Or, How to choose which picture to spend time on and then display.
In my previous post, I showed you five different exposures of the same basic scene. I actually shot 6 pics, but one of them suffered from camera shake, making it unsharp. So, that was the first one thrown out.
Next, I eliminate this one:
It has some interesting shapes, but too much of it has no detail. Remember, the texture of these sunset clouds is what captured my attention in the first place.
Next, let's get rid of this one:
It has more detail in it, but it feels top heavy because of the huge expanse of dark up top. I could change that dark value, but it wouldn't look pretty. So, out it goes.
Now, these two had potential:
They hinted at some foreground interest. Both with the light sky under the clouds and the trees. Both were too narrow a view compared with the one I did pick:
It has foreground interest with light sky and trees. It has a wide enough field of view to show unique shapes left and right. It is balanced light and dark top to bottom. The large dark space up top doesn't feel so heavy because of the silhouetted foreground objects. So, this is the one I choose to enhance.
I adjust the exposure to bring up some of the toe of the exposure curve (lighten the dark) and flatten out the top of the curve (tone down highlights). I don't change any colors, but I do adjust saturation values for red and orange to deepen them. This made the yellows (which had a slight orange tint in them) too bleak, so I brightened yellow. All of this washed out the blue sky, so I dropped it's tonal value way down to help the other colors stand out.
A little sharpening...
Here is the one finished photo out of six shots:
This one, I'll show. I can crop it to fit either of my regular print sizes, 4x6 or 11x14. It will make a nice card or a good background print for an office or den.
I hope you enjoyed my methods for thinning out the herd of exposures to get the one image worth working on and showing off.
Ciao4now!
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