Post Production Editing

I have been preparing my photos to turn in for review and part of the process is to edit them. I am not a huge fan of doing a lot of drastic changes to my photos, and really, sometimes I sort of feel like its cheating. My photography teacher says it is absolutely necessary to do something to almost every photo. I have a hard time with this, how much is too much? Some photos I look at and think I don't want to do anything at all. It is nice to crop or straighten out lines, make a few corrections. I have a professional photographer friend who does some editing to almost all of her photos and I wouldn't ever say she was cheating by editing her photos so why do I feel so conflicted? Here are some of my edits, both before and after so you can see what I started with and what I ended up with. Is it cheating?

                                     

The above picture is the original. Nothing wrong with it really, the butterfly is pretty sharp and in focus. The right side of the photo is so bright it is washed out so that is no good.

This is the same photo, cropped and given a border. I feel comfortable with this sort of editing, nothing too drastic was done. I'd have to use a giant lens to get this photo without cropping (or find a way to get the butterfly to sit still while I get incredibly close).

This is the original photo. I shot this thru a trash can with two holes in the lid for the garbage used as the frame. It is uneven because I had to squat down to see through and it was super uncomfortable.

Here it is post editing. I cropped and straightened only. No other changes were made. Now looking at it I wonder if it is straight or if I need to go back and redo. I should have used the grid tool...

Original photo, taken in Copenhagen. Must have been bright afternoon sun because the colors are a little washed out.

I added some color vibrance, not a ton, just a touch, better? Cheating? Maybe.

Editing software can also be used to change your photos to black and white. I haven't used this function yet, just wanted to show the different possibilities. Fun to play with.

Also you can play with the color hues and get a totally different picture.

Original photo, another bright sunny day...

I like this better. Nice greens, bright yellows. Cropped it a bit to get a closer look at the bird. You can increase hue saturation, lighten or darken shadows, so many options! It is easy to spend a few hours going over photos and making changes. Just be careful to keep a copy of the original unedited version.

I liked this viewpoint but the colors are a bit washed out and the Art Science Museum (structure on the right) has dirty lines running down, not so cute. What is that dark spot in the bottom right corner?

I cropped out the dirty stuff and made the sky more blue. This is sooo cheating, but it looks great!

Great shadow, bad composition. I should have zoomed in a bit more to get that bottom line out of the shot.

Fixed!

So I am still not sure about the editing software and if I consider it cheating but I do think it is so fun to play with. I guess not all of it is cheating. Maybe none of it is. You still have to start with a good photo. You can't fix everything. 

Happy Friday!

Basic Photography Refresher

I took a 6 week Basic Photography course a while back at Knowledge Bowl in Singapore. I had just bought my first DSLR camera and had no idea how to do anything with it. The classes were super helpful and I learned how to do a few cool shots like panning and how to use aperture and shutter speed. Recently I took their refresher course, sort of a review of the Basic Photography class I originally attended. This was so great. The teachers are experienced professional photographers and friendly and easy going. Sometimes it is good to go over things a few times, especially when it is something so new and totally not what you have ever done before. Here are some pictures from my refresher classes. Enjoy!

We met at the Botanic Gardens for these shots...

This picture was taken with a slow shutter speed to get the water to blur and have a more flowing, moving effect. 

This picture was taken with a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of the water, giving a water droplet effect. See the difference? Pretty cool!!!

We used the Aperture mode to control depth of field. The dragonfly is in focus and the background is blurred. If the background was in focus the dragonfly wouldn't stand out. 

Its better to have a cleaner background like in the picture above. This pic is not as nice with the green and brown but I loved his bright eyes :)

Then we went to Bugis for a few shots...

The main focus in the next few shots is patterns and texture. I wanted to put the windows on an angle to make it more interesting. Loved the bright yellow.

The peeling paint and the carved wood give good texture to the photo. The pattern was repeated as a boarder on the front of a temple.

The brick is a short wall or fence and if you were to look straight at it you could see through it. At this angle you can focus more on just the pattern and texture of the brick.

Cool building in the Central Business District. Wonder what it looks like to look out the windows from the inside. 

Framing. This shot was taken through the holes of a trash can. I had to squat down so the angle is a bit off but it is a nice effect and I can level and crop in photo shop.

Silhouette. Would be a better shot with a full sky background but I was laying on the ground with 4 people stretching their arms and hands over me and I wanted to get it over with. I can photo shop this to remove the building and lamp post. I think I need to invest in some sort of photography software...

We also met at the NTUC Building, by the Custom House for a few night shots. This gave us a great view of Marina Bay Sands and the nightly laser and light show. It rained all day long so we were lucky the weather cleared in time for our class.

Thank you Stephen and Edward at Knowledge Bowl!

Happy Friday!