Troubleshooting: From Okay to 'Oh, wow!'

Portland Head Light 2
Originally uploaded by zen granny.

Flickr has a number of groups where people can post their photos to get advice and ratings on a scale from one to five or one to ten. I found this photo of the lighthouse at Portland Head, Maine, posted in one of those groups.

This photo has a number of things going for it. It is nicely composed, with the lighthouse sitting on a diagonal line from the top left to bottom right of the photo. The photographer timed the shot just as a large wave broke against the foreground rocks, adding drama to the scene, and the sky is very interesting with the receding clouds providing a feeling of depth.

But it also has some problems. The photo is underexposed, muting all of the colors that I know are present in the scene, having photographed at that very location myself. The dramatic clouds are nearly lost in a blue-gray mush of sky. Plus, the horizon line is noticeably crooked.

Looks like a job for PhotoShop!

There are those who feel that editing a photo on a computer is somehow cheating, but I don’t hold that view. In this case, the limitations of digital cameras had locked the scene within the confines of an okay photo. But I wanted to liberate the photo into an “Oh, wow!” image. The image information is there in the digital file, it just needed some adjustments to bring it out.

The first thing to do was to correct the horizon. In “Image/Rotate Canvas” I rotated the image 1.5 degrees counter clockwise, then cropped the photo.

Next, I compressed the high and low tones of the photo. This was done in the “Adjust levels” dialog box. I simply slid the left and right sliders toward the middle of the histogram. That brought the contrast back to an acceptable level and made the white tower snap out from the background. A good start. Next, I adjusted the Color balance by adding some red and a slight bit of yellow to warm up the photo, which appeared to be taken around mid morning in bright sunlight. I pumped up the color saturation by about 15 percent to bring out the colors of the outbuildings and sky.

I then selected the sky and foreground water with the rectangular lasso and polygon selector respectively, feathered the edges about 12 pixels, then adjusted the color balance of those areas toward blue. I then selected the darker foreground rocks with the polygon tool, feathered the edges slightly, the adjusted the levels on the selected area to brighten the rocks a tad. Some unsharp masking rounded out the session, which took me all of about ten minutes.

Get to know a photo editing program and play around a bit with some of your photos. As you can see, just a few simple adjustments can make a photo go from so-so to stunning.

Troubleshooting: Lost lighthouse

A friend submitted this photo for a critique and to see if anything could be done to improve it. This is the Crisp Point Lighthouse near Paradise, Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. Judging from the shadows, this was probably taken in the early afternoon. The sunlight is quite harsh at midday, and it is always better to try to take outdoor photos in early morning or late afternoon. The light is softer and warmer at those times of day. I know it’s difficult when traveling to make accommodations for early morning or late afternoon shooting, but it’s always worth the effort as far as photos go (this particular lighthouse is way off the beaten path, so you have you take what you get, conditions-wise). My family has come to the understanding that when we’re traveling, dad is going to be out early in the morning and late in the afternoon into early evening taking pictures. The rest of the day is for accompanying the family to shopping or other activities.

But back to the picture at hand. My friend knows enough about composition to put the main subject, the lighthouse, in one of the outer third corners of the picture, but he still came away with the feeling that something may be off. To me, the biggest problem is that the lighthouse seems to be lost in the trees. While my friend established a foreground, middle ground and background in his picture, the trees in the middle ground, through the visual magic of perspective, seem to be as tall as the lighthouse and compete for attention with the tower. So the first order of business is to explore some cropping options to try to isolate the tower and minimize the distraction of the trees.

I explored both a horizontal and vertical crop. I focused on getting the large tree at the left of the picture just out of the frame, keeping as much of the horizon of the lake as possible and minimizing the tall thin pine tree to the right of the tower. I then moved the vertical crop up and down to see if I liked it better with more sky or more foreground foliage. Personally, I prefer the crop with the foliage on the dune, but you can go either way.

A little darkening of the middle tones and a slight boost in color saturation in PhotoShop rounded out my adjustments of the picture. The lighthouse now stands as the undisputed focal point of the photo. By the way, my friend has more photos and some thought-provoking posts at his blog. Check it out.

Do you have a picture you would like critiqued or fixed? Send me an email at jjrdns6[at]aol[dot]com and write "Troubleshooting" in the subject line.

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Troubleshooting: Underexposed portrait

Turning teenager
Originally uploaded by Phil Widewood.

There are a number of groups on Flickr where beginning photographers post their pictures for others to critique and offer advice. Some of them ask others to “fix” their pictures for them in a computer photo editing program. Ready, Aim, Click will feature some of those photographs from time to time to pass along some tips to help you make better pictures.

This is a candid photo of a gentleman’s 13-year-old daughter. She’s making the transition from childhood to adulthood and anyone who has raised teenagers knows *that* look. This photo is quite nicely done; the framing is good, as is the focus. It successfully captures a spontaneous moment in the life of a young adolescent. The photographer did well in using a zoom setting. Facial features are portrayed better with moderate zooms than with wide-angle or extreme zoom (professional portrait photographers use a moderate telephoto lens).

There is a problem with the exposure, however. The bright background behind the girl tricked the camera into thinking the subject was brighter than it really was and rendered the photo too dark overall. The photographer should have used an exposure value (EV) of +1 to compensate. The girl’s creamy complexion and gorgeous green eyes are lost. The second photo shows the portrait with the exposure corrected in PhotoShop. There are the eyes!

The third photo shows a tighter crop on the face and a softer focus on the girl’s ear. For some reason, having it in sharp focus was a distraction from the main part of the picture – her eyes.

Do you have a photo that you'd like critiqued? Fixed? Send an email to jjrdns6[at]aol.com and write "Troubleshooting" in the subject line.

Top photo: Turning Thirteen posted by Phil Widewood on Flickr. Click on pictures to enlarge. Ready, Aim, Click © 2007 James Jordan.