it's 4:30 in the morning and Greg and I are up for one last sunrise in Tbilisi
I cannot believe that three weeks here is over already it's kind of just it
whipped by
the Greg and I are headed back to to that viewpoint above the sulfur baths
where we met that family and had that shoot in the rain and when I shot that
image in the rain I wasn't really a fan of it I didn't think I liked it but when
I got it home onto the computer I was ok with it I was fine with it but that
being said even though I have that image I don't really have a colorful sunrise
or sunset shot from here in Tbilisi every time we've gone out we've got ins
we've gotten shut out we've gotten some blue hour images but nothing really
really punchy and colorful so that's what we're hoping to get this morning
and yeah it's a little bit of a walk up to get there
so we're up at this amazing view point of to please see it's probably our
favorite spot in the city which is unreal and we're up here by ourselves
it's like peaceful tranquil and yeah I just love watching the city wake up from
a light perspective I don't know what's gonna happen it looks like we might get
unlucky again there's no clouds anywhere in the sky except for where the sun's
rising like the one spot that the sun's gonna rise so we're kind of just gonna
sit back and wait and hope that these clouds move and that the Sun finds a
spot to to rise up like a phoenix from the georgian... yeah and anyway we're
hoping the sun rises behind there
so the Sun's up-ish behind some haze that way there is some light hitting the
top levels of the clouds so I have a little bit of hope now what I'm doing
with my camera is I have not moved it I have not moved my camera I haven't moved
the zoom I haven't done anything I haven't touched it by in the blue light
at the end of the blue light when the buildings were still lit I took a
picture and I actually don't plan on doing a composite I just do this every
now and then when I think potentially the light might be a little bit
interesting so that I have that option so the idea now is to just wait in a
hope that these clouds light up and then I can blend the two images together the
image of town with all the lights still on it and then a colorful sky on top of
it things that very rarely happen together because usually they shut the
town lights off as they've done right now well before you get any sort of
sunrise light if that happens I'll take you into the computer to show you how
quickly I do this composite how quickly I put these two images together
this is fun I really enjoyed just sitting and watching for the light and
trying to figure out what its gonna do right now the light's catching the top
of the clouds and when Tom and I did our video our little QA QA a little while
ago we talked about high level clouds and why they're so important and the
reason they're so important is because the Sun can come through the bottom and
light them up from the bottom and then you get the really colorful skies when
the clouds are too low the light catches the top of them and you get yeah you get
the light on the top but I find it really fun sitting and waiting for the
light because we can actually see back that way the sun's coming up behind some
haze and it's lighting up like the edge of these clouds here and we're trying to
predict or at least hoping it wishing it for this light to push over the city so
we get some color in the sky
I just asked great guy what's happening with the light is it gonna come through
is it still the bottom or is it at the top and he goes out yeah it's at the top
it's not gonna happen and then he goes oh it's coming through Reid after I gave
up on my shot I just given up on my composition Oh Greg Greg Greg Greg
anyways it does look like we're gonna get some underglow on this and you know
what I am gonna take you into the computer and show you how to do that
composite even though it's not gonna be the way I was hoping to do it because
the light change
so the lights good not great but it's good it's not dramatic and I was hoping
for a really colorful dramatic sky kind of like what we have over there but
right over the city it's kind of chilled out a little bit
and I'm kind of a believer that if it doesn't look dramatic there's always a
way to make it dramatic and I'm doing that with a four stop grad nd that's a
medium nd and a 10 stop nd and I'm shooting a four-minute exposure because
the clouds they're nice they are nice but it looks like it looks almost like a
snapshot if you shoot it without a long exposure by chucking on a long exposure
it should create like a painting look in the sky and as long as I've exposed it
properly I think this could come out really cool
okay we're done we didn't exactly get great light but it worked we got a
different shot than last time and we also have another new dog out new peace
dog they're not all called peace dog there's only one peace dogs right it's
not really peaceful either he's a bit of aggressive there's not got really
protective of us another dog came up and started walking with us and it just like
chased it away it was intense yeah we're heading back home for a bit
of a nap I'm not gonna end the vlog now I'm gonna show you guys how to do that
quick composite even the way I don't think
it's gonna work on this image because the first image is way too dark
woah second image is way too bright and but I'm gonna show you how to do it in
case you guys want to do it so then take you back and do that and then I think
we're gonna say goodbye to two please see
okay back home and on the computer and I mentioned that it was going to show you
guys how to do like this composite really quick it obviously it's not gonna
look great I don't think and I haven't done it yet so I don't know that for
sure I'm just guessing on the scenario the lights and the buildings came off
