What the heck was I thinking?

I'm conducting an online class right now, critiquing photographs, and one student, Dennis, posted a photo where I thought the light was too flat and weird and there wasn't any texture in some wooden elements. It reminded me of some of the initial photos I took with my very first digital SLR back in January of 2004. I tweaked Dennis's photo to help illustrate what I was talking about and then tweaked this photo, which looked similar (in lighting) to his picture.

Back in 2004 I put a wooden spoon on a red silk scarf, put something black behind it, and then, either using a flashlight or candlelight, I photographed the spoon. The top photo is my original image, which I thought was rather cool at the time.

Today, older and wiser, I brought that same photo into Photoshop and applied a Topaz Adjust 5 effect called "Detail Strong" to the photo. Using a layer mask, I allowed the effect to come through on the wooden spoon only, not on the scarf. Why? Because I wanted texture to show on the spoon, not the fabric. You see the effect in the second picture.

But it's still too yellow (due to the bizarre lighting I used), so I desaturated the yellow color in the picture (using an adjustment layer) and then applied the Topaz Adjust effect "Detail Strong" to just the spoon. This looks (to me) more natural.

As for the red silk scarf the spoon's sitting on? Well, that's just weird! Dramatic, but weird!

©Carol Leigh, eight years older but not nearly as wise as I should be . . .

Thanks to Elena and Marianne . . .

Elena Nosyreva, thank you for suggesting an alternative way of making my boat stand out more, and thank you, Marianne Skov Jensen, for giving me the specific workflow.

Early this morning we went up to the docks in Newport and I took a photo of a boat that's similar to my photos in the previous post (overcast light, but the clouds weren't quite as cool). Instead of creating a new layer, filling it with neutral grey, and then using a dark/light brush to lighten and darken what I wanted, I used an adjustment mask, lightened the image (via Levels), inverted the mask and used a brush to let the underlying lighter boat come through. (I may have described that improperly, but I've been up since 4 and am a little loopy at the moment.)

What I like about this method is that it's fairly simple, and I don't have to build up the lightness or the darkness X% at a time, where if you accidentally overlap, it looks awful.

So thank you both for (a) being so smart and (b) for taking the time to show me a different way of doing something.

©Carol Leigh

Thought Process and Technique: Fishing Boats

Over in my daily blog, I posted two photos on August 1, photos of fishing boats in Newport, Oregon. Linda H. commented, "Have these been "cleaned" or something in Topaz? Or something similar? They look so pristine." Here is the link to that day's post.

My response is that yes, I did tweak them in Photoshop to bring out what attracted me to the scene in the first place. Here's my thought process along with what I did:

I liked the overall quiet and peaceful feeling at the boat docks that morning. The sky was overcast, but there was an interesting texture in the clouds. The water was still and reflected both the boats and the sky beautifully. Because of the overcast lighting, the blue color of the fishing vessel "Caremi" really glowed. From a different vantage point, I liked how the F/V "Finn" stood alone at the dock, reflected nicely in the water.

I was working with a 24mm-85mm lens on a full-frame camera sensor, so I wanted to show some openness, vastness in the scene. I liked being able to fill my frame with the whole string of boats, from the blue "Caremi" all the way back to the white "Finn." 

Notice that now I've identified exactly what I liked about the scene. Clouds. Reflections. String of boats. Solitary "Finn."

I used a polarizing filter to reduce reflections in the water and in the sky so that the texture of the clouds would show through. (A graduated neutral density filter would have been appropriate, but I can't use a tripod on the docks -- they're too narrow and they move.) I also underexposed by a third of a stop.

In the first photo, you see my original image. All I did was adjust Levels, which helped bring out some of the texture in the sky. The clouds didn't look quite as texture-ish as I wanted, so I brought the image into Topaz Adjust 5 and applied a "Photo Pop" setting. (Photo 2) Nice clouds now, nice reflections. And the scene lightened up a bit, as I knew it would.

But the boats still looked rather dull and murky, too clumped together. And the blue of the "Caremi" didn't look as dramatic as I remembered. So I dodged the boats, applying the effect just to the places I wanted to perk up. (Photo 3)

My last step was to then burn the sky just a bit, to give it a little more drama so that the boats would stand out even more, sandwiched as they are between sky and reflections-of-sky. (Photo 4)

I followed the same routine with the photo of F/V "Finn." You see my original version (adjusted Levels), then added Topaz Adjust 5 "Photo Pop" to pump up the clouds a bit. (Photo 2) Then burned the sky a little. (Photo 3) Then dodged the boat to make it pop more. (Photo 4)

There are hundreds of ways of accomplishing the same thing, and maybe you've got a tried and true way of enhancing your work that's better than this. If so, I would love to hear how you would have handled this situation. I'm no Photoshop guru, as you know, but I like sharing how I work and I am open to new tips and tricks. And Linda H.? I hope this answered your question.

©Carol Leigh