Flowers & Plants Showcase ⇒ Very Green Things in Lauritzen Gardens Conservatory

[Charles Haacker]

In addition to hop-frogs and hoppy-Andi I turned my lens on the green stuff...
I concluded my best bet was the tight closeup. When everything is green it ain't easy shooting green. It gets muddied, busy, and confusing.

[LindaShorey]

Yummy backlighting in #1. I really like the composition - where you chose to position the center of the plant was particularly important because it's so bright. The shadows and light add so much to this wonderful study of lines...and green :)

[Charles Haacker]

Yummy backlighting in #1. I really like the composition - where you chose to position the center of the plant was particularly important because it's so bright. The shadows and light add so much to this wonderful study of lines...and green

Thank you, Linda. I especially appreciate your analysis of that composition because I did give it some thought. That picture was cropped in camera. I was trained to try to crop in camera but I sometimes get in too tight, leaving myself with no place to go, so I try to pull back a little now to give myself some room, but that one is delivered as shot. I know the "rules" (suggestions, guidelines) of good composition, but an awful lot of my composition is (I hope) intuitive, a product of 30 years of working professionally and not having a lot of time to think about it.

[LindaShorey]

Thank you, Linda. I especially appreciate your analysis of that composition because I did give it some thought. That picture was cropped in camera. I was trained to try to crop in camera but I sometimes get in too tight, leaving myself with no place to go, so I try to pull back a little now to give myself some room, but that one is delivered as shot. I know the "rules" (suggestions, guidelines) of good composition, but an awful lot of my composition is (I hope) intuitive, a product of 30 years of working professionally and not having a lot of time to think about it.

Two things I remember my instructor saying during my year of b&w film classes (with darkroom) in 1989:

"watch the edges of your frame!"
"It needs more contrast!"

I very much like your reference to intuitive, though. I think the more technical and deliberate one is, the less feeling is in a shot - but that's a wildly generalized statement I shouldn't even be making.

Interesting about the choice of verb for the action: I would say FRAME when done the camera, and CROP when done in pp - with cropping implying removal of something that couldn't be avoided at time of shooting. Or when you know you will want a different aspect ratio, or as happens more and more with my own digital experience: finding a whole different story from my original intent once I have my play tools in front of me

[Charles Haacker]

Two things I remember my instructor saying during my year of b&w film classes (with darkroom) in 1989:

"watch the edges of your frame!"
"It needs more contrast!"

I very much like your reference to intuitive, though. I think the more technical and deliberate one is, the less feeling is in a shot - but that's a wildly generalized statement I shouldn't even be making.

Interesting about the choice of verb for the action: I would say FRAME when done the camera, and CROP when done in pp - with cropping implying removal of something that couldn't be avoided at time of shooting. Or when you know you will want a different aspect ratio, or as happens more and more with my own digital experience: finding a whole different story from my original intent once I have my play tools in front of me

That could be an interesting discussion in itself: Are the terms framing and cropping interchangeable? I think I use them that way. I got "crop in [the] camera" from my instructors, another way of saying "fill the frame." Crop. Frame.

Well, I looked it up. It wasn't easy as Giggle kept insisting that what I really wanted was the difference between "full frame" and "crop frame" but If finally found a 2014 piece from Light Stalking: https://www.lightstalking.com/why-frami ... ng-second/
They confirm what you said, Linda: framing is done in the camera, and done correctly minimizes the need for cropping. I think what my teachers were saying was Crop as you frame so you don't have to crop too much later, i.e., fill the frame.

[LindaShorey]

That could be an interesting discussion in itself: Are the terms framing and cropping interchangeable? I think I use them that way. I got "crop in [the] camera" from my instructors, another way of saying "fill the frame." Crop. Frame.

Well, I looked it up. It wasn't easy as Giggle kept insisting that what I really wanted was the difference between "full frame" and "crop frame" but If finally found a 2014 piece from Light Stalking: https://www.lightstalking.com/why-frami ... ng-second/
They confirm what you said, Linda: framing is done in the camera, and done correctly minimizes the need for cropping. I think what my teachers were saying was Crop as you frame so you don't have to crop too much later, i.e., fill the frame.

