The One That Nearly Got Away
More often than I care to admit, I take a photo that I almost immediately discard. This was one of those.
At first glance, I didn’t like it. It’s unbalanced. Worms Head falls too far to the left for the rocks in the foreground. There’s too much middle, I should have dropped down further and squashed everything in a little more. The exposure was terrible as well, too bright at the top and too dark at the bottom.
So, I skipped past it.
Rhossili Rocks |
28mm | ISO 50 | F16 | 6s
The above included an ND filter too, trying to squeeze as much out of the long exposure as possible. I probably could have conceded a little on the ISO, rather than going so low, and given a little on the shutter speed to accommodate, but as I said in my previous post, there’s a point at which small systematic changes like this won’t affect the final image you get too much. The beach was windier than I gave it credit for, so in hindsight, a slightly tighter shutter speed would have curtailed the impact of any smaller movements brought about by the weather. This does leave me with an image that is probably fine for showcasing online, but I’m not sure this one would hold up as a print.
For whatever reason, my eye passed over this image again, I think as I was uploading shots from a subsequent day, and I decided I’d give it an edit to see what I could salvage.
Initially, it was remarkably blue and really didn’t capture the essence of the evening; easy fix, more orange! (Incidentally, I’ve always shot with auto white balance, but I watched an interesting video the other day by Sean Tucker on why he shoots at 5,500K, so going to give that a try going forward.) I’ve achieved this, not by pushing up the overall temperature, but by using a radial gradient to the right of the image and boosting the temperature and exposure from the sun. I feel this looks a little more natural, and I love the contrast achieved with the remaining blue on the left hand side of the image. Shadows boosted, linear gradient at the bottom to bring the darker areas out, and another at the top to drop the punchy highlights so there’s a little more uniformity across the image, and it starts coming together.
Having edited the photo, I’m left with lots of lessons learnt, but in the end, I’m reasonably pleased with the way it’s turned out. It’s certainly not my most favourite picture of all time, but I’m happy with the artistic feel. Perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve taken from this is how important it is to apply the science of the camera function to the art you want to create. No amount of editing is going to adequately fix my choice of shutter speed (and the subsequent lack 0f crispness to the image), and so it makes me all the more conscious of improving ‘in the field’, and ensuring I’ve thought about what I want to achieve stylistically before getting the point of pressing the shutter release button. I get that it isn’t always possible, especially with children, but it’s a good thing for me to focus on moving forward.
Check out the before and after below:
