People Flowers and neighbors

[FowlersFreeTime]

Took a break from taking pictures of flowers at my favorite neighborhood garden long enough to click one of my neighbor and her mom with a nice orchid filled backdrop. I cropped it to 8x10 so she can print it and frame it.

• Sony E 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OSS
• 24.0 mm
• ƒ/6.3000001907349
• 1/200 sec
• ISO 200

Editing note: The exposure is accurate, because it was deep shade, but do you think I should have lightened it a bit more? I was afraid to go brighter lest that patch of sky get more distracting.

 

[Alan Clark]

The sky is already burnt out so it will hardly be affected by lightening the whole image, and some of the flowers would benefit from lightening to improve the saturation.
I would also experiment with cropping to remove some of the top of the picture, which is uninteresting, and also the mesh in the lower right corner.

 

[Brownie]

Took a break from taking pictures of flowers at my favorite neighborhood garden long enough to click one of my neighbor and her mom with a nice orchid filled backdrop. I cropped it to 8x10 so she can print it and frame it.
View attachment 41059

Editing note: The exposure is accurate, because it was deep shade, but do you think I should have lightened it a bit more? I was afraid to go brighter lest that patch of sky get more distracting.

Chris, this is where learning to use masks, or in this case dodge and burn brushes would be huge. Go back to the original image, and rather than brightening globally, dodge the dark areas to bring them up. Be careful not to overdo it. Then, burn the sky and see if you can recover any of the detail there. You have to watch this too, overdoing the burn brush will make it look dull. Once you think they're balanced evenly, apply brightness until it looks ok.

Remember, brightness affects midtones, while exposure affects tones across the spectrum.

For my money the image looks fine, save the blown-out sky. In some cases, it can't be helped, but there may be some recoverable detail in there.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

The sky is already burnt out so it will hardly be affected by lightening the whole image, and some of the flowers would benefit from lightening to improve the saturation.
I would also experiment with cropping to remove some of the top of the picture, which is uninteresting, and also the mesh in the lower right corner.

Thanks Alan, I will definitely try that.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Chris, this is where learning to use masks, or in this case dodge and burn brushes would be huge. Go back to the original image, and rather than brightening globally, dodge the dark areas to bring them up. Be careful not to overdo it. Then, burn the sky and see if you can recover any of the detail there. You have to watch this too, overdoing the burn brush will make it look dull. Once you think they're balanced evenly, apply brightness until it looks ok.

Remember, brightness affects midtones, while exposure affects tones across the spectrum.

For my money the image looks fine, save the blown-out sky. In some cases, it can't be helped, but there may be some recoverable detail in there.

And this is where I show my lack of experience. I am usually only doing global adjustments, but I recognize local adjustments (including dodge & burn) and masks are the next learning step.

 

[Brownie]

And this is where I show my lack of experience. I am usually only doing global adjustments, but I recognize local adjustments (including dodge & burn) and masks are the next learning step.

So what's stopping you? The film is free!

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

So what's stopping you? The film is free!

I'm going to queue up some tutorials for ON1 and get over my ignorance. I've just been lazy lol