One Photo, Many Edits

Here is the original. The morning had ground fog and sunlight filtering through the woods.

I took the shot and was so-so about how it looked.

In my mind's eye it was much warmer...
in my mind's eye it was more mystical looking.

But I decided to take it a step further after adding some 'warmth' to it.

This is the uncropped photo.
It satisfied me and I left it be.

Then this morning I wanted something to mess with while I was waiting for the rain to end.

So I opened up the first shot again and dropped it into Topaz Studio. I used 2 layers of Impression, Monet, and another one.

I added the mists that I'd seen with the naked eye and the vision I'd seen while squinting at the photo.

Then I took it another step further and opened up HDR Efex Pro HDR.

I settled on this look. The fog was incredible and moved along the tops of the berry briers, the meadow had an ethereal look to it that did not show up in the photo.

However, it had been a long time since I'd manipulated a photo so much.

I like it.

Programs used. PaintShopProX7, Topaz Studio~free version, Topaz plug ins Simplify, and  Efex Pro HDR. In PSPX7 I was able to add the mists with a brush.

So there you have it. One photo with many edits.
Some mornings it is just plain fun to be creative.

Just Picture it!

OH I know ... I know!
I ranted about editing just a bit ago, saying take that shot, make it perfect, be...a true perfectionist.

However.
Here is a sample of a before [above] and after editing [below]. I used a graduated filter in PaintShopProX7 to give the sky a bit more of a punch and the water a bit more blue.
The shot below is what is looked like to me in my mind's eye.

I like to change things up and sometimes when I take a fall or winter photo all the colors just seem wrong.
What I see in my eyes is not what the camera shows me no matter how hard I work at it.

For example, I was out in the pasture the two days ago and the lighting was subdued but the colors were absolutely brilliant.

There is not much difference between the Original here and the edit. Just enough added warmth added in Viveza 2, from the Nik Collection. [The Nik Collection is free for download now as they are not developing it any further.]

More of a difference here. The yellows are more defined without the saturation becoming too offensive. This is more how my 'eyes' saw it. However, my camera is set to 'natural' and doesn't 'up' the saturation. There are settings on most cameras that allow you to take jpegs on a more colorful setting.

Here is two of our elderly donkeys. On the left is Princess and on the right is Emma.

I took this shot into ON1, a program that is now my favorite.
I took a bit of liberty with how I wanted this image to brighten up.

And then there was Julie...she was kind enough to pose again.

I thought the clouds and the skies were fantastic and needed to be brought out in the photo.

For this edit, I used PaintShopProX7 and Topaz Adjust 5. I edited the sky and the foreground separately.

And then one more edit. Julie's colors seem dim in this shot now. So I went back and did a bit of dodging on her body...

I do edit. I like to keep it somewhat realistic unless I am going for something completely odd and fun.

There you go. Fall color edits with donkeys as my star models.

Taking photos/Random Thoughts

Of course there will always be the debate about how much editing is acceptable.
There will always be a huge debate.
To Edit or To Not Edit.

I am somewhat in the middle. A little editing can go a very long way. 

I like to take .RAW files now. I can breeze through them in CorelAfterShotPro 3 and get a good job done quickly. I guess I am plugging Corel because they haven't gone the way of Adobe where you have to pay monthly to use Lightroom and CC.

I've also found ON1 to be extremely easy and fun to use.
It has the ability of taking my .ORF and my .NEF files and working with them and I can save them in a variety of file types.

However, I am always interested in improving what I do. I read up on tutorials and watch the occasional video. 

One of the items I see floating around the internet is videos that teach you in certain programs of how to change the sky in your photo that you've taken.
Yikes! Okay, that is fun and it can add a lot of drama to a photo.

But when did we stop taking real photos? Or better yet, why do some folks post edit photos and spend more time on them in the digital dark room than they did thinking about taking the shot.

I've harped on this before. And I am as guilty as the next person for post editing shots. And perhaps I am all wrong too...

I have learned a few tricks that could help me get a more interesting shot than the conventional way. But swapping out skies seems a bit extreme for me.

I don't mind cloning out a small distraction, but going to the far end of the spectrum is a bit unrealistic.
So I don't know if I'd qualify as a purest ~ no, I am not. But I won't spend hours swapping skies, cloning in or out rocks, and other items on a photo.

I think about what I want to do, watch the weather for a perfect sky and then try to compose something that will work.

Here is an edit that is very obvious.

Here is another. Replaced sky added a moon, but it is all quite obvious.

Here is a shot I took a long time to think out and do. I took many shots on a beautiful morning. I used an Infrared filter and also did some shots with a ND filter.