too soon there was a lot of color in this guy I don't think it's gonna work
okay so I'm in my laptop I've got the images open and before I even get into
these images I should mention that I'm really happy with how they came out at
the end not when I was compositing but just the very last couple images this
image for example this is the four-minute exposure I did I love how
this came out and this kind of works is my big cityscape image that I was hoping
to get the whole time this is the magazine cover if you will and I'm gonna
talk about that tomorrow on tomorrow's episode I may sit down go over my images
my favorite photos from Georgia and talk about the photo story so stoked with
that image I'm going to show you the composite because I promised I would
this is the dark image you can see the city lights are lit up literally one
minute after I took this photo the lights went off this is the sunrise I
guess where there's just not a lot of color at all yet so that's why it's not
gonna work for one the first image the lights were off shut off too too early
in the evening and for the second image I just didn't get sunrise light at this
point in the shoot and then I moved my tripod as you saw because Greg convinced
me we weren't gonna get light but I'm gonna show you guys what how this works
anyway basically in Lightroom I'm gonna edit both images really fast for
whatever they're gonna be used in the final image so for this image I'm only
using the foreground all the lit up part of the image I don't care what happens
to the sky it should be a super quick edit basically just a color correct and
maybe brighten it up a little bit just because I know that the the final image
I want it to be a little bit brighter than this looks so something like that
also looks a little bit green so we'll bring the purple up a little
bit on the tint it looks about right yeah I want to contrast it out a little
bit more to sharpen it and then we're good
moving on to the sunrise this might take a little bit more editing remember the
foreground doesn't matter all I care about is the sky so I'm gonna lighten
things up with the whites and the shadows I'm gonna punch the contrast to
get some darkness in that sky maybe bring back the blacks a little bit
vibrance up to 50 I might even go crazy with the the color a little bit because
it needs it something like 15 this guy looks a little bit bluish and probably a
little bit greenish may get nice and purple to match the the foreground that
I'm gonna do I'm gonna bring down the highlights bring the contrast up a bit
more even get a really really dark scene and then that's it for that when the two
images are edited you just select them both in the bottom right click and then
edit in open as layers in Photoshop click on that and then they come into
Photoshop as edited layers and they'll show up right over here and here we have
them we have the top one is the the darker image and then the brighter ones
below it right there they're identical even though they don't look it I didn't
move the tripod if you keep your eyes on like the tower you'll see it doesn't
move at all just the lights come on and basically with this edit all I'm trying
to do is bring out the lip part of the bottom so we're gonna go down here this
is to add a layer mask and we've got the top layer selected I'm gonna click on
that then we're gonna go over to the gradient tool
it's a tap has to be a hundred and we're gonna slide it like that and now all of
a sudden we have the sky from the bottom layer you can see I've just done that
it's that simple now we've got the sky that has color and in an ideal world
there'd be a really bright colorful sky and it would save us from having this
dull blue sky and that's the idea so yeah like quickly again you're just
gradient math King and then you can actually after
you've done gradient masking that you can grab this brush the brush tool and
just paint in the little extra areas that might have gotten missed so over
here all this stuff you see it just lightening up that I'll got missed in
the gradient and that's the final image if you hit save ctrl s save it's gonna
save it here in Photoshop and then if we flip back to Lightroom it's actually
brought it right back into Lightroom next to the two original files are
actually in between the two original files we click on the info it says edit
TIFF it's now a tiff file and then you can actually add little bits of work to
this image if you want for example if you want to now darken the sky a little
bit to make it match a little bit more you can do stuff like that
so it's a really good technique even if it didn't work so much on this image
it's really it's a nice technique to use and a lot of photographers use this
technique yeah it can be helpful maybe go out and test it at some point
anyways that we're still here in fleecy today one last day so maybe I'll take
you in a little bit of a walk around town
heading up to our house for one last work session into blazing I cannot
believe it's all kind of coming to an end
it was kind of sad leaving bleh see it's been good to me it's been good to us
we've had a good month here or three plus weeks we've been getting fit we've
been getting some cool images we've been enjoying the food
the people yeah it's just been it's been what we needed really and the I'm
excited about coming back here in a couple years I'm excited about a new
adventure starting tomorrow as well I am ready for a change of scenery this is
with some of the longest I've ever stayed in one place in ages probably
since bueno SIA T it's like over a year and a half ago when I was bored out of
my mind yeah but yeah this has been good and
exactly what we needed and I am ready for that next adventure what the next
adventure is because you're gonna have to tune into more to find out I'll see
you there peace