Dead Reed

[Andred]

Took this straight from raw, done nothing but crop, any advise on how to bring out the reed head more would be welcome, that strip of 'green field' in the background draws my eye away I think?

[RovingMike]

There is a DR issue there that I think you will struggle with even using a couple of raw conversions. Overall it is under exposed, but there is total loss of detail in the light bits. Also the lighting is a bit odd for me. I'd expect to see the light on the right side, not the raggedy left.

The reed is really too central and splits the pic in half and might arguably be a bit too high.

[Wheelu]

As Mike has said there is a patch of what appears to be plain white to the left of the head. Have you tried using two raw conversions with differing exposures to get around this? Alternatively, or additionally, use Shadows/Highlights to kill the highlight a bit.

If you select the reed head, experiment with feathering the selection, and then apply an adjustment layer to it, you should be able to bring it out from the background. You will probably need to play with the selection until you get a realistic result.

As for the central placement, it has a weird sort of attraction for me, I could see it printed very large across a boardroom wall perhaps

[Andred]

Thanks for the critism folks, its appreciated, I have made a few adjustments, cropped in slightly to make more of a square, tweeked the exposure slightly and added a high pass filter with an overlay blend mode in PS.

Im not expecting miracles, the subject is probably rather boring, but I am a complete beginner in the world of photography, recently bought my DSLR to take snaps of our new arrival ( 3 week old Emily), but have found myself really liking this new hobby, even enrolled in a 12 week evening class, starting tonight at my local college. hopefully will start seeing some improvement as the weeks progress.

[RovingMike]

Definitely better. But for me it wants to be on one third or the other, but not bang central. Some things are better like that, but for me, not this.

[gray1720]

I think it would work best with the rush(? - I'm no expert but it looks more rush than reed to me) on the right-hand third (ie 2/3 across the frame from the left hand side). To me, as that's the way it seems to be blowing, it give space to blow into (if that makes any sense at all). You have made a huge improvement to it!

Adrian

[AGW]

Its Typha latifolia...aka Reed-Mace but sometimes also referred to as bull-rush (there is a very different plant which more commonly known as bull-rush). Hope this elps....


Graeme

[Andred]

Thanks for clarifying that Graeme :-)

My final adjustment on this image...... re-cropped.

Thanks for all of the advise folks.