I was walking the grounds at Wimpole Estate this past weekend and took this photo of the gardens that are behind the house:
ISO 25 4.15mm f/2.2 1/1700
While I think it is pretty, the word that comes to mind for this scene is ostentatious. I can’t help feeling that part of the reason for the estate was to show off wealth. The edges in this garden though, were perfect. You might notice that there was no one walking in the gardens. That is actually a result of editing. Here is the original:
ISO 25 4.15mm f/2.2 1/1700
There are two children running around there. I removed them using a combination of the spot healing brush, the healing brush and the clone stamp. Why did I bother you might ask? The answer would be because I could. I don’t usually remove people from my photos and I thought this would be an excellent chance to practice. I also made some slight adjustments to the overall photo, the original just felt a little too bright and had a little too much contrast. Those edits I made in Lightroom. I increased the tone is the shadows, desaturated the yellows, and bumped up the hue of the greens. One edit that I tried and then discarded was putting a graduated filter on the photo. I ended up not liking what that filter did to the tone of this particular photo.
How do you feel about removing items or people from photos? Let me know what you think of my attempt. I have to admit it makes me a bit uneasy. Feel free to leave your thoughts on this type of editing below. If you have a favorite technique for removal and have blogged about it, or have written about why you do or do not do this type of editing, feel free to leave a link to your post.
Cheers!
Photography Journal Blog 