tompepper posted:

xzzy posted:

Fortunately it's not a super complex concept, yeah it's weird at first but after a little while it'll all become muscle memory and you can worry about what everyone else worries about : is this composition any good or am I a complete failure?

tuyop posted:

I don't think I'm very good but one of the things that I habitually do with almost all my photos is to up the contrast either through curves or with a slider. It's like an exploratory step to try to get the picture to represent the focal point that I had in mind when I shot it.

I really like the van in front of the apartments in your post, so here's how I start out the workflow:

Here's the original, opened in Preview with the "Adjust Color" tool selected.

Right off the top I can see that the image is exposed to give you great detail in the highlights and shadows. What's lacking here is contrast, everything has the same flat, grey aspect because the camera doesn't know what you want to pop out.

Next, I just pull in the level ends so that the extra information at either end of the histogram gets dropped:

If my dad had asked me to touch up one of his snapshots, I may stop at this point just because I know he's not really looking for much more. However, I did lose some detail in the clouds and the roof of the van. I don't mind that but ymmv

Now I adjust the contrast and the midpoint until the van pops even more.

Little bit better but I think this scene should be a bit more... orange. It gives me a vibe of hot parking lot and the temperature is simply too cool for that.

So now I mess with the other sliders. Each change I make I usually confirm that it has a positive effect by wiggling the other sliders a bit. After adjusting the contrast and highlights here, for instance, I brought the right side of the level slider back and forth to see what effect my changes were having on the roof and the clouds.

I turned up the exposure so I could increase the contrast even more (boosting the highlights) without losing shadow detail. I also increased the saturation to give the picture more of that scorching parking lot feel, balanced by trying to bring the temperature cooler to give the sky some contrast. Then a little bit of sepia and sharpness because I liked the result of that.

The image after this little bit of futzing.

With this shot, I would now try to mask off the sky and apply a "dehaze" gradient mask over it to give it some additional drama. Depending on the effect I want I would also try masking off the grass and tree leaves and playing with the saturation and colours on those bits, since they could be either more vibrant or more washed out, depending.

Edit: Oh, I also think the composition would be a bit better if the van was closer to the center of the frame. Having it bunched in the corner there feels cramped and I'm not sure whether it or the buildings are the important part of the shot. Unless the point of the photo is that the van is only a transient, temporary part of the scene and the tension between the van and the apartments and the beautiful sky is the point here...

tompepper posted:

been getting used to my new camera, very happy with the colour

burexas.irom posted:

One of my first jobs was in a photo shop, so I was exposed to a lot of these old-guard mainly event photographers who poisoned my mind with their lovely ideas about what good photography is, e.g. if you have one pixel overexposed THE PHOTO IS RUINED I TELL YOU

So now, years later, I'm getting into shooting myself and I find that most of my effort goes into unlearning all the bad advice I got over the years. I'm saying this because I was reading tuyop's process and internally going "Jesus christ they are blowing the gently caress out of that camper roof" but then looked at the final photo some time later and was like yeah it has this cool 70's postcard high-saturation film quality to it, cool edit.

field balm posted:

I assume that is the adobe software your using?

E: Chucking in another picture of some lizards! I might have made the dark parts in this too light, its really hard to tell lol.

Toalpaz posted:

tompepper posted:

tompepper posted: