Leslie Reid

<p>Reflections of a red post and fire hydrant with rainsplash craters superimposed--what’s not to like? I’d love to see a crop of that part of the image....<br>

Why I photograph what I do? Because something catches my attention and I’m trying to figure out why, and then I’m trying to understand its attraction well enough to distill it into a concise image. I spent over an hour photographing the most overphotographed landmark in my town a few days ago, all to try to find out what it is I like about the thing. I ended up with one frame I liked out of a hundred taken, but I solved the puzzle. So for me, photography is a way of learning how to really see things. In the process, I end up with lot of why-on-earth-did-I-take-that shots, but it sure is a lot less painful now in digital.</p>

<p>And here’s the after. On this image, I did a BW conversion to remove distractions that might take away from the objective of the photo: illustrating a rather odd interspecies confrontation. The critical elements for conveying the message were the gull, the woman, the compositional lines that guide the eye to--and connect--the two protagonists, and the (tonally manipulated) diagonals in the bottom left corner that I’m hoping balance the awkward composition. I edited out the small sign and darkened the large one, and I reduced the luminosity of the greens in order to make the figures stand out against the background. In doing these manipulations, I radically changed the scene in order to try to ensure that the message the viewer receives is as close as I can get it to the message I’m trying to convey. So which is a more “honest” image--the interspecies confrontation or the caffeinated kitchen ceiling? Probably the ceiling--it was a lot less manipulated. There I only changed the color to something that wasn’t there and stretched the tonal range, and the changes are fairly inconsequential--if it had been colored lights (or smoke rings!), the sense of the image would be the same. But here I changed the color to something that wasn’t there, warped the tonal range, changed the relative tonalities, and cloned out or hid distractions. What’s more, with BW conversion the changes are covert: when someone looks at a BW print, they tend to assume that the tonalities are true to what their eyes would perceive had they been there. They never are--thanks in part to physics, chemistry, physiology, and psychology. And which is the “truer” image? Both are as true as I could get them to the images that were in my mind as I prepared to snap the shutter. Why did I manipulate the ceiling photo? Simply because I was tired of doing BW conversions and wanted to do the opposite. And the objective of that photo? Just having fun, and I hope that’s the feeling that comes through in the image.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks, Arthur. And Steve, I like the portrait a lot--there’s a beautiful feeling to it.<br>

I wanted to get this second pair of images up before diving into the whys. Here’s the before:</p><div></div>

<p>and here's the second</p><div></div>

<p>The first is the original image--the rising sun was casting fairly faint reflections from two pot lids onto the dark kitchen ceiling. The second is more-or-less the image that was in my mind when I took the picture. I used radial and rectangular gradients in LR6, with WB temperature and tint manipulated in each gradient. </p><div></div>

<p>My goals for the edit: 1) rebalance the proportions between sky and foreground, 2) bring out the S-curve in the upper foreground that leads the eye to the lighthouse, and 3) enhance (or at least protect) the sunflare in the foreground. I used adjustment brushes in LR6 to increase the foreground exposure and reduce the luminance noise that had become visible. I used an adjustment brush to add contrast and clarity to the S-curve to bring more attention to the form. In PE14 I cropped off the bottom part of the foreground and stretched and compressed the limbs of the S-curve into the form I wanted. I then selected part of the sky (finding a neutral zone so distortion wouldn't be evident along the margin) and stretched it up to adjust the foreground/sky proportion. Finally, I cleaned up exposure in a couple of areas with lighten and darken blend modes on brightness adjustment layers. </p><div></div>

<p> Here's my thinking: beautiful bird, nicely focused, and pretty nicely exposed for a dark-plumaged bird in difficult lighting--the bird can pretty much stand on its own. So the problem is bringing up the environment to match the bird--I wanted to establish a sense of depth in the frame. The branches help with that by providing a foreground element, and they also give some context for the habitat.<br>

I'm currently working in LR6, so I unfortunately didn't have access to layers. I first reduced the overall exposure, upped the contrast, darkened shadows, and increased vibrance and saturation, all to bring more interest into the sticks and water. I then added two gradients: 1) starting with reduced exposure and reduced WB temperature at the bottom, fading to the top; and 2) starting with increased exposure and slightly reduced WB tint at the top, fading to the bottom. That gave me the sense of depth I was looking for, but you can probably imagine what the poor bird looked like at this point. I then used an adjustment brush to bring the bird back pretty much to where it had started, reversing the global changes I'd made to deal with the water (and checking field guides for reference on plumage colors).<br>

I then needed to deal with the out-of-focus stick--I liked it from the point of view of the composition, but it was distractingly fuzzy. I used an adjustment brush to darken it, then cloned a strip of water up to an arbitrarily defined bottom edge, with enough feather on the clone to make it look not quite as out of focus as it had been.<br>

This all would have been easier in Elements--I would have put the bird in its own layer as I worked with the water and sticks. Had I been in Elements, I probably would have gone back in and lightened the top-to-bottom gradient still further; instead, I decided to leave it as is so I wouldn't have to re-edit the bird. I do regret losing that beautiful orange elbow into the underwater shadow, though.... </p><div></div>

<p>I'm new here, so I have no idea if this upload is going to work...but it was this thread that prompted me to join up. Post-processing allows us to hone in on the elements of the scene that originally attracted us, and I was attracted to this picture because of the wonderful contrast between the hands and the camera, with that magnificent blue behind them. Boring? No way. Some of the most rewarding moments in photography are finding cool things in unexpected places.</p><div></div>