Class Runs from August 28 - October 21, 2017 ” Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman -
Monday, September 18, 2017
This past Saturday, my daughter and I took a ride to New Haven to see the scenery near the Food Truck Paradise. I took pictures and did some editing. I'll post the before and after pictures.
Okay Celeste… That's nice that you took your daughter out shooting with you. I like the first shot quite a bit. I appreciate how you tilted the camera down and kept the far shore line parallel with the top edge of the frame. In your edit you raised the contrast and darkened the image but it also became quite a bit bluer so another tweak would be to take some of the excess blue out with the color balance adjustment. That would reveal more beautiful evening colors and you'd be happier with the result.
The next two seem to be focusing on the large tree… see how the sky competes for the viewers attention? My main rule of thumb to remember is if the photograph isn't about the sky then work hard to eliminate the sky from your picture it generally is too competitive with your main subject and draws the viewer's eye away.
The next one shows us a nice example of sky and water with gentle evening light. Its main flaw is that the horizon line is tilted. It's very very easy to rotate the image to make that sky and water horizon line parallel with the top of the frame. You can increase the saturation slightly to bring out the gentle evening colors more and also warm up the picture a bit as well using color balance.
The image of the goldenrod has some potential but suffers from a lack of any light playing on it. The edit doesn't improve it much either.
The next shot of the foliage you actually hurt rather than helped by over sharpening it. Also there are some strange colors around the edges... purple for instance.when we sharpen pictures we have to do it gently at best it's easy to overdo it. Also notice that the top of that shot is too bright and takes away from what otherwise would be the focal point of the picture.
The last shot is headed in the right direction with your edit… we still need to build more light into the rocks in the foreground with a feathered selection. The composition is pretty good and the horizon line is fairly parallel to the top. Learning to edit your images is twofold process… Learning how to edit with the tools that you have at hand and also developing a vision of how you want to edit it by looking at the work of other photographers. Keep going!
Okay Celeste… That's nice that you took your daughter out shooting with you. I like the first shot quite a bit. I appreciate how you tilted the camera down and kept the far shore line parallel with the top edge of the frame. In your edit you raised the contrast and darkened the image but it also became quite a bit bluer so another tweak would be to take some of the excess blue out with the color balance adjustment. That would reveal more beautiful evening colors and you'd be happier with the result.
ReplyDeleteThe next two seem to be focusing on the large tree… see how the sky competes for the viewers attention? My main rule of thumb to remember is if the photograph isn't about the sky then work hard to eliminate the sky from your picture it generally is too competitive with your main subject and draws the viewer's eye away.
The next one shows us a nice example of sky and water with gentle evening light. Its main flaw is that the horizon line is tilted. It's very very easy to rotate the image to make that sky and water horizon line parallel with the top of the frame. You can increase the saturation slightly to bring out the gentle evening colors more and also warm up the picture a bit as well using color balance.
The image of the goldenrod has some potential but suffers from a lack of any light playing on it. The edit doesn't improve it much either.
The next shot of the foliage you actually hurt rather than helped by over sharpening it. Also there are some strange colors around the edges... purple for instance.when we sharpen pictures we have to do it gently at best it's easy to overdo it. Also notice that the top of that shot is too bright and takes away from what otherwise would be the focal point of the picture.
The last shot is headed in the right direction with your edit… we still need to build more light into the rocks in the foreground with a feathered selection. The composition is pretty good and the horizon line is fairly parallel to the top. Learning to edit your images is twofold process… Learning how to edit with the tools that you have at hand and also developing a vision of how you want to edit it by looking at the work of other photographers. Keep going!