Editing advice - Royce_

[Royce_]

Hello everyone, I'm new here, so please go easy

I submitted a few photos and received a few rejections, so I thought I would seek advice, try and make myself a better photographer, lick my wounds a bit, and maybe in the process of it all, learn to hit the x key a little more in LR!

Now I'll be the first to admit that nothing I submitted absolutely knocked me off my seat, but I thought after browsing this website idly for years, I'd give it a go, see what I could do. In retrospect, I can see all the rejection reasons as pretty damn valid, so these questions are more from the point of view of "what should I be doing?" and "how can I make myself a better photographer?" rather than seeking sympathy. I'm seeking to up my game here.

I'll go through the some of the rejections first (some I will probably discard out of hand), and then of course take the advice and probably come back with some potential candidates to see what you think before I go clicking submit any more!

First photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792957#
70mm, ISO 100, 1/500, f/5.6

• Soft, yeah. Might not be recoverable without processing the hell out of it and risking a different rejection. Parts are not bad, so do you think a narrower f/number would have helped?
• Overprocessed, I'm a little lost on. I do notice there's some halo-ing in the equalised view. Coming straight off the camera, the picture does look "shiny" anyway, so the glassy look is probably not helped if I'm trying to recover any blown spots (slightly blown just below the U). Anything I can do here? CPL to kill the glare, or slightly underexposing the actual shot maybe?
  • Incidentally, is there a way to (easily) generate the dust checker filter in Lightroom, so I can spot defects in advance?
• Bad composition - if this is only the centering, fair enough, that's an easy fix in post.

Second photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792870
175mm, ISO 200, 1/160, f/5.6

• Soft, yeah, is this even recoverable?
• Clutter - is the only solution here not to take photos in front of construction sites? From this distance, I don't suspect shooting any wider open will do anything nicer to the DOF to make the subject pop?
• Overexposed, probably post is partly the culprit, probably metering - the background is dark, so the only compensation overexposes the fuselage a bit too much.
• Is the culprit here just poor weather and poor angle choice? Something I can do better here?

Third photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792863
70mm, ISO 200, 1/160, f/5.6

• YEP, this is dull, grey and boring. There's probably much too little dynamic range. Yes, it was overcast, and the sky lost the lovely diffuse evening hue that it should have had. Once I cleared some of the auto settings and matched it to the colour profiles of others taken around that time, the image pops a lot more.
• Framing I can sort
• Would the attached image and colour profile fare any better? Or am I flogging a dead horse here?
• 

Fourth photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792967
123mm, ISO 100, 1/320, f/3.5

• Yes it's dark and boring. Is this a straight give up because of the rubbish weather, or worth any time trying? I could definitely look at the white balance being off, but it might be best just to cut my losses

Fifth photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792960
70mm, ISO 125, 1/125, f/5.6

• Centering, yeah, I get that.
• Yeah, waaaay too dark. There's some depth to the RAW still that I can recover pretty well. Should I bother? The lighting was pretty moody that evening with a brief few rays popping through the overcast skies after a rotten day, just before sunset, which gave the aerodrome a nice golden hue for a brief few minutes, my settings kill that effect completely.
• Would something like this fare better, or am I better moving on and spending my time on others?
• 

Thank you everyone! I appreciate any advice you can give, more than happy to take it all onboard and learn as best I can. I'll take your feedback onboard, so if I'm flogging a dead horse, say so, if I'm going to learn and eventually take better aviation photos, I'm going to need the constructive criticism, I'll just have to take it on the chin!

Cheers!
Royce

[trenchjp]

First photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792957#
70mm, ISO 100, 1/500, f/5.6

• This one is indeed really soft and might also be a bit blurry, unfortunately it can't be fixed. f/8 is usually the sweetspot for our type of photography, so you might wanna keep the aperture set as this for most of the time.
• Overprocessing rejections are most of the times caused by the halos you saw on the check for dust tool, they usually appear by messing too much with dehaze, boosting shadows or clarity. But without seeing how you edit your shots, there's no way to pinpoint exactly what you are doing that's causing them.
• Bad compositions are usually the first rejection you get when you decide to upload here. Always center the photo using the fuselage and crop the image close to the plane, but not too much close. Make sure you're also croping each side of the plane the same distance.

The best scenario is to always have your shots well exposed right after taking them, but you can always fix a (not too much) over/underexposed shot in editing, just make sure you are not creating halos when doing it.

Second photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792870
175mm, ISO 200, 1/160, f/5.6

• Not as soft as the Cargolux 747, but still not sharp enough to be accepted. sharpening on this one could be fixable, however.
• Not sure about the obstruction/clutter rejection however, it's better to wait for a screener to comment on this.
• Looking at the histogram you can see that it's indeed overexposed. If a photo has this big ''spike'' touching the right-side ''wall'', it's overexposed, same thig for underexposure, if there's a spike on the left side, it's underexposed. Never let anything touching the sides of the histogram be taller than the horizontal magenta line.

