Let's edit some images
I have 6 here ready to edit
they're going to be very quick and easy edits
but hopefully they will give you an understanding on how I work on my images after shooting
I'm going to be using Lightroom on my ipad
so yeah, let's do it
I took this first image that you can see here at the golf course here in town
it was a beautiful day and this was a beautiful scene
I knew from the beginning that it was going to be a panorama
because of how the trees were organized in the photo
so that's what we're going to be doing first
we're going to be changing the aspect ratio from the boring 3x2 to a more dynamic
if you will, I don't know how to describe it, but
panorama aspect ratio, as you can see here
and now, what I'm going to be doing is what I'm going to be doing for every image
that is just going to increase the contrast
make sure that the elements that I want to stand out on the image really do stand out
and add some grain
that's all I do with my images
This is pretty much it, the image is almost ready
maybe I want to make the snow a little bit brighter... the whites
but I think it's pretty much ready
the only thing that I'd like to do here is...
you might not have noticed, but here in the background there is a power line
that is annoying me a lot
you can't really see it from far away, but if you really pay attention, and look closely
you can see it
so we can try to remove that
as I said many times, there is no problem...
I have no problem with removing stuff from the image that doesn't add anything of value
we're not trying to do journalism here
we are trying to create some art and some images
this should be fairly easy to remove
I mean, we can go a little bit more in detail, but I think that it looks great already
we still have a power line here that we could work on later
but yeah, I think that this image is looking great so far
let me show it to you, in full screen
I just love it
I love it so much that... let me show you
it's the one that I have as a wallpaper on my ipad
let's move on to the next one
this one... I made this one in Saint Joseph, in Michigan, on a very, very cold day
there were these fences all over the place
some of them were falling down, like this one, and half buried in the snow
as you can see, this one is a little bit busier than the other one
it's not as clean, we're going to start where I started at the other one
first, by choosing the aspect ratio I want for this image
in this case, this is square
now, we are going to increase again the contrast
in this case, I want to increase the contrast between the fence,
the dark fence, and the white snow
but also
to make the clouds, and the light that is going through the clouds, stand out a little bit more
I think it's a very nice contrast
Okay, this is looking pretty good when it comes to the contrast that I was looking for
Now, I just want to clean it up a little bit
to remove all these little distractions that we see all around
All right, it's looking already so much better, much cleaner
but we can go even farther, and I actually did for this image
I have a version here that I'm going to show you... this one
I'm not going to do this here in front of you because it would take a long time
but as you can see, I went all over the background and removing
more of those elements that were very distracting
that don't add anything to the image, and this is the final version that I ended up with
Next one, I took this one from here from the balcony
actually, you can see here on the bottom right a little bit of the balcony
and this light is cut off too
and that's because I was composing already in a square, in my camera
even though my Sony camera doesn't let you compose in square
but it has a grid, so I kind of can guess what is going to fit in the frame and what it's not
so we're going to, again, transform this to 1x1
immediately, you can see that we already have an image
the only things that we're going to do here, you guessed it
is to increase the contrast and to remove the distractions
and this is pretty much the final version
as you can see, I didn't do a good job down here removing that bush
again, I have a better version that I made... there you go
as you can see, that corner looks much better, that bush is gone
we compare it to the original
as you can see, other than removing those distractions
that again, I think is totally okay to do
is just increasing the contrast and making sure that everything
every element really stands out in the image
okay, next one
again, let's crop it to 1x1
let's increase the contrast
we can play as much as we want with these things, I do
I spend quite a little bit of time playing with the grain
more grain, less grain, and seeing the differences
I play a lot with the vignette too
and with this slider here, clarity, because it adds even more contrast
but once again, I just want to get rid of the distractions
in this case, those on the top right of this image
even this thing here, that I don't like and it doesn't add anything to the image
and there you go
these things are pretty easy to do with digital photography and the images look so much better
all right, another one
this one, I took it pretty close to home here, on one of my morning walks
again, square, there you go
what I like about this image, this composition here, is the convergence, if you will, of lines
this crack on the road was the first thing that I saw
and I thought that it looked pretty cool leading to another horizontal line here, the fence
and then another vertical line here on the tree
but then, once I started working on this image,
I realized that there were many more lines in this image
like this one here horizontal, another horizontal,
vertical, horizontal, and a lot of verticals in the background that are the trees
I was not necessarily seeing that when I composed this image
but I'm guessing that's the reason why I decided to include these trees here in the background
instead of, you know, just cropping the image to something like that
at the time, when I shot this image, it just looked better, it just felt better
and only afterward you might find an explanation to why that might be
again, let's increase the contrast here
I do have a preset that does all of this for me
just to save some time, and to know which one of the images
is worth working on, and which ones are not
this image might be the simplest one of the the ones that I showed you
it has and nothing, it requires nothing
it's very good as it is
the crack on the road that was filled with ice and snow really stands out against the dark asphalt
let's move on to the last one
let's convert it to square
it's a little bit tilted because I was paying attention to the ducks
so let's make it perfectly horizontal there
there you go
I
just wish this duck was here flying over the snow and not over the creek
because it would be even greater contrast
but I actually like it
I like it because you can still see these other 2 ducks, there are a few more in the background
but you can see these 2
and then you might discover the one that was hidden in plain sight there
the only thing we have left to do is of course to remove distractions
we have a little post here
and now, all of this here on the left side, to make it more symmetrical
because there is nothing on the right side, so I'd like to remove all of that
as I said before, the snow makes this so much easier
if this was grass or some other kind of surface, it could look more fake
but because it's all white, because it's all snow, you can just go ahead and remove everything
and it will look very natural
All right, and there we have the final version of the image
as you can see, we didn't do anything crazy
we just increased the contrast, making sure that the contrast we saw in the field
between the highlights and the shadows are still there
making sure that our subject is still standing out
and we can use whatever tool we have available on Lightroom,
or whatever software you might be using, to make it stand out even more
and that's about it, that's all I do with my edits
I try to keep it as simple as possible
I hope this was helpful, if you have any questions please leave a comment down below
Thank you so much for watching, and see you in the next one!