Re-visioning an image

As part of prepping the images I donated to Images Without Borders, I decided to reprocess them from scratch and see if I could make them as good as I could given what I know about post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop — consider it a pop quiz on how much I’ve learned in producing quality images in the last few months…

I find some of the differences fascinating. My image of Morro Rock at Dawn, which is one of my favorites (ever!) got a major makeover. Here’s the image as I originally processed it, literally on my laptop in the auditorium at Morro Photo Expo waiting for George Lepp to talk:

I like that version a lot (except for the bird dots in the sky; I later removed them for the version I used to print out for christmas gifts), and the glow on the rock well simulated what I saw when I took the image; I felt I could do better now, though.

So here’s the new image:

The glow on the rock isn’t as noticable, but the coloration is more the golden tone that was evident that morning, and I much prefer the coloration of the water and sky and the better detail in the boats. And there are no bird dots or other junk in the sky…

If nothing else, it’s a very vivid example of how photos may look “photo realistic” but really are heavily tied into the interpretation of the photographer in post processing. it’s always been that way, by the way — the tools in a wet darkroom were just different ones.

Which one do I like better? I like aspects of both, actually, for different reasons. I’d kind of like at some point to take the rock in the original and move it into the image I just finished. Maybe some day I will — but to be honest, I like the new version of the rock as well…But I definitely — today — prefer this new one and how the boats have some detail visible. I was for some reason doing a lot of sillouette imagery last october when I was in Morro Bay…

Another image I redid today, the night herons, better shows how much better I am at this than I was when I originally did it (about 8 months ago):

To me, it now looks soft and grey. The new version of the image has whiter whites, better contrast and stronger blacks, and is much sharper and generally an improved image.

All in all a muc superior image, and I think in this new one the eyes really pop, and they really are the focus of this image, where in the previous version, I now think it came across rather muddled.

To me, it’s good to sometimes go back and re-vision your previous work and see what you can do with it; it can be a really positive way to see the progress you’re making in becoming a better photographer. The bones of that night heron image were always there, I think. Now, I think, the rendering I did allows you to see them.

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