I’m hoping to start a series of how I came up with the final images that you see on this blog. I would like you to believe that every image that you view here is straight out of the camera but most have at least a little bit of post processing done to them. I am under the belief that you should use all the resources you have available to use. In the old days of photography before digital, we used different film to get different looks, we dodge and burned the image while printing, we composited and retouch or paid someone else to do it. Today when I go out the door to shoot I am thinking about how I can get the best image in the camera, but I’m also thinking what new resources I have at my disposal. Resources like dedicated Flashes, Photoshop, Lightroom, and all the plug-ins that are available. I don’t think “PHOTOSHOPING” an image is a bad thing. I think it’s just a tool to help you produce the artistic vision you have as a photographer.
Click on the thumbnails to see larger images.
Image No#1 -Canon 7D at 24mm @F22 and 1/200 of sec
This is the first shot I took. The Exposure Comp was still set from previous shot.
Image No#2-Canon 7D at 18mm@F22 and 1/50th of a sec
This is the next image taken as you can see I dropped the shutter speed to 1/50th of a sec. That’s +2 stops from the previous frame and I zoomed the lens out to its widest setting.
Image No#3-Canon 7D at 18mm@F22 and 1/25th of a sec
I opened up another stop to end up at my final exposure 1/25th of a sec
Image No#4- Same camera and camera settings
With the same camera settings I added a flash to bring some detail into the flowers and building. The flash was on manual and full power.
Image No#5-Same camera and camera settings
The only difference is that I turned down the flash by 1stop to 1/2 power
Image No#6-Same camera and camera settings
Once again I turned down the flash power by 1stop to 1/4 power which ended up being the right combination of camera setting and flash power setting.
The final image that appears above is the result of the trial and error from above and some post processing in Lightroom 3 and a Lightroom plug-in from Nik software called Viveza 2. In Lightroom 3 I used the adjustment brush to darken the lower edge of the image, removed some bird from the sky with the spot removal tool and put a slight vignette around the entire image. In Viveza 2 I added the warm tones you see in the sky and front of the building. I also used Viveza 2 to open up the shadows in the flowers.
I hope you like this new series of how I come up with the final images that I post and print.
