in this video I'm going to talk about vision creativity and light I will show
you some of your edits of this photo for the Lightroom challenge ARP I will also
show you how I did my own edit of that photo to end up with this result and
finally I have a new challenge so stay tuned because we have a lot to talk about
welcome to my channel here I talk about photography and I make videos just like
this one where sure my thoughts about vision and creativity so if you're here
for the first time it may be a good idea to subscribe by the way I've been
repeating this intro for a while I wonder if you're getting tired of
hearing it that's the case and if you think that it's time to change it please
let me know in the comments below for the rest of this video I'm moving to my studio
and here we are in my studio litem vision creativity I think that the last
Lightroom challenge is giving me a perfect opportunity to talk about this
and first of all I want to thank all you guys that took part to this challenge I
saw over 200 different edits to my photos which I really think is fantastic
and these really demonstrates that the creativity process doesn't stop when we
press the shutter button actually and it happened for me sometimes it starts
there so let me show you this every single edit is different sometimes
slightly different sometimes dramatically different and this is why I
loved the idea of creating this challenge as I knew that it was going to
prove how important it is our own vision in the editing process and how
creativity plays a major role in this process as you can imagine it was very
difficult for me to pick a few images to show you amongst all these edits
nevertheless I selected three let's have a look so I saved the three images they
are pretty different in crop and colors for sure from my edit and possibly
that's why I selected them let's see the first one first one is by Ian Tom's
seven seven two three and I thought this is crazy
and that's why I selected Ian went with a very interesting red color and it's
very cool to see how different this edit can be from my own vision and this in
the end it what makes all of us so unique in terms of seeing the next edit
is by artee photography and I really like the mood of this image I like the
details I like the color tones I again this is a very different vision
from mine nevertheless beautiful and the last edit that I picked is by labeth
dot lkl and Labeth did four different edits of this photo and this is t he one
I like the most here we have another color treatment lovely orange e
yellowish tones I saw a lot of green photos and I appreciate a creative
approach like this very well done by the way all these accounts have amazing
galleries so I really encourage you to check them out
Thanks to everyone else again I love how engaged this community is and I also
really like the idea that on this channel the viewers not passively
watching but becomes also part of the content and if this works for you - I
will try to engage you more and more in the future but now let's go back to the
waterfall shot for a second as I think that to close that chapter I need to
tell you why I went for this edit and how I did it in Lightroom when I
launched this challenge I mentioned that I wasn't super happy with my shot but
mainly I wasn't super happy with the environment that I found when I arrived
to this location there was people everywhere
it was super busy there was definitely too much going on to create a
minimalistic and serene image which most of the time is my ultimate
interpretation of a place so my first decision was to go for a black-and-white
image although from the images we saw before I noticed that a lot of you guys
could bring quite a lot of colors out of this image my vision was different I
wanted to see less I wanted to simplify and I thought the black and white could
work better and in order to see less I tried to create a very contrasty image
and so amongst the different exposures that I
I decided to edit this very underexposed image because I thought it
was going to be easier to increase the contrast and create that mode that
I was searching for and this is a look that I use in my work from time to time
but now let's edit this photo in Lightroom I mentioned this before this
shot was taken in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and now I will do a
quick edit I will be maybe a little rough because I don't want this video to
last forever so let's get started first of all I will crop this image a little
bit I want to Center the waterfall so I will keep the original aspect ratio and
I will just crop it a tiny bit and move the waterfall to the center of my frame
done that I will open the basic panel and immediately I will change the white
balance as you can see the image is a little bluish because I used a neutral
density filter once I change that I will also change the profile and I will use
Adobe monochrome if you have a later version of Lightroom just select
black and white on the top right corner of the basic panel then I will increase
the contrast quite a bit and already you can see that almost the entire picture
because it's so underexposed is kind of disappearing I will not touch the
highlights at this time but I will decrease the blacks and I will increase
the whites a little bit of clarity a little bit of dehaze and I will move to
the tone curve here I will select a strong contrast and if I open the black
and white panel I will decrease the Reds a little bit I will decrease the orange
and look what happens when I decrease the yellows boom basically the
top left corner completely disappears awesome
I'm not gonna touch the split toning I will open the details where I will put
my sharpening amount at 35 decrease the radius 0.6 and increase the details and
95 which basically is the standard that I use for landscape photography I will
of course mask the sharpening holding the Alt key and moving the slider to the
right whatever is white will be touched by the
sharpening whatever is black will not and I will move it to 64 I'm going to
move to the effects panel and I will create a little post crop vignetting and
as you can see right now I can see only the waterfall and the bridge everything
else is gone now that I'm done with the general adjustments I will do some local
adjustments using a brush tool double click on effects to reset all the
adjustments I will decrease the exposure and the highlights in order to create a
brush that will completely get rid of all the little white dots that I have on
the top left corner and if this doesn't do I will need to go in and with the
Healing Brush I basically will make sure that everything is gone I will create a
new brush because I want to get rid of some disturbing elements on the bridge I
will be a little rough but basically what I will do here
I will decrease the exposure decrease the highlights and the blacks and I will
go in and erase these these white shirts
and now I will create another brush because I want to show the bridge a
little more than what we are seeing right now
so again reset all the adjustments and I will increase the highlights and the
shadows the white and the clarity and also the sharpness and then I will
roughly this time going on to the bridge and try to bring in a little more
details than that basically I want to do something similar with a waterfall and
emphasize the water flow because of course in this icon trusty image I'd
lost as well some details from the water itself so to do that I will create
another brush and I will increase the shadows I will increase the white I will
increase also a little bit the aperture and am I correct that later increase the
clarity and go in and start painting
and after a lot of painting here's my final image
I was very happy with the final result I still am I sold this image multiple
times which is always good and as you saw before I also have one print in my
home so I guess I really liked it but now it's time for a new challenge and
this time I'm going to edit your photos so if you want to take part to these new
Lightroom challenge it's very simple post the before and after of an image of
yours hashtag Lightroom challenge you of
course remember to tag me Attilio Ruffo photography and in a few weeks I will
select a few of those images I will contact you to receive the raw file and
I will make a video while editing those photos of course afterwards I will send
you my edits of those photos and clearly those images belong to you before saying
goodbye I would like to pick your brain on a couple of things first of all if
you have any suggestions for a future challenge don't be shy share it with me
write it in the comment below then I would like to know what do you think
about creating an interactive Facebook group I do
like Instagram for Lightroom challenges or photo assignments but at the same
time I like to have a platform where everyone can share their work share
their photos and the entire community can interact with each other so if you
think that this could be a good idea or if you have other thoughts about making
this channel as interactive as it can be I would love to know this is the vision
that I have for this channel more and more I like to create a very interactive
community it is very important to me to understand your thoughts and your
expectations from a channel like this and so thanks for your help and this is
really all for today I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you will let me know
so hit that like button leave me a comment and if you didn't yet maybe this
is the right time to subscribe and for those of you that celebrate Christmas I
wish you a Merry Christmas I will be in Italy with my family and friends awesome
food it's the best Christmas I can wish for thanks for watching and I will see
you in the next video