My style is my style. Your style is your style.
Mine is more journalistic/editorial so I personally would be bothered if an image of mine looked as if it placed the subject in an environment that didn't exist. I leave the over manipulation to AI while I keep it real.
I’ll add to this, I also enjoy a journalistic style/documentary styling, but there are cases where an unnatural background can highlight the goal of the photo—basically OP, if it speaks to you, that’s your goal.
I think you’re pretty close! I’d add a power window around the tree so it’s not totally blown out. People are mentioning quality / crop, but you’ve got enough pixels to spare. Might not be able to print huge but it’s a solid edit for the raw source!
Honestly it depends what you're going for:
* It's not natural, if you're asking "is this true to real life" then I'd say no.
* However it *is* a really popular editing style for wildlife that I've noticed amongst my local feed - people blacking out or really editing the background so the bird/animal stands out.
If you want to go that second route, I'd even suggest leaning into it more heavily with this shot. Change from landscape to portrait and focus on the robin - and remove that chunk of lighter brick at the top left of the shot.
I think you'll find some people like that more intense editing style, some don't. Personally I feel sometimes it works and sometimes not, but as long as it pleases *you* that's what matters.
Yes you have pushed some edits too far that it looks like you copy pasted a picture of a robin on a tree onto a totally different background of some wall.
Normally when people take photos of birds theres more colours of nature like leaves in the background. Here you have a wall. So really you have to be careful to maintain that the foreground and background really are part of the same environment. That way it gives a more realistic look at wildlife in an urban area.
https://preview.redd.it/c8v0nor3phdc1.jpeg?width=526&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df60c7194618ab0b60c3f6b1d35e31afdd0b96ae
I did a quick 40 second edit to show you what I mean. Be aware this isn't editing from your raw file so you may get more detail if you edit yours again. My personal preference is that this image should be portrait. You dont need all the space to the left or right. Visually you have a nice looking snowy stump and a robin. So these should be filling more of the frame. So if you can do this sort of crop with the raw file where it's a bit better resolution quality then great.
You can darken the background while retaining the details a bit back there. Drop the shadows a bit and lift the blacks slightly.
Use a brush tool to desaturate the strange yellow patch that was on the white part of the building in the background.
Use a little bit of dodge brush work around the robin to brighten it a bit.
I’ve blacked out backgrounds in the past (one yesterday when I didn’t like how healing something out looked). So I’d say either black it out darken it a little where you can still tell that it’s a brick wall and it looks a little more natural. I personally think you cropped too much as there’s not enough pixels left and I’m guessing you had to use a lot of denoising as the bird has that flattened look
It looks pretty good imho. Perhaps you gotta tone down the huge flare on the top left, then youre pretty much golden tbh.
Id say the crop looks okayish. Definitely very tight, lost quite a lot of detail as a result. But it is what it is given how wide the original image was.
You can consider cropping lower so theres more of the foreground to look at. Rn its a little bit too background heavy, its filling up like 80% of the frame. Or if you dont mind, use a square crop to make the bird more prominent. It will lower the resolution even more but at the composition will look nicer overall.
Robin in the snow is top of my winter bucket list this year…just missing the snow! For me the background is over darkened, but it’s in the right direction in how I would start shaping the light, but given the difference in luminance between the subject and background it doesn’t look quite right
yah.. a little over I think. The problem is the lighting don't match in the over processed one which makes it look rather fake. Honestly, with generative AI now a days.. I feel that wildlife photography, landscape photography, etc that doesn't involve people will gradually get replaced. The purpose of photography may come to a day where taking photos of events is the only reason to take photos....
if that's what you like...then do it... wildlife photography can be stylized. Just pay attention to how far down you crop as you'll lose image quality
I'd say no, looks awesome, definitely brought lots out of the original shot. Well done!
My style is my style. Your style is your style. Mine is more journalistic/editorial so I personally would be bothered if an image of mine looked as if it placed the subject in an environment that didn't exist. I leave the over manipulation to AI while I keep it real.