That was a great article; thanks so much for your time in digging it out of Giggle

My Panasonic mirrorless with 14-140 mm lens is set for 3:2 aspect ratio. I know that's not using all the pixels, but after all my years with film SLR and then Canon Rebel series dslr, I am very comfortable with landscapes being 3:2 and I want to be able to compose and frame in-camera whenever possible. Fun discussion, Chuck - thanks!

[Charles Haacker]

That was a great article; thanks so much for your time in digging it out of Giggle

My Panasonic mirrorless with 14-140 mm lens is set for 3:2 aspect ratio. I know that's not using all the pixels, but after all my years with film SLR and then Canon Rebel series dslr, I am very comfortable with landscapes being 3:2 and I want to be able to compose and frame in-camera whenever possible. Fun discussion, Chuck - thanks!

Now there's another very interesting subject! Your Panasonic must have a 4:3 sensor, so setting it for 3:2 crops a little from top and bottom. I had become very used to the 4:3 ratio with my tiny compacts, and was mildly surprised that my Sony has a native 3:2, except that I set it for 4:3 most of the time because I like the ratio. It's closest to 5:4 (8x10) that I was so accustomed to for so long.

When I was shooting film I was all over the place. My big studio portrait camera that was used only for B&W portraits had a dividing back, taking two 3x5's on a 5x7 sheet. Those negatives were big enough for fine portrait retouching on the negative, but almost all the time finished prints were cropped to a "standard" 5:4 ratio. Color portraits were sometimes made with a Mamiya RB67, roughly a 4:5 ratio, but more often I preferred my Hasselblad, a 6X6cm square that could be left square or cropped either vertically or horizontally. When Daphne was assembling wedding albums she would order prints full square or 4x5 or 5x4. It was pretty flexible. When I shot 35mm I almost always shot to crop to a 5:4 "standard" ratio, so I was always going to crop off the ends.

The 4:3 ratio fairly closely approximates the 5:4 I was so used to, plus have discovered a pretty cool "cheat." Shooting all raw, my Sony records everything on the full 3:2 frame, even though it's set to crop to 4:3. I can, therefore, revert to the 3:2 at will. Also, if I conclude that I wanted something on one end of the frame more than the other, I can stay with the 4:3 and just shift the image within it !! I think that is SO COOL!

[minniev]

Nice green things. I especially like the ones with the striped leaves (cannas?). I did some up in black and white not long ago, but if I'd had the great backlighting shining through like this, I'd have kept them in color too! You found some good stuff in that conservatory visit, I'm enjoying visiting alongside you.

[Charles Haacker]

Nice green things. I especially like the ones with the striped leaves (cannas?). I did some up in black and white not long ago, but if I'd had the great backlighting shining through like this, I'd have kept them in color too! You found some good stuff in that conservatory visit, I'm enjoying visiting alongside you.

Aw, thanks Min! I loved those stripy leaves, too, but I didn't see the little plaque they usually place to tell what something is, and while I love flowers and foliage I'm hopeless at identification, but I looked up canna and I think you're right! Canna apparently comes in a bewildering variety, some with solid green leaves, some with spots, some with stripes, and even some with dark red leaves... It bears lovely flowers but I'm not sure when. These had no flowers that I could see.

[LindaShorey]

... have discovered a pretty cool "cheat." Shooting all raw, my Sony records everything on the full 3:2 frame, even though it's set to crop to 4:3. I can, therefore, revert to the 3:2 at will. Also, if I conclude that I wanted something on one end of the frame more than the other, I can stay with the 4:3 and just shift the image within it :lol: !! I think that is SO COOL! :rofl:

Definitely a fun feature. Sort of like my Olympus that has the nice 2x digital zoom in jpg, but gives me the full frame raw file.