Technical Excellence the 3rd element

Technical Excellence is not an element that I can show you on the web. It is the technical quality of the image.

As a juror sitting on a panel when an image spins around you can tell almost immediately if an image is technically well done. The colors are correct in value, the shadows are not blocked up. The term blocked up means no detail in the tone Highlights and Shadows tend to block up when an image is over or underexposed.

Underexposed images generally appear weaker in the colors without the punch that you want an image to have. In days of film underexposed images tended to have a blue cast in the shadow areas.

Overexposed images also tend to lack punch because the shadow areas or blacks tend to go gray from the overexposure. Blocked up highlights are a problem as they eliminate separation from one bright area to the next.

Well exposed images generally have information in the highlights and shadows. You can see this in your histogram. When the data bunches up on either end or on both ends of the histogram you are generally clipping or cutting off data in the highlights and shadows. There are times when it is ok to have a pure white or pure black as they are values found in what we see but we need to be judicious about those areas.

Some of the other areas of technical concerns are Chromatic Abberation (color fringing around edges).

Oversharpening, usually obvious by a contrasting line following the edges of the image elements.

Poor quality retouching, not blending facial retouching or retouching some areas while ignoring others. Cloning tracks, where the item being cloned has not been blended to make the cloned area unnoticeable.

These are a few of the more obvious concerns when looking for technical excellence. If you'll keep these elements in mind when working on your images you'll find the quality in your everyday work improving dramatically.