last week last week I posted this photo on different social media and I received
a lot of questions about how I took the photo how I edited this photo so I
thought let's make a video about it so if you are interested in landscape
photography long exposure photography or photography in general and you want to
know more about this sit back relax and for the next few minutes just enjoy this video
welcome to my channel here I post my travel short films but I also make
videos just like this one where I share some quick and easy photography and
filmmaking tips that everybody can follow so if you are here for the first time it
might be a good idea to subscribe some of you might know the besides making
videos I am mainly a fine art landscape photographer which basically means that
my landscape photographs are more an interpretation of a place than a
description as I try to capture the mood or the state of mind that I am in in
that specific moment
I mentioned before that I've recently been to New Zealand and if you are a
photographer and you are in New Zealand you want and you have to go to see the
Wanaka tree this tree is so famous that it has its own hashtag #wanakatree but
when a place has been photographed so many times it gets really hard to be
original and find a unique composition but nevertheless since I was in Wanaka
for one night I had to have a photography session with
the tree I usually like to get on location early as I need to scout around the spot
search for the right composition and be ready when the light is right so I set
up my alarm I got up and I went as I got to the lake even it was 40 minutes
before sunrise I realized that I had completely underestimated how popular
this tree is trust me I did expect to find other photographers but not so many
and not so early it was panic as I didn't really have a lot of options of
where to place my tripod so I immediately decided to secure a spot and
try to do the best with it I also placed my second camera and set up this time-lapse
the spot is okay but I don't know I don't feel the composition is right I
still take a bunch of images including this one for my lady in red series but I
feel I need to do something different so I take the risk of leaving in this spot
so I walk fast I keep my eyes on the tree and I quickly realized that the
only way to find a composition that I like and be able not to have any other
photographer in front of me and in inside my shot or to be in someone else shot
was to move far away from the tree and to use a zoom lens which I rarely do
most of my images in fact are taken with a 20 millimeter lens so I set up my
tripod in the water no photographers behind me and I really like what I see
there is a beautiful light zero wind and the Sun is literally painting the tree
leaves in a delicate yellow it's beautiful I'm really happy now and I also at peace
I know there is possibly another 50 60 tripod somewhere but I ignore them I can
only see and focus in on my composition
because I shoot in raw every single image needs to be developed in Lightroom
so let's have a look at how I edit this photo alright as you can see this is
my image straight out of the camera it is a 658 seconds exposure I got very
lucky that my leaves are not moving you can see some blur just at the bottom
here because I think the water is moving this branch and so here we have some
some little movements but the rest is very very still because there is no wind
whatsoever so I got really lucky said so lthe image is super flat because it's shot
in raw and so I will show you right now my workflow to fix and adjust this image
to my liking the very first thing I want to do to this image is that this little
buoy represents a distraction for me so with the spot removal I can quickly get
rid of it and this is done Z to go back to the full image I will open the basic
panel and and the very first thing that I want to do is to adjust the profile
with the latest software update Lightroom gives us the possibility to
see the image just hovering over different color profile and I find that
Adobe color is the profile that I prefer to use so as I mentioned this
image is shot with a neutral density filter which often will give a blue
color cast to the images so a main thing to do in any longest poser is to fix the
white balance and I we can do that using this tool and searching for a neutral
grey that will warm up the image and get rid of the blue cast
I think we went a little too far the temperature is seven thousand nine
hundred and I want to bring it down a little bit I can also fix the tint a
tiny bit and the next thing I want to do is bring down the highlights a little
bit increase the shadows at the same time maybe that was a little too much in
order to move the histogram a little more to the right I will bring up the
whites and in order to move it to the left as well I will bring down the
blacks and now I think I can work on the exposure I want a little more exposure
and a little less contrast I will also decrease the clarity I am searching for a
very ethereal look but at the same time I will bring up the Dehaze this looks
good to me I want a little bit of vibrance and a little bit of saturation
maybe a little less I think the image is already looking much better we can see
already with just a few adjustments on the on the basic panel the
before-and-after is encouraging you can also see that my histogram looks better
it is a little wider and but I will close the basic panel for now and I want
to use a medium contrast for my tone curve and I will then move to the detail
basically here I will work on the sharpening I will not increase the
sharpening and actually I will decrease the radius of my sharpening usually 0.7
or 0.8 is what I like to use another thing I will do is that I will make sure
that the sharpening will not affect the water and the
sky to do that I will apply a little mask and by holding option and clicking
into the mask I can see where the mask will be applied basically
everything that is white will be sharpened and everything that is black
will not be touched the image looks already much better but I want to do
something else I want to apply specific adjustments just to the bottom part of
the image to do so I will use this gradient filter and I will apply this to
the bottom of my image so so what I want to do is that I want to have a little
more light in the bottom of my image to add this ethereal look so I will
increase the exposure a little bit I will increase my shadows as well not by
much and then I want to decrease the clarity to give this really very
ethereal look I can see the difference with these adjustment is very subtle but
is there another local adjustment that I want to make is related to the tree I
will use this round mask in order to cover the tree and its reflection so now
that I have the right mask you will see that if I make any adjustment it will be
applied to the outside of the mask but this is not what I want so I will need
to invert the mask because I want to apply the adjustments inside and what I
will do is that I will decrease the highlights I will increase
the whites and the clarity I will add a little bit of Dehaze and also a little
bit of saturation and sharpening and I will move to the very last adjustment
which is in the effect panel where I will add a little bit of vignette in
changing the midpoint the roundness and also the feather so this is my final
image as you can see didn't take very long but the difference is remarkable
what do you think and this is all for today I hope you enjoyed this video and
if you did and you want to make sure that I know you can leave me a like or a
comment also maybe this is the right time to subscribe thanks for watching
see you in the next one