Category Archives: Photo Fix Friday

Photo Fix Friday

Posted by Mike on

Photo Fix Friday

Well I guess I can officially call this Photo Fix Friday concept a blog series now that I have reached three posts! I was looking through my old Disney images when I ran across this colorful image of the Pop Century resort. I remember this trip back in May of 2012. It was my first solo Disney trip as well as my first with a DSLR after almost a year of learning about photography with my old point & shoot.

What strikes about the original image is the color tone. I had the image way too warm (for my tastes and my memory of that evening). The beautiful darkening blue sky was the perfect backdrop for the colors of this section of the resort. I also had the image too dark and lost some of the details. Although I had been processing my images for quite a few months I was still learning about a good balance between the highlights and the shadows. I am sure I relied too heavily on the Topaz Labs’ Adjust plug-in to achieve my images.

For this photo fix I chose to start by changing the crop. I is a subtle change but I think it gives the Rubix Cube stairwell a little more room to breath in the image. The second change is the white balance. The original was at 5000K which although is not too far to the warm side of the scale is adding a lot of oranges and yellows to the image. The new image has a temp at 3500K. This brought the sky back to the color I remember and gave the buildings a nicer look, not like the sun was still shining on them.

For the second image I definitely adjusted the exposure more than I did originally. I increased the overall exposure by 2/3rds of a stop to bring up the background details and brighten the colors on the cube. I adjusted the highlights down and further brought attention to the rest of the scene by increasing the shadows. These changes give the image a definite boost toward the cheerful side rather than the darker, slightly intimidating original image.

The last changes I did to this image would be the final processing steps. Rather than go through Topaz Labs, I used the OnOne Perfect Effects 9.5. The ability to layer in multiple enhancements like increasing the contrast, increasing the dynamic range and adding a slight vignette all from within one application is very beneficial. If the changes I see in my head are more creative than these minor tweaks then I would have used Photoshop and spent a little more time processing.

Overall I like the changes I was able to achieve. I know my early processing was a little dark and tended to be warm in tone overall.  Let me know what you think of these changes….

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Pop Goes the Night

Pop Goes the Night
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Pop Goes the Night Two

Pop Goes the Night Two
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800

 

Photo Fix Friday

Posted by Mike on

Photo Fix Friday

The second edition of Photo Fix Friday is here. I don’t believe I can call it a regular feature of my blog yet, but I am working on it. Surprisingly there are quite a few opportunities in my early images.

This Morning Trail image was captured on my way to work back in April 2012. The town had cleared off some land designated for a new town park and offices. It was a cold morning and the frost hung heavy on the ground. I spotted the sun breaking the horizon through the trees.  It was creating some great shadows in the path toward the woods. I pulled the car around and returned to the small entrance. I grabbed the camera with its tripod and quickly captured the scene.

What I remember most about the view was the frost on the grass along with the light and shadows. As you can see in the first image I over-processed the scene by increasing the colors. I’m sure I ran the image through my Topaz Labs Adjust program to create a pseudo HDR effect and in the process destroyed what it was about the scene that made me stop.  If you look in the tops of the trees on the right of the image you can spot the halo effect of using the HDR function too much in Adjust.  Another sure sign for me is the loss of blue in the sky.  The sun was not that over powering, that is all in my post-processing.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Morning Trail

Morning Trail – Original
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/50s, 32mm, f/18, ISO 100

 

The second image is basically straight out of the camera. This is what I initially captured. The horizon is tilted and the image is a little underexposed.  You can also see the true color of the sky as well as the frost on the grass.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; MorningTrail-SooC

Morning Trail – SooC
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/50s, 32mm, f/18, ISO 100

 

Now for the fix. I changed the crop that I used. I know I went with the 16×9 crop in the original because I had to place the horizon using the rule of thirds. I was still working on understanding everything I had been reading and was not focusing on the feel of the image. For this new image I stayed with the original 3×2 image ratio but brought the top right corner in and down.

My tweaks in Lightroom were done to lighten up the shadows and tone down the highlights.  I did not want to over saturate the image again so I only did minor adjusts to the color.  The frost needed to stay visible to me.  You can still see the effects of the sun but it is not overpowering the image.  I also wanted to keep as much of the shadows as possible but did bring back some of the detail hidden in the darker portions of the image.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Morning Trail - New

Morning Trail – New
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/50s, 32mm, f/18, ISO 100

 

My fix on this image is truer to what I remember about the scene. It is not necessarily the way every image needs to be processed. Some images I process with a look in mind and proceed to change the image to achieve that look. For me this image needed to be brought back to what is in my memory.

Photo Fix Friday

Posted by Mike on

Photo Fix Friday

I have been posting quite a lot of my Disney images lately as a stop gap to my current trend of not capturing anything new with the camera. That trend I plan on remedying this weekend! So as not to get everyone to hate Disney I thought I would try something different – Photo Fix Friday.

I was looking over my older images (from 2012/2013) to see where I started and try to understand if I have improved any over the years. The improvement can come in many forms – image composition, style, post-processing, etc. I think it is good to review your older work. It definitely lets me appreciate my current work even more.

So on to the “fix”…

This image was captured at the beginning of my journey. I had just spent 9 months learning about photography and using my Sony point -n- shoot for all it could give me. I had just purchased my first DSLR, a Nikon D5100 and a pair of lenses to get me on the next leg of my photography trip. This is also during the phase of constant Google+ theme participation. This image being part of my Grass series of images.

As you can see from the original I was experimenting heavily with post-processing. This particular image getting the old sepia treatment. I hadn’t learned of the word subtle yet… 🙂

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – Original
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400

 

I liked the composition for Three Sister. I was also fascinated with shallow depth of focus as you can see. If I was to capture this image again I would definitely increase the DoF to get more of the foreground grass in focus. This second image is practically what came out of the camera. A few minor tweaks in Lightroom but my starting image none the less.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – Start
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400

 

For this Photo Fix I chose to go with a less cramped crop on the grass. I know now that I cropped the image to remove the lump of blurry, green grass on the left of the image which I felt was a little distraction. Today, I used Photoshop to blend it away. The larger crop allows for more of the background to be visible and provide some breathing room for the subject.

I also stayed away from the sepia tone and went with my more preferred silver tone for the black & white processing.  You will also notice a little less contrast in the new image which gives a more natural look to the details in focus and not so much a processed look.  I can now look at this image without cringing…  LOL.

 

MLCreations Photography: Blog Post Related &emdash; Three Sisters

Three Sisters – New
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/640s, 42mm, f/4, ISO 400