I have been waiting a while to edit this image. And finally here we are. I really like this picture of a jetty, with the water flattened using a long exposure.
This picture was edited in Lightroom – there was no need to go to Photoshop which makes a nice change.
So I will describe how I processed this image in Lightroom. The previous version of this image I posted had the most basic of corrections. I do not anticipate the full edit of this image taking too long to be honest.
Crop
First job here is to straighten the horizon. It was quite a tight composition to start with, but I cropped in tighter on the right and a bit on the left to reduce the amount of sky in the image.
White balance
As this was a long exposure (60 seconds)correcting the white balance was a visual thing – none of the presets worked. This is in part due to the blue cast you get when you take a long exposure using the Lee Big Stopper filter – a 10 stop ND filter.
Basic panel
This was quite easy to do. I wanted depth in the lovely flat water, and the intensity of the sun striking the wood of the jetty structure.
I made minor adjustments to all the sliders in the basic panel, then went to HSL as I had work to do there.
HSL Panel
In the wonderful HSL panel I darkened the blues in the sky and lightened the yellows and oranges in the wood structure of the jetty.
Now I am getting there.
To emphasise the sunlight on the jetty, I painted the top of the jetty structure, not the legs, and added clarity, and brightened the shadows, highlights and exposure a little bit.
Finishing touches to this image were detail and a minor vignette,
And that is the image processing done.
Apart from a quick check in Lightroom Mobile on my iPad, which reminded me I needed to boost the exposure, just a bit, by about one third of a stop.
The image capture details were as follows.
- Exposure – 60 seconds
- Aperture – F16
- ISO 100
- Canon 6D
- Canon 24-105mm lens
- Focal length used 65mm
- Manual Mode
- Platypod Pro
- Lee Big Stopper
Tomorrow the black and white version of this picture.
And then you wont see this image again until my luminosity mask work kicks in – this is top of my list for that treatment.
Rick McEvoy Photography Blog
Tuesday 29th November 2016
