Dreamy photo via Lightroom 2.1

I took this image in Columbus, OH. It is a different view of my previous post of the Santa Maria replica. It was late at night and I wanted to create a very dreamy effect. I put my flash on the ground out of the scene to the right. The flash was set to full power and zoomed to aprox 100mm. Camera settings [f/2.8 1/40 sec. ISO 500].

I converted the image to B&W utilizing the same method as the previous post with one exception. The clarity was set to -50 rather than +100. When the clarity is adjusted to a negative number it brings in a very soft dreamy effect. Try it!

The second image was modified using the same techniques. IMHO, it creates a very dreamy effect. :-)



Get out there and capture the beauty of life!

Lightroom Black and white conversion

The first image is an image I shot last month when shooting the team photos for the Silver Ring Thing tour team. The day was beautiful with very nice clouds and good light. However, this image was shot in the late afternoon which rarely provides the dramatic light needed for an interesting photo.

However with all the different lines and shades, it looked like a great photo to convert to black and white. The second image is a quick conversion using the grayscale button in Lightroom [LR].


The second image is your basic grayscale image. It has no 'pop' or wow factor to it and is basically a very 'flat' image.

The third image is a Black and White conversion utilizing the many powerful tools in LR 2.1. A few of the tips I will outline are not available in LR 1.4 [clarity tool].

[All the instructions are based on the assumption of shooting in RAW.]

1. Click on the develop module
2. Click on Grayscale in the HSL/Color/Grayscale section below the basic section in the develop module.
   
3. Under the 'basic' set of tools adjust the black slider to the right until you darken the image to a manner that is pleasing to you. [Do not worry if it is too dark, we will address it later.]
4. In this photo I adjusted the black to +18.
5. If the black causes parts of your image to be too dark, adjust your exposure to bring out the images that are too dark. In this example I adjusted the exposure to +.95.
6. I adjusted the recovery slider to +18 to bring out the impact of the clouds. [Play with the recovery slider to enhance the appearance of your sky.]
7. My next task was to bring out the midtones and the tool I used was the clarity tool. [It is not available in LR 1.4]. I adjusted it to +100. [Play with this tool and see the impact to using a negative clarity value.] It creates a dreamy effect around -50 to -100. Go ahead and play, you can always move it back to the original position.
8. Move down to the tone curve section and adjust your point curve to strong contrast. Notice the change in the image.
9. In this image I 'cropped' the image slightly to eliminate the vignetting in the upper corners from shooting very wide. [Hit the R key and it will take you to the crop mode, then adjust accordingly.]
10. Adjust the sharpening slightly
11. Export to PS to add the border and text

If you do not have lightroom, go to adobe's site and download a free trial version. Remember, if you are a student, check out the many sites that offer LR and many other great software tools for a great discount.

I hope this tutorial helps! Go out and capture the beauty of life!

Columbus, Ohio - Playing in Lightroom

I took this image a few weeks ago while walking in downtown Columbus, Ohio. It was later in the evening and I had some time to enjoy the city. [I was in Columbus on a business trip.] The lines and shapes of the building caught my attention. However, regardless of how I took the picture, I could not capture it in the manner I saw it in my mind.

However, after some 'playing' in Lightroom 2.1 I was able to create the second image that matched the drama I saw in my mind. I envisioned a building from the turn of the century with late night meetings and discussions concerning the future of the area.

The first image is directly out of the camera and the second image is after some 'artistic' liberality was used. :-)