George Farmer said:
Great thread, Peter. I echo my first reply regarding the aquascape.
Thanks for showing us the extra shots. Interesting on the algae too, I've never seen GDA that bad. And top tip on the impellar. Always innovating aren't you?!
Out of interest, did you use much 'digital darkroom' in the final full-tank shot. It looks almost too flawless. Or was it sheer hard work cleaning the rocks and pruning?
George I am happy to clarify for everybody about the photos
George your probably looking at the algae covered tank and thinking hold on a sec, how could he turn that into the image in the opening shot. There is no trickery going on I assure you. The algae was a nightmare there is no doubt about that, but luckily it cleared in time a couple of weeks before the deadline so I could prepare the tank for the competition. As you have indicated It was sheer hard work tbh over several nights just to clean the rocks and the tank, they were cleaned and then cleaned again and again, and then more time was spent to whip it all into shape before the final photos were taken. The original competition photo entry and main photo in this thread are NOT photoshopped. I am sure you are not suggesting it is either, but given the events when the Asian entrant was found to be cheating this is a sensitive subject as I am sure you can understand from my point of view. I will try and give some background information about the photos.
I will just say that ANYBODY reading the thread is welcome to a copy of the original file if they wish to have it, just send me a PM with your email address and I will forward it to you no questions asked. it can easily be checked with an Exif viewer to see if photoshop or any other image altering programme or method was used. I did not even so much as crop the image or sharpen it, things other competitors have admitted to on other forums using photoshop. The image was not retouched in any way before I sent the original file to ADA for the competition, it was sent untouched. The only methods I tried to use to my advantage were photography and very careful preparation beforehand. I was very careful while doing the last preparations for the tank, knowing that the competition rules do not allow any form of digital altering. I probably took a few hundred images over the course of 3 or 4 photo sessions just to get the fish into the right position, this was the hardest thing of all and is probably a story in itself how I did it. The final photo had many hours work put into it.
Dan has the original file in his possession and can/has verified that it is not retouched in his opinion, it was sent to him at his request a few days ago for use in the UKAPS stand for the festival of fishkeeping exhibition in Hayling Island. He wanted a large file for printing quality purposes so I sent him the original no problem. I will see if I can post up the original file, its about 4mb I think, I am not sure if I can do it in photobucket without a premium account which I do not have.
Edit can't do it in photobucket. Heres the original file as big as Photobucket will allow me to upload, you can still check the information on the file though by downloading an Exif viewer you then right click the image and the exif viewer shows you all the information about the photo. I use it all the time to check photos and see what f no's, speed etc were used on other peoples photos. It will show up if photoshop has been used on the file, there is no way of hiding this with an exif viewer AFAIK. Some people will try and hide the extent of the retouching they have done to an original file by deleting the embedded thumnail image in the exif viewer, it will still show up that photoshop has been used but you cannot now compare the embedded thumbnail of the original image to the picture shown, so you cannot see or compare whether wholesale photoshop has taken place, backgrounds being added etc.
Edit: I dont know why the image is not showing up bigger, I have the settings set for 1024 x 768 maybe its our own forum thats not allowing me post the picture so big. Heres a direct link anyway which hopefully works better. Edit again, thats not working either. I will work on it to get it working
I was having difficulties yesterday as well posting stuff but this is a new problem.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y142/dublin6/DSC_0091.jpg
You can (not you only George,anybody can check) check the image posted above against the image that Jeff Senske has posted up on APC forum from the ADA competition, it is the same image, dust marks and all except that ADA have cropped it for presentation purposes.
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...55958-2008-ada-layout-contest-top-27-a-3.html
Here's the Exif viewer that I use, its an add on extension for firefox browser, handy thing to download anyway
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905
Some of the the other images in this thread have been photoshopped, mainly to get rid of CO2 bubbles that are floating around the tank which are very visible especially against the background. I have upped the contrast on some of them as well in photoshop and probably cropped them, no big deal there I think. I have not deleted any fish or added any rocks or plants or anything like that. Most of the other pictures that I took other than the main competition entry were taken with the equipment operating in the tank, the fish cooperated better that way. I found once the filter went off the fish were much harder to photograph. Another problem with the filter off was using the hairdryer, the fish tended to hide as soon as the hairdryer came on. So I spent a lot of time and trouble on the main tank shot when the equipment was removed, once the filter was on the fish moved around freely so I could photograph them better. I don't see a problem posting those type of retouched pictures here tbh, these are just secondary pictures as far as I am concerned. But It is also the reason that I don't have too many different angles of the whole tank without equipment showing, it was to difficult and time consuming to organise so I just concentrated mainly on getting the front view for the competition entry.
The first image in this thread is cropped, this is NOT how the image was sent to ADA for the competition, I sent them the whole uncropped image file. Its pretty close though, I have just cropped the top and bottom section of the photo in this thread to just give the view of the tank only, I have used no other form of digital altering, contrast ,sharpening nothing at all. If you look to the right hand side of the main image you will an obvious dust mark on the side wall of the aquarium, the dust was on the sensor of the camera when I took the photo. I was a dissed about this later on when I realised there was dust on the sensor. This would be easy to get rid of in photoshop, a couple of minutes work, and something I would normally remove if the photo was not a competition entry. There are many other photos from the other photo sessions with no dust marks, I could have used one of those instead if I so wished, actually I sent one of those to the AGA competition as my entry, it was a cleaner shot as regards dust marks. I had a couple of hundred photos to choose from, a lot of duds as well mind you among them, but the fish position in that shot is the one I liked best, so I knew the image could not be retouched and thats the decision that I made, it was the best shot, dust marks and all, so that was the one I used for ADA . The reason the rocks were so clean was hard work with the toothbrush.
Sorry about the long winded answer, but as you can appreciate it is a sensitive subject about which I am happy to clarify any questions people may have.