I came up with this, edited to black and white.

[This shot was taken obviously before our house remodel.]

I like to do less as more.

I studied the lighting in this shot and went with what filtered through the window in the late evening out onto the porch.

I've done some pretty wild stuff, but always seem to come back to the basics.
I even once in a while go a bit overboard in exploring things like HDR.

Recently I've gotten an interest in bugs. I've read up on how some of the professionals get great 'insect' shots and learned about something called Image Stacking. Image stacking led me to Focus Peaking and searching out how to manual focus properly in an Automatic Focus world.

I'm making the circles. Landscapes, Macro, Panoramic, High Dynamic Range, Long Exposures, Still Life, and Infrared Photography, a bit of over the top artistic stuff, and then back to the basics.

All challenges to make taking a photo interesting and challenging at the time.

Edit? Of course. Have fun with it. 
After all when the debate dust settles, I guess it all comes back to the photographer and what the Artist Photographer wants to portray.

I guess if you are going to take photos, you just need to enjoy what you are doing.

Thoughts on Photography

I used to claim to be a purist.  But that was when I faithfully took film shots and left it up to the lab to do my printing.

Along came the digital camera and I was not not not going to go there.
But in the end I gave in and got a little point and shoot digital Olympus Stylus camera. And the digital age took me by storm.

And then I acquired my first Photoshop program to learn with.  Photoshop 7.0.
I enjoyed working with the program and becoming creative with it.

But I still wanted basically to remain true to the photo.


Now you can get Adobe Lightroom $9.99 for per month.

Adobe CC their slogan...Take It/Make It. Software for rent.
The slogan they have bothers me a bit.

Take It/Make It.
I think it gives the wrong message to budding photographers.


To me it says, take the photo, 'rent' our software and we can teach you how to make a great photo.
But is it a new normal for photography?
Granted you do need software to make .RAW files into .jpegs or other useful files.  


I also don't buy into the fact that you cannot take good photos unless you have the Industry Standard Photo Editing Software or the most expensive lenses and most expensive cameras.
However I suffer camera envy and lens envy with the best of them.

Whatever happened to learning to use a camera and exploring its capabilities first?  The internet it full of online photography classes.

How to edit your photos into a masterpiece!
Learn Photography, a Tutorial!


I will also say that yes, I do use editing software.  But I go for 'the shot' and try to make it as correct as possible first and not afterwards.

I take it and then may have to touch it up.

 Original

Edited to take out the noise from the long exposure on the moving water in this shot.

ISO 200

f/20

60 second exposure

Olympus E-420

ND filter

I most certainly didn't need that long of an exposure and could have done with a slower one, but the ND filter was a 10 stop filter. Very dark.  I could have gone with a lighter one, but the sun was so bright and I enjoy seeing how far I can push exposures.

The shot itself is not one to write home about.  I was trying to get the rocks and the ice crystal clear and allow the  water to be ultra smooth.  Instead I 'sort of' got it. 

I assume if I spent enough time working on this shot, I could enhance the ice and the rocks.  But this shot doesn't shout at me as being that great. 
So I passed on spending hours in a software program making a great photo.  
I plainly missed hitting the mark on this shot. 
More than likely if I'd not gone with such a long exposure I would have gotten something much nicer.


Here is another shot I took with a Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd S1413 pink point and shoot camera. I was walking along the snowmobile trail and pulled the camera out of my breast pocket and choose Landscape as the setting.

No editing other than the water mark.

Then I did take it to CorelPaintShopProX7 and used Topaz BW Effects 2 to get this.

ISO 100

f 7.2

1/1166 seconds

No filters

You guessed it, I am guilty of 'making' a dramatic black and white shot from a color shot.

The difference here is that I knew the capabilities of Topaz BW Effects and as I looked at the scene in front of me, I thought of how it would be composed in black and white.

I didn't just shoot a random shot.  I knew how the clouds would add drama against the blue sky when I shot it.  

I knew from old school film that in black and white photography the red filter would whiten the clouds and darken the blue sky.

And simply, I really liked the composition of the shot.
Of all the shots I took that day hiking in and out of the valley, this is the one I think was my best.

This was my the second shot I took in a portrait view to catch more of the sky, but I like the first one better.

Then there was the neat ice formations.

Unedited

Edited to show details and cropped

It is a pretty shot and one of interest to me because of the delicate frost forming. But not stunning or electrifying.  

And lastly just something for fun.

I spent a lot of time last week crouching and kneeling on the snow and ice.

Did I mention I love photography in the winter?