Its not normally my practise to tinker overmuch with photos, preferring to use them as close to straight off-camera as possible.
In fact, I’ve got the whole process virtually down to a set routine now…
Check exposure, check colour balance, sharpen a tad, straighten if needed, occasionally crop out unwanted elements that may have crept into the edge of the frame. And wham… convert to JPEG and upload to Flickr.
The longest part of the process is actually importing a batch into Lightroom in the first place!
But sometimes I’m tempted to depart from the norm. And such was the case with the above pic.
It all started with a Flickr contact suggesting that one of the pics I’d recently uploaded as part of the Cambridge set might look good in sepia.
Well, the suggestion quite appealed to me at the time so I gave it a try.
Hmm. Not too bad, but not especially inspiring either. But the exercise set me to thinking. So I looked through the rest of the Cambridge pics I hadn’t uploaded and came across a couple that looked as though they could gain something from the treatment.
Tried a couple of different techniques, one of which was pretty dismal but the other holding some sort of promise (although initially I went a bit over the top on a couple of the tweaks).
So revisted it, tweaked a bit more (by which time numerous different processes had been involved, including a minor adjustment using the freebie version of Picnik in Flickr cos the brightness didn’t look quite right on Flickr’s white background), and ended up with the above pic. With which I’m actually quite satisfied.
Don’t think I’ll be doing it again for a while though. Gets pretty boring after a time!
(And, before anyone makes any comment to the contrary – yes, you know who you are! – there’s no artistry involved. Its all down to simple manipulation of a few settings applied to a digital file! Heh heh.)
How very phallic! But notice I didn’t say ‘artsy’ or anything like it!
I think I’m with you on the post-processing thing…..I don’t find it to be as creative as I find it boring. But maybe it’s just my pictures that are boring?
Regardless, at least you have tried and found that you can obtain results with which you are pleased. Great job, sir.
I enjoy “playing” with my photos sometimes. I really enjoy converting some to black and white, then doing a bit of tinting (like old hand tinted photos).
Not long ago I snapped some photos in RAW format but I haven’t done that enough to really know what I am doing. Unfortunately, I do not have Lightroom (the cost of the software is a bit high). I have Elements 6.0 and Microsoft Digital Image Suite. I use both.
Your photos are always beautiful. I love the colors. I am with forkboy, I think the photo above is a GREAT photo. I like it a lot.
Ah Tam, working with RAW is really worth the effort… you can pull out so much more info. Although I use Lightroom (cos I’ve become familiar with it I s’pose) there are other RAW editors around and I think all dSLRs come with some form of RAW editor on a disc anyway.
Plus I think there’s a plugin avaailable for Photoshop.
I promise you, if you persevere with it you’ll find it well rewarding.
As for the above pic, yeah, I’m quite pleased with it. In fact, I’m sorely tempted to get a full-size version printed on some textured substrate (a rough cartridge paper maybe). Think it would really enhance the effect, particularly if it were sort of cream- or vellum-coloured.