tutorial

Evening Edit.

IMG_6701 IMG_6701-3 You can sort of make daylight photos look like evening shots in Lightroom. The shadows won’t quite match because the sun isn’t actually low but it will at least fool some people and seem like avery warm day to others (movie-like sun, Arizona or something). Use the temperature control sparingly, go to the bottom of the menu and turn the image calibration tone to the pink side to taste. You might have to bring out the blues in the HLS section. Reduce the shadows and bring back some blacks, add some contrast and get rid of any residual bird poo.

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Cataract.

IMG_4207The washed out and colour-cast edges are done by wrapping a clear sandwich bag with a hole in the middle, around the lens which I coloured with a blue highlighter on the left and a red one on the right. The hole lets the cat’s head/eye stay sharp and in focus while the surroundings look misty and dreamy.

Day 5: Own Garden.

IMG_3172This is taking garden-creeping to the next level. Taken at an allotment centre, with 10s of gardens next to each other and lots of flowers/plants to photograph. I don’t have all that many photos to show though. It was quite rainy hence the water droplets but during editing I managed to figure out how to process the photo to look realistically like and overcast evening – warm rather than grey/blue (tutorial will be posted in a couple of days).

Lightroom Experiments: Sneak.

IMG_4871-2 IMG_4871

 

In this one I tried to make my own bokeh. The four spots on the red blood patch are actually adjustment brush points set to reduce saturation to 20% and increase exposure, with a very tiny amount of feathering. I tried to keep the size similar to the actual bokeh but they look a bit too small. The SNEAKY trick here is a radial filter on the light shaft in the centre of the frame to make it a little more pronounced and draw viewers’ focus more subtly than a standard vignette.

 

Lightroom Experiments: Fire & Smoke.

IMG_4829-2 IMG_4829Tried to use what the shot offered here. The column of bokeh in the background looked like a column of smoke to me so I worked around that. To me it looks like a huge ash pile on top of which is a bonfire that the guy in the background is huddling close to, but is going to have a rather bad day (here’s you thinking you could view this subjectively).

Lightroom Experiments: Down.

IMG_4847 Original IMG_4847

 

Quite similar to the previous post, tried to make the ricochets a bit more subtle and the gun flare a bit more realistic. The difficult part was getting a slight glow from the gun behind the rock.
As for the non-edited bits, the flashgun was pointing down from the top of the brick at the back of the shot to mimic floodlights like those around base camps.
Happy to hear comments about mistakes I made or tips you’d like to give/receive.

Lightroom Experiments: Hit and Miss.

IMG_4839 Original IMG_4839

Not quite as elaborate as the first image in the series but here I tried to create relatively believable gunshot flares.
The ricochet mark on the top left looks a little cartoony but I think that fits in quite well. A more subtle touch is the blood by the fallen soldier as well as reflections on the knee and helmet on the other.