Photos taken on overcast days are really hard to get accepted, always try to shoot on sunny days, or in moments when there's direct sunlight on the plane.

Third photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792863
70mm, ISO 200, 1/160, f/5.6

• Was rejected for bad composition cause the plane is too low on frame.
• Contrast rejection is due to the poor weather and light conditions. Again, it's better too always shoot on sunny days.

I don't think this one can be fixed either.

Fourth photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792967
123mm, ISO 100, 1/320, f/3.5

White balance is fine, not underexposed by the histogram, but still dark visually speaking. The plane is also too low on frame.

Fifth photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792960
70mm, ISO 125, 1/125, f/5.6

Second version is a bit better, but the weather was just to bad to make this shot acceptable. Horizon also looks quite off to me... In any case, it's better to spend time on other photos.

I hope i've helped you a little bit. If you haven't already, i would suggest reading the upload guidelines, they are a very useful guide and will help you to get your first shot accepted. If you have any questions, feel free to pm me or reply me on this thread. I'm sure other people will also comment here aswell.

Best regards!

[Royce_]

• unfortunately it can't be fixed

The best scenario is to always have your shots well exposed right after taking them, but you can always fix a (not too much) over/underexposed shot in editing, just make sure you are not creating halos when doing it.

Great, thanks for the help, I'll simply move on from that one

• Not as soft as the Cargolux 747, but still not sharp enough to be accepted. sharpening on this one could be fixable, however.
• Not sure about the obstruction/clutter rejection however, it's better to wait for a screener to comment on this.
• Looking at the histogram you can see that it's indeed overexposed. If a photo has this big ''spike'' touching the right-side ''wall'', it's overexposed, same thig for underexposure, if there's a spike on the left side, it's underexposed. Never let anything touching the sides of the histogram be taller than the horizontal magenta line.[/URL]

Photos taken on overcast days are really hard to get accepted, always try to shoot on sunny days, or in moments when there's direct sunlight on the plane.

Yeah I didn't realise I'd managed to blow the highlights so much, I messed that one up in post, clearly. I'm still a little lost on the obstruction / foreground clutter thing, as it doesn't seem to meet the criteria. In fairness it probably does meet the criteria for crappy background, but I thought I'd give it a go and show where I got to on recovering this one, if the consensus is weather rubbish, background rubbish, don't waste my time any more, that's fair enough, I'll move on

• Was rejected for bad composition cause the plane is too low on frame.
• Contrast rejection is due to the poor weather and light conditions. Again, it's better too always shoot on sunny days.

I don't think this one can be fixed either.

Ok! Thanks!

White balance is fine, not underexposed by the histogram, but still dark visually speaking. The plane is also too low on frame.

I had another look, I don't think this is recoverable. I've performed some recentering and trying to bring up the colour, but my opinion is this might be deemed destructive, and I will never change the weather, in any case, here is the re-work for completeness

Second version is a bit better, but the weather was just to bad to make this shot acceptable. Horizon also looks quite off to me... In any case, it's better to spend time on other photos.

Alright! That's clear, I'll move on then!

I've got some more that I've been working on, I'll upload those in this thread as a separate post for opinions once they're ready

Thanks again for all your help!
Royce

[dlowwa]

Yeah I didn't realise I'd managed to blow the highlights so much, I messed that one up in post, clearly. I'm still a little lost on the obstruction / foreground clutter thing, as it doesn't seem to meet the criteria. In fairness it probably does meet the criteria for crappy background

Hi, two things: the advice on not expecting great results (for the purpose of uploading here) when shooting in overcast conditions was sound; I'm pretty sure the obstruction rejection was a mistake, as I can't see anything in the image that would be a problem. I've contacted the screener involved to be sure, but for now I think it's safe to assume obstruction is not an issue.

[pawelm]

Hi!

An explanation about this shot being rejected for obstruction/clutter https://www.jetphotos.com/viewqueued_b.php?id=9792870

Quite simply, it was a misclick while selecting rejection reasons. It supposed to be rejected for centering. In our screening menu obstruction and centering boxes are next to eachother and I selected the wrong one by mistake.

My apologies for causing confusion

Have fun on JP,
best regards,
Pawel

[Royce_]

Thank you all for your advice and help so far! Taking into account the rubbish weather of late, here are some photos taken in brief periods where the light wasn't so diffuse, even one where we managed to sustain blue sky for more than a few seconds! Please could you give me your opinion / advice / prescreening?

Thanks!

1:

2:

3:

[dlowwa]

Thank you all for your advice and help so far! Taking into account the rubbish weather of late, here are some photos taken in brief periods where the light wasn't so diffuse, even one where we managed to sustain blue sky for more than a few seconds! Please could you give me your opinion / advice / prescreening?

First two borderline for dark/soft respectively, and the last likely a contrast rejection.