Desert Racing Action

[Atheomerase]

I shot this photo a couple years ago at a Desert Race in Parker, Arizona. The un-retouched copy was horrible with all of the silt in the air. All of the colors were washed out, and dull, once I learned a few tricks with Photoshop, I was able to save the image.

[Aaron]

Whatever you did it made a great shot of the car going through the loose material -- keep it up.

[Photo-John]

Post the original so we can see the difference! Actually, that might be better for the Digital Imaging forum.

As for a critique, I don't really like the crop on this one. I don't think vertical is working - at least not when it crops so much out of the vehicle. It also kind of takes away from the forward motion feel that should be there.

Color, contrast, and saturation are great. I am curious about what you started with. But we need to keep this forum on track. That's why I suggested it might be a better post for the Digital Imaging forum.

Thanks for sharing. Hope my critique was useful.

[Themage]

I think you did a great job on the photoshop. I disagree that this should be on the digital forum. To me photoshop is just another tool for the photographer and you can do alot of things in photoshop that you can do with in the darkroom.

I would of have liked to see more of the car then when it got cropped off.

[Atheomerase]

I can try to keep the thread/forum on topic and just happen to toss the original up also...

The cropping was more due to the proximity of my person to the race course. I climbed up onto a boulder and was catching 3-5 photo sequences of the vehicles as they came past. The photo was shot with a Nikon CoolPix 950, just a point-and-shoot, with the photo sequence, I couldn't adjust the zoom. I was stuck with an oddly cropped bit of photos in some points, but perfectly framed in others.

[Photo-John]

You misunderstood why I said he should post on the digital imaging forum. I have no problem with digital tools. You should see how much work goes into my images! I absolutely agree that they're just another set of tools and digital art is as valid as any other.

But this is a critique forum. People post images for critique here. If we want to have a discussion about how to digitally process or salvage a problem image, this isn't the place to do it.

[Photo-John]

That really is an impressive salvage job. I would never have had any idea if you hadn't spilled the beans. Now I better understand why you posted it. It's definitely something to be proud of.

I also understand how and why you shot it the way you did. The criticism is still valid - for the future. It's always important to keep in mind how our positioning might affect the final image. We can't fix the ones that are already shot. But we can plan better for the future.

[Atheomerase]

John,

Thanks again for the critique, I hadn't expected to get good shots in that section of course, and had the zoom set up for that section. With the 20D and a good lens that I can MF, that zoom set-up should be compensated so I can get a full vehicle in frame.

I'll post the images in the other forum for the enhancement discussions.

Thanks again,

Chris