Abstract editorial? Oh dear...

Blue pyramid glass bulidings against a blue sky
Ho hum, this week has been spent at work and the weather has not been stock-friendly in the evenings. I've had another two batches of images go through QC and one or two images, though perfect technically, probably won't sell. They've been plonked in my "Creative" pseudonym as I don't expect them to sell and I don't want them to affect my main pseudonym's Rank. The main problem with them is that I don't have a property release so they can't even be used "creatively", which leaves them in the wilderness of non-editorial non-released subjects - which I am quickly becoming a specialist in :-(

At least the Olympics are exciting for us Brits...

Abstract of wooden clad multi-storey car park in Reading, UK

Close-up of the pages of a book 1/6

The image on the left, by the way, is an image that I re-shot this week on my D300, using the same settings and lens as the two examples that failed shown in my QC Tests. This one passed with no issues whatsoever, my best case yet for soft or lacking definition being linked to upscaling and not lens or technique. I'll soon forget about my QC issues, but I'm still feeling hurt from all the comments that were made...about crap glass, crap technique, crap workflow...well here is the proof.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas in July

Once again I have to quote my post on Alamy's soft or lacking definition because once again my blogging has been held up by my QC failures. This time I have managed to add Interpolation Artifacts and now Over-manipulated to my troubles!!! I am now shopping for a better camera body as 6MP just takes too much effort to get past QC (and for good reason, as announced here).

Festive blue bead garland 3/4

Festive snowman cut-out 3/4

I've been getting all festive in the last couple of weeks and looking for subjects to fill the buyers' hearts with joy. The result is these cheeky showman images and some limited DoF beadwork.

I haven't started keywording these images yet, I tend to quickly caption them to get them live and then return to them under my own steam. This means that they are out there and can be found by caption and I can link to them but they won't get a great deal of traffic.


Festive blue beads and gold star garlands 1/4

This week is Shoot! the Day (yes, the whole week until the 27th) so I will be trying to get some shots this weekend within the S!TD window. I've sprained my ankle but I'm still going to northern France this weekend and will be shooting peasants (if I see any) so expect some arty french farmhouse images in the offing.


Festive clothes pegs for hanging greeting cards cut-out 5/6

This week, I've been mainly adding, cut-outs!

My post about Alamy's soft or lacking definition, which went down so well with you all, reflects the reason for my lack of posts, they kept saying no to my photos until I was running with a backlog of nearly 40 pictures, grrrrr! Finally, yesterday, they relented and my more careful editing (see, I'm not in denial!) has seen me through. If they had said no again I would have been ready to join the ranks of the "6MP isn't good enough for Alamy" brigade, but then again, they may not have looked at my pictures so this still may be true...


Chinese dragon cut-out 6/6 [catchy caption, eh?!]

So...cut-outs. I been working with the archetypal silo rig, large translucent box, infinity white background, SB800 on a stand (free-standing Manfrotto monopod, no less, turning out to be very versatile) triggered on SU-4 slave mode by the on-board Speedlight. Plenty of information on this kind of rig out there, for which I am very grateful. So on to the subjects. I am about to start on some Christmas themes but for now I've found a friend in a chinese dragon, which was procured on a trip to Hong Kong, and some salad servers...this next one of the dragon is my favourite and could well be used for "looking to the future of the Far Eastern economies"


Chinese dragon cut-out 1/6 [no less catchy than the last!]

Cut-outs (or silos) aren't the most exciting things to photograph but they are a staple of the stock photographer's portfolio so I will be adding a smattering of them over time. It is a good environment to go a bit abstract, especially with the help of a macro lens, but I'll keep that for the next post



Blue plastic hand salad servers 3/5

Alamy's Soft or Lacking Definition

Whatever you might think about Alamy QC failing images for "soft or lacking definition", as explained here, so far those of us who frequent the forum have yet to see a picture that the photographer can show at 100% to be free of some kind of flaw. Since I seem to be capable of creating pictures that are soft and lacking definition on demand I thought I would put up some more examples for those who are still in denial about it.

Last week I had just such a moment. I'd had no failures for a week or so and was thinking all was fine and then three times in a row I got a soft and lacking definition failure. It turns out that the two photos responsible for the failure are soft, as follows (shown as 100% crops of the original 48+Mb files):


This one is most likely mis-focussed @ 1/350s f10 31mm handheld


This one is most likely the subject moving and/or mis-focussed and to cap it all, there is clear CA at the edges of the bird @ 1/800s f8 400mm VR handheld

Don't stare at them too long, they hurt your eyes (that's a clue!).

Alamy QC seem to do a very simple thing, they zoom to 100% in the centre of the image (which is the quickest check they can do). So, apart from scanning across the image for dust and odd birds and things, I would do a final check by zooming to 100%, dead centre and if it ain't right, don't submit it.

Here's other common effects that gets the dreaded soft and lacking definition failure:


This picture was taken at high ISO and then noise reduction was applied heavily leaving a painterly effect @ ISO1600 1/60s f4 18mm handheld


This picture has been interpolated up from 6MP RAW NEF to 71.8Mb 8-bit PSD showing "jaggies" on the edges @ 1/1000s f5.3 300mm VR handheld

The other failure which is poorly understood is demonstrated in the following images, "chroma noise is something you get with older digital cameras, low MP cameras and at higher ISO settings:


The lower half shows chroma noise, the upper half has had the noise removed.


This shot shows the chroma noise exagerated by pushing the saturation to 100%.

Alamy have written a guide to removing chroma noise and some other retouching techniques, here

Hope that helps...