Good Year Blimp During Rose Parade

Hello Everyone:

I took a picture of the Good Year blimp as it flew by during the Rose Parade. What do you think of it?

jorger101 -

Technically it's fine. There's nothing wrong with the shot as far as I could comment. Artistically, it seems to be missing something. There's not much exciting stuff happening up there in the sky that day ... (even the birds might agree), no interesting cloud formations, no warm sunshine bathing the blimp, etc. You did what you could but there just wasn't much there at this pt in time. In the future you might try doing something off-beat in situations like this, say zoom while exposing, intentional motion blur, post-processing color shifts, some trick filters, etc. Sometimes it's the way to go.
GB

Thanks. I agree that the picture is not that interesting. I have seen better pictures of the blimp. Maybe I should add more interesting clouds to the image in photoshop. What do you think?

Jorger - Yeah, why not? Throw some stuff at it and see what happens. It would probably be pretty easy to mask. Post the results here.
GB

My deal is that you were at the Rose Bowl Parade; one of the greatest photo opportunities of all time and you shot this?!? This image has nothing to connect the viewer to the parade and is just an ok shot of the blimp.

A missed opportunity for sure.

I'm thinking if you had have shot from ground level and included a band or a marcher or a float or a grandstand in the image it would have been a whole lot more interesting.

You know jorge...there are some good suggestions here, but sometimes, a simple shot is just plain nice in its own respect. The color and detail are awesome. However, I'm not wondering if a little different crop might help this simple but very pleasing shot. Maybe something a bit more symmetrical.
Great shot.

Just so that everyone knows, I did take pictures of the Rose Parade. I took close to 300 pictures. I did the same last year and I got some pictures where you can see the blimp over the parade. Most of the parade pictures are pretty straightforward and I do not feel they represent my ability as a photographer or as an artist. Maybe I will post some of those pictures in my user gallery. I am just posting a simple image because I am interested in getting feedback on it. I second ken1953 on this.

I'd remove the color cast, then enhance the color. After that, I'd consider cropping tighter. After that, convert it to black and white, or whichever way you incline.

I agree about removing the colorcast. there is a seemingly bluish cast on this. Add a little warmer tone. I think the shot is ok, but it definetly could use something more to hold one's attention. Including something to give context to the blimp would be a start. Such as, if you waited for the blimp to go over a building where you could have included some of the building at the bottom might have given the viewer some reference as to the size and altitude of the balloon. the clouds that are there already are fine, makes a nice soft backdrop to the subject

Very nice suggestions. Here is a warmer version of the image. I will work on some other way to improve the image later.

Not sure what you did, but it looks like you added a warming filter? The effect did not come out too well. Try just using the color balance filter in Photoshop if you are using that. . .other programs should have a similiar filter. Just remove about -10 of blue to the mids and highs. That gave a very nice and subtle overall enhancement. Here is a image describing the adjustment.

Thanks Gary. I used the color balance adjustment in Photoshop, I added +20 in the cyan/red slider, then it looks that I goofed, I added +15 in the yellow/blue slider. Here it is with your settings. I when as far as -20 because when I convert from photoshop format to jpeg some quality is lost. Gary did you add some saturation to the image? My image is not quite the same as your edit.

Your edit looks real good now. No, I did not saturate. I only took away the blue as shown in the filter image. I think maybe mine looks more "saturated" because i left a little more blue in than your 20% adj. Personally, I like your edit better. Removing more of the blue seems to clear up the shot and in effect gets the blimp to stand out stronger. If you wanted more color now you could always increase saturation by 15-20%, but I would not do this. It looks very good now.
Nice edit.

The last post is really nice to look at.. Comparing it to the original, there doesn't seem to be major difference, but the stuff that did change makes it way, way better. Nice job.
G

Thank you. I do not see the last post in my computer. I losted my connection and reenter tne forum, but I do not see. Maybe a need to refresh my browser.

I could not see my last post in the thread so I am posting it again. I modified the image by replacing the background with a nicer sky. I took it from a previous shoot where I photographed the sky just in case I needed it later. Around southern california the sky usually is free of clouds except when it rains. What do you think of this one? Is it an improvement?

Yes, definetely an improvement. the darker sky allows the blimp to stand out as if it is getting hit by the sun alone. the clouds also add.

Thanks Gary. I believe I have a keeper now.