April Squares: Top Shots, Hadrian’s Wall

ISO 800 f/13 1/1000sec 16mm

Day 7, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: August 16, 2017. Hadrian’s Wall, several spots along the Wall are maintained by English Heritage

Thoughts on the Edit: Although now a square, the original file was captured with a wide-angle lens. The edit has the Luminar Look, Camden Desat, applied. I also experimented with the Orton effect filter, using it on two layers, the initial edits layer and the final edits layer. I’ve not ever tried that before and what I was specifically working on was the look of the sky.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: What to Leave In, What to Take Out

When it comes to editing, there is always a bit of deciding what to leave in and what to take out. Here is a file I was working on last week:

ISO 800 11mm F/13 1/500sec

In my edit, I decided to take out the people. In this case, the eraser tool was sufficient for this:

ISO 800 11mm F/13 1/500sec

I’ve cropped the image, but just slightly. I wanted to leave in the shadow of the tree. The tree itself I wanted to leave in the center of the frame, despite this being against the “rules” of photography. I wanted to leave in the feel of a sunny day, but I did decide to add a vintage film filter to this file.

All the edits here are pretty basic, but they do change the image. What do you think of these changes? feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Picfair version is here.

Add to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Shadow.

What I Am Working On: How to Lose My Work

I think I am going to file this too: never do this again.

It all started out well enough, I was looking at this file, taken at Hadrian’s Wall:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

It’s nice but needs a bit of work. So, from that I created this version:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

Before dealing with the exposure, I applied a crop. I’ve used the rule of thirds overlay for this because, as I suspected, there was a stronger composition lurking within the original file. Then I considered the exposure; this image was created using the shadows slider to lighten the shadows, then I moved the black and white sliders around until the image looked good to me. I sharpened the photo by increasing the details sliders just a bit.

Then I created this black and white version:

ISO 800 22mm f/14 1/800sec

That is now lost for all time. I state in a very dramatic fashion.  Here’s what I did wrong. After making this version and saving off a blog-sized copy, I went back in the history to the color version and did the steps to add a watermark. I saved off my blog-sized copy of that. Then when I dropped the history tab again to go back to the black and white version, all that history was gone.

Two things, somehow that seems like that shouldn’t have happened and at the same time, I feel like I should have known that would happen. So yes, I should have saved a full-size version of that black and white prior to mucking about in the history. In Luminar, the way I am doing that (when I am doing things properly) is to export it to my hard drive labeled as a version. In my formatting on my drive, this version would have been: file number + Lum + BW.

Instead, I have just a smaller, blog version. So, I am writing this cautionary blog post to remind myself to do it differently next time.

What do you think of my color version versus the black and white? I have to say that I personally prefer the color, in my opinion, there is a bit of something that just didn’t translate into the black and white. Feel free to leave a comment below.

My Instagram version is here:

View this post on Instagram

Hadrian’s Wall near Haltwhistle. I’m thinking about wide open spaces this morning. #thingsiseewhilewalking #mondaymotivation #madewithluminar #hadrianswall

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Mar 11, 2019 at 1:44am PDT

Cheers!

Color version is on Picfair.

Added to Cee’s Black and White Challenge, Fences and Gates.

Wordless Wednesday: Hadrian’s Wall

ISO 800 16mm f/13 1/640 sec

Instagram version:

View this post on Instagram

A view of Hadrian’s Wall near Sycamore Gap without the famous tree. #hadrianswall #sycamoregap

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Mar 11, 2019 at 8:51am PDT

 

Picfair version here.