Sony People shots from a recent trip to Ronda

jimmy2thou

Regular
Location
Marbella, Spain
Hi All,

These are all with the NEX 5N & 16mm lens. I was amazed at how the photos just leapt out at me when I opened them. I added some clarity, custom curves and sharpness and cropped/straightened where necessary. They look so intense to me, i don't know whether I should tone them down or leave them, as they have captured a gloriously Sunny Spanish winters day. Bit of a mouthful there. Anyway, here are the photos. What do you think?

2-men-standing.jpg


enjoying-the-view.jpg


enjoying-the-view-2.jpg


enjoying-the-view-3-bw.jpg


following-you-following-him.jpg


lady-and-the-gents2.jpg


winter-sun.jpg


I look forward to your feedback

Thanks,

James
 
PM sent Jimmy....Ummm, don't worry seems you've fixed it yourself. Excellent....you'll be an asset for us more technologically challenged folks down the track :blush:
 
All,

Stay tuned while Jimmy reloads his seven photos. He has gotten tangled up in my Moderator training wheels.....where I edited his thread in error. All will be well shortly.

I cannot apologise to Jimmy enough :blush:
 
....as I meant to say the first time around....:blush:

Great images here Jimmy. The richness of colour and detail is astounding. If I had to pick a fave, it would certainly be no.6
lady-and-the-gents2.jpg

It captures the spirit of all I remember of the old country. OK my origins are not in Spain...or Russia ;) but in the Mediterranean nonetheless.

Well captured, makes me really want to get back there now....
 
James,

I gotta say, there's some absolutely marvellous images here. Real classic, wide-angle stuff. Regarding the processing and presentation though, there appears to be a sense of the unreal about them, almost as though they've had some low-level HDR treatment. The composition of #5 for instance should give a strong sense of depth but it comes across as being a very two-dimensional image. #1 works great because it IS a two-dimensional image, and I love the b&w image because it does give me a strong sense of depth that I don't get from the colour shots. I really love the concept and composition of a lot of these shots but I'm struggling to reconcile what I'm seeing with my eyes with what my brain thinks such an image should look like.
 
Thanks everyone. I don't normally photograph people, but I thought I would give it a go. I had the NEX by my side an just tried to imagine what would be in the frame (easier with the 16mm) and snapped away. I had to do some major straightening after, but that's the great thing with having 16mp, you can straighten and crop and still be left with a decent size print. I am off on my travels in a few days and will be in New York for 2 days and plan to test my stealth shooting further. :)

Christine, the Ronda road is a bit of a windy one. It is much improved over how it was even 5 years ago. It's just the nutters who drive 4cm from your bumper that are the problem. We just pulled over and let them pass, with the occassional glance over the edge to see if they had made the next bend or not. :)

Luckypenguin. I know what you mean about the slight hdr look, but I just used clarity, curves and sharpness. Either, it was the really strong afternoon sun, or I think the new Sony sensor is somehow improving the micro contrast captured in the images. Either way, it is nice to have that level of clarity there. :) Strange though, because lately I have been playing with a more retro look to my photos. I might try it on a couple of these and see if it tones them down a bit. I'll re post a couple of results.

Thanks again,

James
 
Here is the Lady with the Chaps again. This time I used zero clarity, -10 vibrance, -15, saturation and applied a more retro set of curves to tone down the colour a bit more. It resulted in washing out the clouds more, which I don't mind. End result definitely looks more natural, but it is certainly the first time I've used negative values on the sliders in Photoshop! :)

What do you think?

lady-and-the-gents2-desaturated.jpg
 
Luckypenguin. I know what you mean about the slight hdr look, but I just used clarity, curves and sharpness. Either, it was the really strong afternoon sun, or I think the new Sony sensor is somehow improving the micro contrast captured in the images. Either way, it is nice to have that level of clarity there. :) Strange though, because lately I have been playing with a more retro look to my photos. I might try it on a couple of these and see if it tones them down a bit. I'll re post a couple of results.

Thanks again,

James

Thanks James, interesting to hear your thoughts. Were the images processed from jpeg or raw? I'm wondering if it is the camera hardware or software which is extracting so much detail. The look appears similar to the "Tonal Contrast" filter in Nik Color Efex. The other interesting thing I notice is that the depth-of-field appears virtually infinite which, notwithstanding the short focal length of the lens, is not what I'd expect from an APS-C sensor. It's possible though that if the micro contrast has been improved in the 5N then it would probably give the appearance of greater depth-of-field.

Re: your reprocessed example above. I think both versions have their merits but the second example does appear to me to be more natural looking, even if it does lose some of the "punch" of the first example.
 
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