Thursday, May 26, 2011

Week 20 good to WOW Edit Chalk Drawings

Time for Thursday's reveal of our Monday SOOC shots.  People's shots were already great with lots of color and dimension.  I cannot wait to see what they did with them.

As I was editing my shots I realized I was actually fairly happy with their colors and exposure.  I believe my edits did add color and depth, but I would have been content with the before if I didn't know how to edit yet.  The disappointment in my shots was composition and my inability to capture the shot my head envisioned.  This might sound like I'm sad, but I am actually very encouraged by it since I bought my DSLR in March and started shooting in full Manual mode (except focus) in April.  I have been spending my picture taking time focusing on getting the settings right.  Going over the almost 400 pictures I have of the children and the chalk I realized I got the settings right more often than not.  Since they moved in and out of the shade I had to change the settings frequently to do so.  Now that changing and understanding my settings is easier it means I can start focusing my energy on composition again.  I am not the photographer I want to be (and I actually have my dream set fairly low) but I actually feel like I might get there.

That said I did finally have a chance to edit my pictures this morning, and I'm actually pretty happy with them, too.  If you have advice/criticism to give me, today would be a good day to give your 2 cents because I feel happy and optimistic, but I really do have some things I need to learn--starting with what exactly don't I know yet?  Oh, and by the way I'm trying that whole mouseover thing, so to see the before shot, put your mouse on the picture and see if it works.



I basically ran mini-fusion on all of these with a few adjustments and added the pink layer.  I'm not sure that makes them simple edits since it is simple to run the action, but it does a lot of different things to the pictures.  On this last one I also added a gradient map of burgundy to blue on soft-light blending mode which really added color to the pavement and bricks.

That's it.  I'm hoping I copied and pasted correctly for the mouse over affect to work so I can go look at everyone else's edits.  Be sure to check them out over a Ramblings and Photos.  Have a Happy Thursday!


Photobucket

9 comments:

Lynda said...

Great photos and clean edits of them! I'm partial to the mouseover effect and love your implementation!

Ashley Sisk said...

I actually think that your SOOC shots were great so your edits look really natural. Isn't it great when you feel like you're making progress and learning something. You're doing great!

Courtney said...

Great job! Like the clean edits!

Gina Kleinworth said...

I love how they turned out. I completely hear you when it comes to playing & learning the settings. I know that I have my work cut out for me & I have a fraction of them available on my camera. I can only imagine my learning curve once I get a real slr.

Unknown said...

Love your edits! They really bring out the details! Great job!

FYH said...

Thank you so much, I changed from browser I can now leave comments again. It was so frustrating!!!
Love your clean edits! I'm also learning my settings, it really helped me to go shoot in RAW, so I can concentrate more on the focus, because the exposure can be corrected afterwards
if it's way off.

Unknown said...

beautiful job!! I love the first edit - really brought out the colors!

Julie (Wellblessed) said...

The brightening and sharpening on these is great! Love the mouse-over, I'll have to go back and check out that tutorial. :)

Charmaine Poulin said...

Love the subtle changes using that action!!! Lovely!