George, What about adding some weak flash or other lights to the scene? Regards, Bob S.
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 11:38 AM, George Sinos <[email protected]> wrote: > Slavishly adhering to the advice of getting it right in the camera can > limit your ability to create the image you really want. > > The before and after images are here > <http://www.georgesphotos.net/Photography/altar-before-after/25399372_vjTgds> > > The "after" image is what I see, in my mind's eye, when I think of > this statue at St. Bridget's church. When I took the photograph I > found it was impossible to capture in the camera what I had > visualized. > > You often hear the advice "get the image right in the camera" and > don't depend on "fixing it later in Photoshop." But it's not always > possible. In this case, "getting it right in the camera" means > capture an image that will work within the capabilities of the > processing tools. > > It isn't possible to capture the stature and the window in the > relationship that I see in my mind, with the window out of focus. > There are walls, a marble altar and other physical restrictions in the > way. It's just not possible to stand where you would need to stand to > use the focal length lens necessary to make that shot. > > The "before" photo is a close as I could get. I took several shots at > various exposures anticipating an HDR combination. In the end, I was > able to use only this single exposure. > > Here's what I had to do to get the "after" shot. > > Starting in Lightroom, I fixed the basic exposure. > > Moving to Photoshop CS6, I used the Adaptive Wide Angle tool to bring > the window to vertical. > > The window was still too far away from the statue, so I used the > Content-Aware Scale tool to move it closer. > > After using Crop tool to set the aspect ratio, a very small portion of > the lower left corner was blank. That was due to the two previous > adjustments. I used the Content Aware Fill tool to fix that. The > match isn't 100% accurate, but it doesn't show because of the next > step. > > The Blur tool put the window out of focus to help keep attention on the > statue. > > At this point the photo was moved back to Lightroom 4 where the > exposure was fine-tuned, a few hot spots were darkened with the > adjustment brush and a small vignette was added. > > I feel this image needs more work. I may go back and re-shoot the > image now that I know what the processing steps can do. With a > slightly different starting image I may be able to get a final result > closer to the image I see in my mind. > > The final image may not be notable to anyone but me. That's not > important because I'm the only customer for this photo. > > The point of this rambling comment is that photography is a process. > The camera and your post processing software are both part of that > process. The two must be used in balance to produce the images you > see in your mind. Using one without understanding the other can > severely limit your creativity. > > gs > > George Sinos > -------------------- > [email protected] > www.georgesphotos.net > plus.georgesinos.com > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
