suddenly fastened onto the above statement. [colors as they came from the G2]
Well, I think I did know that the word "digital" means that the camera records digitally (in binary code). I was just using the word colors as shorthand for "info" from the camera.

The range is there, and the place on the electromagnetic spectrum represented by each binary-code number. So whether it's the in-camera conversion to jpeg or other raw converter software's conversion to jpeg, tiff, or other file format, the representation of visible light does have its foundation in the camera's "language."

The visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum is in my head as a rainbow. And that's how I came to write--without much mulling it over--the word "colors" as a stand-in for the camera's info.
So there is no truth except what we remember from the fleeting moment of taking the shot, when our minds were probably more occupied with operating the camera.
And actually, that memory cannot claim to be "truth." Many studies have shown the unreliability of human memory/memories.

Since Einstein, I think, also, that we have no choice but to accept that all physical truths are relative. No absolute physical truth exists.
< she said, wandering off into philosophy >

Mary
 
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