I considered this image a throw-away until I learned how to edit it camera raw. I liked the composition of the original, and the focus on the drop of water was nice, but it was so washed out by my flash. In camera raw I reduced the clarity and temperature and darkened the shadows to give the whole image a soft, dream-like quality. If the edit above was a throw-away, this one was even more so! Brit looked darling with her hair, makeup and outfit all ready for the ballroom dance, but you’d never know it from this photo. Fortunately, camera raw saved the day (and the shot)! I decided to go for a soft black and white effect for this photo. I started by bumping up the exposure and draining the saturation. I also tilted the tint toward the purple side because it gave the image more life-like depth, and smoothed the image by reducing the clarity. The shadows, whites, blacks, and vibrancy had to be adjusted down to bring out the detail and I finished off the photo with a subtle...
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A fresh, thick blanket of snow followed by blue skies makes for some beautiful scenery. This image is composed of eight shots, taken in quick succession. I didn’t have a fancy panorama tripod so I just had to swivel my body. I used Photoshop’s automate feature to assemble the panorama, and then experimented with content-aware fill. This image was too busy for the content aware tool to work as well as I would have liked, so I chose to crop down the image instead. However, I did use the content aware fill tool to remove some dark spots from the sky, which I learned were caused by a speck of dust on the sensor of my camera. :/ I haven’t had time to take it in for cleaning yet, so content aware fill is going to be my friend for the next couple of shoots… I also boosted the saturation and vibrancy a touch. Here are the photos I used for the panorama – as you can see, the scene was initially much wider, but it wouldn’t look good online so I cropped it down a lot. Panorama 1 | Panorama 2 | Panorama 3 | Panorama 4 Panorama 5 | Panorama 6 | Panorama 7 | Panorama 8 This was quite a harrowing shot to take. I risked life and limb running up the icy, snow-buried bleachers of the BYU-I stadium to catch the last glimpse of the sun as it set behind the clouds. By the time I made it to the top the sun had almost completely disappeared. Even so, it was exhilarating. This panorama is composed of four shots and, like the pic above, had to be edited to remove the dark spots on my sensor. Since this shot isn’t as busy, I was able to use the content aware fill to flesh out the edges of the compiled panorama. I lowered the contrast and raised the brightness to capture more of the orange and pink tints diffusing in the clouds. These are the photos I used: Panorama 1 | Panorama 2 | Panorama 3 | Panorama...
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