I’ve written before about my photographic “process.” That’s not really a good word for it, but I can’t think of a better one right now. There’s two aspects of photography that bring me the most joy. The first is going out and making images and the second is sharing those images. The middle bit (processing) can be fun, but often it’s just a necessary evil. I’m going to talk about the middle bit today.
I took this photo out of the Arboretum conservatory window when Jane and I were there photographing the orchids. I also took another image of the same subject, just slightly more in focus. I was having trouble deciding which one was “better,” so I sent them both to Jane to get her opinion. She liked the dreaminess of this one better, but felt that the bright perfect circle of lens flare was too distracting.
She perfectly articulated what was subconsciously bugging me about this version of the photo. Ironically, the lens flare was softer and less distracting in the second, more focused image, but the rest of it was less compelling. So I did what she suggested and cloned out the bright spot, which resulted in the version on the right. It’s substantially better than the original, but I still felt something was lacking.
Specifically, I thought it had a little too much white space in the upper right corner. So I cloned a few spots and used them to fill in around the edges, giving the perimeter a little more definition. I also felt some of the branches were a little light in color. I didn’t want to increase the contrast any more, so I did a little burning to bring out more definition. The changes are pretty subtle, which was my intent.
I generally don’t like to get too heavy handed with my editing in Photoshop. But sometimes a little bit of tweaking can take an image from good to great. I think that’s the case here. Pay no attention to the (wo)man behind the curtain, The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken.