Sometimes you drive all day to get to a location and the weather's crap and the best image you get all day is what you see below. Is your afternoon wasted? Not necessarily. Using a few simple Photoshop tools and a filter, you can make something outta nothing. First of all, if the color is drab the best thing you can do is switch to B&W. There is only so much you can do with exposure, saturation and vibrance, but if you push too far the noise levels get out of hand real quick. So now that we've dispensed with the color, we can concentrate on contrast.
Above and beyond the subject matter, the interplay of light space versus shadow or contrast is what makes or breaks a black and white photograph. When I switched this image to black and white, I lost a lot of detail in the cloud cover and fiddling with the brightness and contrast sliders just wasn't getting it done for me so I had to switch to the burn and dodge tools to give the photo the oomph I was looking for. Despite what you may hear or read about photographers bragging about their pictures coming "straight out of the camera," don't let that discourage you from working with your photos to get what you want out of them. Ansel Adams never let a photo out of his studio without some sort of correction, so don't worry if you have to crop or do a little dodging or burning to get the print you want.
I used the dodge tool to get more contrast in the cloud cover on the left and right sides of the photo using the shadow setting and 20% for the exposure and simply going back and forth until I got the look I wanted. I also used that setting to increase the thickness of the black areas in the rocks and the trees, then I switched to highlights and added some emphasis to the some of the sand in the lower right hand corner.
Finally, I'm currently on a kick where I like to smooth out the final image to give it a dreamy ethereal texture. You can do this in one of two ways. In the RAW editor, you can use the clarity slider before you open the image in Photoshop. Conversely, you can use the "surface blur" filter in the "Blur" filter menu.
The moral of the story is don't let the conditions you find at a particular location prevent you from finding an excellent photo even you have to make it yourself.
That's great a photo and great information.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about photographers that brag about not using PhotoShop. When they say that you can tell that they are letting the camera decide what the viewer sees. and not creating art. The camera is a tool to capture light, but it is up to the photographer to recreate the scene on the final image. Your work is great!