Every Picture Is a Compromise
Lessons from the Also-rans
Most photography websites show the photographer's very best work. Wonderful. But that's not the full story of a creative life. If we want to learn, we'd better pay attention to the images that aren't "greatest hits" and see what lessons they have to offer. Every picture is a compromise — the sum of its parts, optical, technical, visual, emotional, and even cosmic – well, maybe not cosmic, but sometimes spiritual. Success on all fronts is rare. It's ok to learn from those that are not our best.
This is a series about my also-rans, some of which I've been able to improve at bit (i.e., "best effort"), none of which I would consider my best. With each there are lessons worth sharing, so I will.
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Original digital capture
Just a Touch of Warming
Color Balance
For (I'm sure) deeply psychological reasons, we humans generally prefer things that are warm. Soup, campfires, bed, beaches come to mind. Seems so with photographs, too. This week will include images improved with a bit of warming in processing.
What I saw that I liked:
Love the tiny droplets of water on the reeds.
What I don't like in the picture:
My first go at this one immediately involved conversion to b/w (above). I like it, but the more I looked at the RAW file in color, the more I was drawn to it — in spite of the fact that it leaned to the cool side of color balance.
What I learned:
Easy enough to fix. In Lightroom the Color Balance slider does a wonderful job of shifting tones globally to warm or cool and image. I moved this one from 5500 to 5803 and that was all it took to bring out some of the warmer colors in the reeds. |
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