I've been taking photographs, seriously, for about 2 1/2 years now. One thing I've learned is to time and compose the shot so that it comes out the way I intended. If I want a landscape shot of lots of Cypress trees at night in a swamp with lots of fog to create that eerie effect, then I know I'm going to have to find a location like that which I can access at night, and time it for a night with weather that suggests there might be fog, and then hope for the best. Another thing I've learned is that when I don't get the shot I wanted, Photoshop is my best friend!
I really like manipulating images to achieve the effect that I envision. While I am thrilled on those rare occasions that I take a shot and it has that wow look that I wanted, I'm just not that good to achieve that all the time. So I have no reservations about adjusting the heck out of the shot with photo editing software like Photoshop.
Here's a recent example. This is the original shot taken in the afternoon, in broad daylight. Not particularly interesting. Not completely in focus, a little soft.
And here's the finished product...
So what exactly did I do to make this? Well, to be honest, I don't even remember every adjustment I did. Some of the things I did were to shoot the original image in RAW. Images shot in RAW format provide more flexibility with making adjustments without making the image look bad. In Photoshop I cropped the image slightly and used several filters to alter the color and add a subtle drawing effect which I thought added to the eeriness. I added gradients to the top and bottom of the image to add black to darken the image. I sharpened the image. I also used layers to paint in some fog-like color and reduced the opacity to give it that see through fog look. I erased a small amount of the fog in certain places where the tree trunks are so that the fog would look real in the scene. Additionally, I created a layer and painted some gaussian blur just on the water to give it a calmer still look. Also, I reduced the brightness of the highlights in the water significantly.
So what do you do to your images besides crop and sharpen? What are your thoughts about photo manipulation?
Cheers, and happy creative editing!
Dan, I think it is awesome you are writing this blog. I always enjoy looking inside the thought processes of other photographers. It is very enlightening. If I may, I'd like to share a little about what I do. I always shoot in RAW. I use Lightroom to convert my RAW images. One of the things I've learned is to always set the white and black points first. Utilizing a histogram for this process ensures that I don't clip any important data. I feel the RAW conversion is possibly one of the most important steps in my workflow. If I handle this part correctly, it is much easier to create images I like, but also to create art, even from images that don't stand on their own, because of some flaw. What I do after the RAW conversion is really not as important as what is done before I bring an image into Photoshop. Anyways, just my opinion. Thanks for letting me share. Keep up the blog. I look forward to reading more.
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Cyndi, thanks for your great insights. You've touched on a very good point. RAW files give you something akin to a free ride (to a point) to edit without destroying the photo. I've found that often edits done in RAW are often more than sufficient for a finished piece of photography. But you can always do more outside of RAW to create exactly what you want. Thanks again for your thoughts!
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