Thursday, September 8, 2011

Before and After: Lily Pads of Beaver Lake 09.03.11

There is no denying the power of editing and I have been using it this week to take my photos to a different place. I did some selective coloring yesterday and a creative color enhancing edit on Tuesday. The before and after I chose for today is from my color enhancing edit. While I love both of the edits I did this week, they are both creative edits as opposed to clean edits. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it shows me that I have a ways to go in developing my photography skills. I love that I can take a picture that did not turn out amazing SOOC and make it an artistic representation. But through experience and more learning I hope to capture photos SOOC that leave me feeling the same way I feel after these edits. 

With my edit my main goal was to remove the tree trunks in the reflection of the water. This ended up removing all of the lines in the water which I do miss a bit. I am not sure how to accomplish both in Lightroom. I would love any tips or suggestions and I would love to know what you think of the original versus the edit. Thanks for stopping by!

Before 
Taken with Canon EOS Rebel Ti1 
Settings: ISO 100, 250mm, ss1/6, f/6.3 (full manual on tripod)

After
Edited with Adobe Lightroom
"It is only by loving nature, and going to her for everything, that good work can be done; but then we must look to her for the materials for pictures, not for pictures themselves. It is nature filtered through the mind and fingers of the artist that produces art, and the quality of the pictures depends on the fineness of that filter." - Henry Peach Robinson

Linking up with Pixel Perfect Blog Hop. Head over and see the other before and afters!

4 comments:

  1. What a beautiful pink Lily...great capture!

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  2. I love your edit. What a wonderful job.

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  3. As I was catching up with your blog, this before and after caught my eye. I must say you are ROCKING LR! :) One thing I wanted to point out, not sure if you shoot RAW or not, but if you do, your SOOC won't look as perfect as it did in person. The purpose of a clean edit is to make it look like what it did in person, then add the artist perspective you talked about on top of that. Beautiful SOOC can be achieve though, but almost everyone does some post processing so don't get discouraged either. ;) Also, with the tree trunks, have you tried the adjustment brush on them? I would lower the exposure down to -4 and paint it on. If you want I can do a video for you and email it to you. Let me know! :) Shoot me an email. melissa_noste@hotmail.com

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Thank you for leaving your thoughts! I love reading your comments and critiques.