What goes into photo - A walkthrough of the Lake Dunn Eagle Image
Have you ever taken a photo of an amazing scene then looked at it and wondered why it doesn’t look as good as what you could see in real life?
Taking extraordinary photos is half (or less) on site taking photos and half editing after the fact. In its most basic form, the final image is limited by how the camera interprets the world but this blog isn’t about how cameras translate the world into digital (or film) form.
Some photographers scoff at the thought of editing photos or using photoshop, but I see these as tools to get to the final artistic vision. Even in the days of film before photoshop was ever created, photographers were making detailed changes to their images using techniques in the dark room. In the image above, famous photographer Ansel Adams took a photo of James Dean walking down the street. As you can see, Ansel made lots of notes on the original image, and developed the photo to his images. The image below was created in 1913 to train photographers in how to edit photos. Notice the photographer was able to smooth his skin and even remove the cigarette in the subjects mouth.
I have had the final image of the Eagles on the Lake Dunn Sculpture Trail in my head for around three years. I thought it might be interesting to take you through the editing process to get to the final product. The first thing to do is understand your subject, figure out the best angle that will complement your photo. This will often mean taking hundred(s) of photos of the course of a couple of hours as the sun goes down to get the perfect sunset.
Do some basic editing of your favorite image.
Straight out of camera
With some basic adjustments
Once some basic adjustments have been made, it is time to make some detailed adjustments in photoshop. I have made some notes on what I want to achieve in the image below
After making some careful selections and making careful changes to the colour and brightness of the selected areas, we can end up with the finished product below. How long has this project taken? Only around 2 hours for this photo, however, some images can get quite complex and may take a couple of days to blend different parts together to produce the perfect photo. So next time you see a beautiful photo, take the time to appreciate how much work went into creating it.
