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Category: Before and After

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AI009

ReNae Ravan

 
 
 

ReNae Ravan
 

I know this photo is way overexposed but there was just something about it I liked. I am going to try to darken it just little with my editing program. I don't want to do too much to it, just make the brightest spot in the background a little darker, a little easier on the eyes. I am as new to editing photos as I am photography so I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance.


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July 27, 2010

 

Dan W. Dooley
  A little overexposed, ReNae, but not beyond redemption. I presume that this may be the only shot you made of the subject and I presume that you may have shot it in JPG so that you don't have a RAW image from which you can work more detail.

Here are a couple of thoughts. Since the subject is all the way to the left side, and since there is nothing of interest to the right, have you considered doing a crop to bring the right edge just to the right of the visible flower? That would still leave a nice, soft background above and to the right of the butterfly. The soft, pastel colours there would harmonize well with the softer colours of the flower itself and would eliminate the distracting brighter spots in the background. Likewise, it would tend to balance the picture more. It is unfortunate that the back edges of the wings are missing but if you made the crop, it would tend to somewhat compensate for that loss. Likewise, the colouring of the top of the picture would work nicely with the flower itself.

The focus is slightly soft and I'm not sure what might have caused that. The subject is not out of focus, but not knowing what lens you used or the aperture setting, I don't know if that softness can be blamed on the lens or too small an aperture setting. The 50D suffers from the affects of DLA (Diffraction Limited Aperture) meaning that a smaller aperture setting (than on other cameras) will result in the image softening.

That aside, the image is very pleasant and the lack of vivid sharpness to the flower actually, in this case, adds to the appeal. Gives it an almost water painting affect enhanced by the colours. Some of the spots in the flower are a little on the bright side but since the butterfly itself is exposed ok with no hot spots, it all works.


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July 27, 2010

 

Janet Dietz
  Hi ReNae, Dan's suggestions are very good and it is a very nice image as is. I find it very dreamy too. You asked about editing, and I took a snapshot of your image into photoshop and found that selecting the background and then applying the Image, Adjust, Shadows/Highlights was a good way to bring down the highlights without losing the green tones. I'm sure there are other ways to do the same thing, as there always is in photoshop, but that one worked for me. Maybe someone else will have another idea.


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July 28, 2010

 
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