Feedback please?

[Jon Brand]

I have some nice lights to work with now. This was taken with a pocket camera. Not a nice fancy camera at all.. I think its my best image yet and want to know what you think. Are the colors to strong? Should I desaturate, or leave it as is?

I credit COOP 100% for the influence and the overall layout of the montage.

I eventually want to learn how to work a nice camera that is close in my family and get VERY sharp images. These aren't as clear as they can be.

Thanks

[Jon Brand]

I just noticed the bolsters look like different colors from eachother. That is something I need to remember to tweek.

[ChuckKerwin]

Pearl looks washed out, not as pretty as it is?

[Kenneth Springer]

That is much better than I could ever do!

The only comment I have is that there appear to be all of these random dark spots on that rust colored background and I find them to be EXTREMELY distracting and making it hard for me to concentrate on the knives at all. They are just about all I see when I look at the picture. I would definitely prefer a more uniform background. But that is probably just me.

[Jon Brand]

Chuck, I see what you're talking about. I need to find the right balance and I don't want to over saturate the colors.. because it could end up looking "fake" or overly "photoshopped". But its something I will work on. I think that the left inset which shows the back of the knife is definitely washed out looking. The main center image is more close to what I am aiming for. Its true that in reality the pearl is more vibrant then shown.

Kenneth you are correct. I don't have backgrounds to use yet. What you see is simply a coffee table top. It has alot of scratches and weird dots.. In the future I hope to have better backgrounds.

[Allen Newberry]

That's better than I can do. Nice image!

[Buddy Thomason]

Nice, Jon. You're going in the right direction. In addition to the good comments above:

1. All insets should be color-matched to the main image. This is much easier to do if you set your camera's white balance using a grey card before shooting. Without consistent white balance across all parts of the whole image you'll find that in adjusting color between all parts will cause the colorless steel to take on color casts.

In the above image the lower inset has the most neutral steel (the spine and bolster are visible). The central full knife image shows the steel with a distinct cyan cast, and the upper inset shows even more of the unwanted color cast. There are ways to deal with this in post-processing but it's best to control it 'in the camera' so to speak. In general it also helps to have similar lighting for all shots that will make up the composite image, and to use the same aperture setting, varying shutter speed and ISO as needed.

2. Consider placing small spacers under the knife to lift it off the surface in all cases. This does many things but one of the most important is that it will soften those harsh and deep shadows and help separate the knife from the background (commonly referred to as 'pop').

3. Bounce more light back onto the surfaces that are shadowed by the angle of your overhead lights. The lower inset is a good example.

Jon, there are a billion little things you will learn by doing over time. Reading photography books and magazines - attending single day workshops in your area (like Coop and I do) will greatly illuminate your understanding. It doesn't much matter what the workshop subject is, you will see that techniques used in other areas of photography can be useful in shooting knives and processing the resulting digital files.

The more you do this and put your examples out there for others to respond to, the better you'll get. But it's like anything else, one has to be active and shoot lots of knives over time to eventually master the process. In my own beginning I shot knives from my collection over and over because I was learning a lot and needed to practice constantly. While it was somewhat tedious to do so, I found that if I went more than a week or two between knife shoots it was like starting over because the rhythm of the 'workflow' had faded. You're on the right track Jon, just keep at it.

[Jon Brand]

Buddy, thats what i'm looking for. Its alot to absorb since I really don't know what I am doing technically at all yet. I'm gonna try to study this. It may not stand out that much but if you notice, the knife is actually lifted from the ground, I have something underneath both ends..