What I Am Working On: Seemingly Small Adjustments

Sometimes it is little things that can make a big difference. The original file:

ISO 250 f/11 22mm 1/640 sec

The edit:

ISO 250 f/11 22mm 1/640 sec

Custom white balance and lens distortion, these are two adjustments that I started with that made a big difference.

Seemingly unimportant details like the trees in the foreground are helping to tell an important story about this scene, like how far up you have to hike to see this view. I wrote about that a bit in a previous post and showed a different part of the landscape. In this case, I think a photo of this scene without the trees would be telling a completely different story. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Summer Scenes and Tuesday Photo Challenge, Trees.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Little Used Sliders

Over this summer I had the opportunity to hike up to Kehlsteinhaus, or Eagle’s Nest, a Nazi-era building associated with Adolf Hitler, although apparently he was afraid of heights and hated the place.  Today it is a building you can tour and a restaurant. There are a couple different ways you can visit. We went early in the day and walked up. It’s tough if you decide to do it that way, wear hiking boots, monitor the weather, dress in layers, and bring food and water. I didn’t go into the building itself, I was there for the views:

ISO 250 f/11 18mm 1/320sec

I’ve edited this in Luminar.  The edits I will discuss below are a few that I don’t often do as part of my workflow:

ISO 250 f/11 18mm 1/320sec

The first was a custom white balance. I used the little eyedropper to find a neutral grey and clicked. I struggle with white balance sometimes, mostly because I don’t work with it a lot. I think that my camera does a pretty decent job most of the time. The other two filters that I used here were the dehaze and the polarizing filters. A lot of times, if a scene is hazy, I let it stay that way. I think that is just a matter of personal preference, haze either bothers you or it doesn’t and generally speaking, I fall into that second category.

Even though I am posting this, I don’t really feel like I am finished with this photo. I’m not completely satisfied with the edit and think I may prefer the original to the edit.  I’m going to let this sit, probably for months, then I’ll take another look and re-evaluate. That’s the beauty of digital, another version is always possible.

Feel free to leave a comment or question below.

Cheers!

Added to A Photo A Week Challenge, Opposite Weather, because man, is this photo the exact opposite of today’s very grey day!