This is my second “Dance” entry to Weekly Photo Challenge: Dance.
It’s another shot from Indonesia, the photos I took weren’t good, the dancers hands fluttered too fast to catch and I wasn’t hugely focused on the subjects, dinner conversation and the addition of vino were probably the cause! I came home to find a lot of blurs…
So, I decided to play around with simple online editing tools to see if I could make the photos acceptable. Shot 1 , below..
I was so pleased with this one, cropping right into the only focused figure, using Google+ editing, pop, burst and HDR, muted, first time at publishing one of the test shots… I love the way I could make the edits focus on her face and upper body and lead into the line of lighting, blurring out the extraneous parts, so I posted this one as the first shot for the weekly challenge.
This second one (sequence below) is cropped in a lot. I wanted to get rid of the hotel background so messed around with Google+ editing again, using the same process plus a mask, edit for a central focus is great, you can move to a specific point, so I took her face as my central point…
Well, you tell me if it worked… I like the second attempt, it reminds me of those 60’s pictures my parent’s generation had hanging on their walls, a little retro compilation but to me it makes up for the original’s errors.. a way of covering up perhaps? It looks like a picture you might see in a hotel somewhere, on a bland wall…
Do let me know what you think…maybe my eye is biased to my editing learning curve… Any comments more than welcome….I’m sure I need to get to grips with a serious course, but for the time being these online editing tools are pretty good!
Cropped original…
With lots of Google + effects…
Travels in the Middle East and beyond 
The second shot for me. Definitely.
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Great response to WPC -dance
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The blur gives the feeling of motion, so some blur is fine. I like the second shot the best.
janet
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I like what you’ve done with Google+, I didn’t realize they have editing tools like this. For the second dancer I like both photos – the blurred hands show motion and the second more heavily edited could be used in a number of places such as an event poster.
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I’m glad you wrote that comment, Eileen. Google + had Snapseed for its editing tool on Photos, but removed it a while back and left a bog standard tool in its place.When I went in on the night I edited the “event poster style” ( I agree, thank you) the old tools were in place, I was thrilled as they are so good and intuitive. The next day I was so happy with the results I decided to go back and salvage the rest of the photos using the tool. They are no longer there… I wasted a goodly part of my night thinking I was at fault, I wasn’t finding the correct screens, then I went back into my history and found the picture, there was no option to add new photo. I have no idea what went on, I will spend some time over the weekend re-stepping but it is a complete mystery to me, a sad one too if it’s not accessible again now! watch this space…
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I just found the snapseed option in photos. I’ll have to play with that a bit.
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How lucky you are to have so many interesting photo ops! Love your photo, but the blurred hands bother me. I am also learning, and suggest you shoot shots with movement with a faster shutter speed for less blur. I shoot in aperture mode and adjust ISO up until I achieve the effect I want. Don’t be afraid to go really high on your ISO; our modern cameras can handle it.
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