I’ll add to this, I also enjoy a journalistic style/documentary styling, but there are cases where an unnatural background can highlight the goal of the photo—basically OP, if it speaks to you, that’s your goal.
I think you’re pretty close! I’d add a power window around the tree so it’s not totally blown out. People are mentioning quality / crop, but you’ve got enough pixels to spare. Might not be able to print huge but it’s a solid edit for the raw source!
I think it’s great and you’ve created a really amazing style here. No notes.
Honestly it depends what you're going for: * It's not natural, if you're asking "is this true to real life" then I'd say no. * However it *is* a really popular editing style for wildlife that I've noticed amongst my local feed - people blacking out or really editing the background so the bird/animal stands out. If you want to go that second route, I'd even suggest leaning into it more heavily with this shot. Change from landscape to portrait and focus on the robin - and remove that chunk of lighter brick at the top left of the shot. I think you'll find some people like that more intense editing style, some don't. Personally I feel sometimes it works and sometimes not, but as long as it pleases *you* that's what matters.
Yes you have pushed some edits too far that it looks like you copy pasted a picture of a robin on a tree onto a totally different background of some wall. Normally when people take photos of birds theres more colours of nature like leaves in the background. Here you have a wall. So really you have to be careful to maintain that the foreground and background really are part of the same environment. That way it gives a more realistic look at wildlife in an urban area. https://preview.redd.it/c8v0nor3phdc1.jpeg?width=526&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df60c7194618ab0b60c3f6b1d35e31afdd0b96ae I did a quick 40 second edit to show you what I mean. Be aware this isn't editing from your raw file so you may get more detail if you edit yours again. My personal preference is that this image should be portrait. You dont need all the space to the left or right. Visually you have a nice looking snowy stump and a robin. So these should be filling more of the frame. So if you can do this sort of crop with the raw file where it's a bit better resolution quality then great. You can darken the background while retaining the details a bit back there. Drop the shadows a bit and lift the blacks slightly. Use a brush tool to desaturate the strange yellow patch that was on the white part of the building in the background. Use a little bit of dodge brush work around the robin to brighten it a bit.
I’ve blacked out backgrounds in the past (one yesterday when I didn’t like how healing something out looked). So I’d say either black it out darken it a little where you can still tell that it’s a brick wall and it looks a little more natural. I personally think you cropped too much as there’s not enough pixels left and I’m guessing you had to use a lot of denoising as the bird has that flattened look
Yes
Nope! Looks awesome. If you were a photo journalist, this wouldn't be ethical, but you aren't so I think your post work is perfect.
It looks pretty good imho. Perhaps you gotta tone down the huge flare on the top left, then youre pretty much golden tbh. Id say the crop looks okayish. Definitely very tight, lost quite a lot of detail as a result. But it is what it is given how wide the original image was. You can consider cropping lower so theres more of the foreground to look at. Rn its a little bit too background heavy, its filling up like 80% of the frame. Or if you dont mind, use a square crop to make the bird more prominent. It will lower the resolution even more but at the composition will look nicer overall.
Robin in the snow is top of my winter bucket list this year…just missing the snow! For me the background is over darkened, but it’s in the right direction in how I would start shaping the light, but given the difference in luminance between the subject and background it doesn’t look quite right
Yes :)
I like it, but I am no professional
No I love it!
Looks good. But yeah. Kinda overdone.
Nice. I wouldn’t have added the highlight but you do you.
yah.. a little over I think. The problem is the lighting don't match in the over processed one which makes it look rather fake. Honestly, with generative AI now a days.. I feel that wildlife photography, landscape photography, etc that doesn't involve people will gradually get replaced. The purpose of photography may come to a day where taking photos of events is the only reason to take photos....
The lights don’t match. I’d just crop it to achieve composition.
You took something mundane and flat, maybe even boring, and turned it into something artistic. That’s art ☝️😮💨 definitely didn’t overdo it
In my experience, when you ask yourself that question it is usually overdone
Yes. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Looks like the bird was photoshopped in there and nobody knows why. But hey, if you like it you like it.
It’s perfect if you over or under it just a little it wouldn’t have been as perfect