Now that I have got the basic parts of editing done I can bring in all the colour and Vibrance that I need to create a positive long-exposure shot so I have decided to adjust the brightness and contrast so that I baseline colours in place before editing them fully and the screenshot below shows how much I adjusted the two sliders.
Once I had cropped the image I then went on to adjust the tone of the photo because I believe that especially the right hand side of the photo needs a bit more tone added to it so that it doesn’t look overall too contrasted.
The last form of editing I decided to do on Photoshop was to adjust the sliders for Vibrance and Saturation because I want to create a slight HDR effect which is what I want to do with all my selected photos by putting many different chosen techniques that I have used throughout the book and put them into one so by doing that I have created another baseline for the editing to be improved on a different software.
Exam Editing
This is the final outcome from Photoshop however I am still not happy with the overall colour so I am now going to edit the photographs colour on Lightroom to add more affect.
The first step I took was increasing all the colours within Hue to the max as the allowed all the colours in the photo to stand out therefore I could use other techniques on Lightroom to contrast them all together into the one and create a good atmosphere within the photo and most of all to improve the overall composition.
Secondly I then worked on the photos saturation adjusting the colours I feel need to be tuned down or tuned up so that I can create a positive image, I decided to turn the Red and Orange up because that is the colour of the trail lights but also to slightly turn down green and yellow because they were contrasting with the bush I originally didn’t want.
Next I adjusted the Luminance within the photo because this affects the intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction, which is fundamentally the trail lights so I adjusted the luminance in a wave form so when it dips it suddenly rises with more colours.
Then the last bit of editing I did with Lightroom is use Lens correction which is simply re adjusting the photo to straighten it, however this on made a small impact because I was using a tripod when shooting the photo.
This photo is a photo of my dad’s car trail lights, to get the affect from this photo I set my camera up on TV mode and stood under a lamppost so that I could get the road lit up where I wanted it to be, this also helped my camera to focus on moving point even though I flicked the manual focus switch to allow myself to focus the camera. When taking the photo I considered the editing that I could do and also the rule of thirds so I used my tripod so that I could get a sturdy image of the lights moving round the bend rather than having to hold my camera and risk movement. When I considered the rule of thirds I decided to shoot the image on an angle and also the shoot without zoom because I figured that I could get the full movement of the trail lights and also all the colours without the risk of them being grainy. The picture has been taken with a lot of creativity on mind. I came to the conclusion that this type of photography and technique can’t be produced just for the sake of it, I had to use my camera and knowledge to my advantage because at the end of the day I want to create the best photos possible. This photos focal point is the moving trail light which is the whole point of Long-exposure but
that doesn’t mean to say the rest of the photo is pointless and not attracting the eye because it is, without the surroundings the trail lights wouldn’t contrast with the background of the photo which is why I purposely positioned my camera and tripod underneath and lamplight because that’s where I believed I could bring the photo together. I like many parts of this photo the main being the trail lights and I believe when getting to the editing stage I can really bring the colours out through adjusting the saturation which leads me to my next favour which is the colours within, I like the way the colour starts off bright at the bottom presumably from the car and the gradually darkens but the sky is affected by light pollution which gives off a modern affect just like Alex Wise’s work. However I have a couple minor criticisms about this photo the first is the bush on the bottom right hand side of the photo which I believe is too bright in the photo and either needs to be toned down or cropped completely out which is what I’m going to show in my next analysis. Another flaw I believe to have is that because of the moving lights parts of the photo have become slightly blurry however through the use of Photoshop I will be able to smooth the photo out and potentially give it a sharper look.
As I said in the previous analysis I was going to use editing to my advantage to edit out any flaw that I noticed, so the first Is the overall rule of thirds of the photo and how I believe the bush on the right effects the overall photo so I have chosen to slight remove the bush so much that it still in the photo but still contrasts well with the surroundings because I figured that if I cropped the whole bush out that the image would look really plain and boring.
I have now finished the final editing for the photo and I believe I have achieved all the criteria I wanted for this photo, I have managed to add the effect of HDR but also keep all the long-exposure which is what I wanted to achieve with the overall composition. Throughout the editing I managed to add drama to the photo which was done through Lightroom via adjusting the Luminance which also adds to the HDR affect which was not present in the original shot which I had to weave in. To conclusion now that I have edited the photo to how I want it I can now keep it in mind when I come to produce my final photos in the next few pages.