A Little Bit of Red

[Ellie]

I took this in some fine weather a few days ago, for a theme in a local photography competition: “A little bit of red.” We were walking the dogs at golden hour, I happened to turn around and saw this woman in the red coat walking towards us.

Too good an opportunity to miss, but I think I blew it (literally: I’m annoyed with myself for blowing the exposure on the sky). I’ve done my best with the editing in post, but it still isn’t as good as how I saw it on the day. Any other critiques, suggestions, or just reminders to take a breath and do better next time, are all welcome!

 

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Well, you’ve certainly nailed the theme of the photo with the classic red jacket in a landscape that usually gets a lot of love @whitehorsephotography

It’s hard to tell from this shot, but is the sky totally blown out? You could potentially crop at the tree line in the centre for a square crop and it would still be an effective composition.

[Ellie]

@admin-2 I had sort of blanked in a different crop – I think I was being too emotional (read: stubborn!) because I wanted to try and catch the light through the trees, and because the competition specifies 5×7″ (though I don’t know how strict they’ll be on that.)

 

I will go back to the RAW and have another play, although from memory it is the sky above the trees that’s totally blown.

[Robert Apple]

You could try something like this. Sometimes the light pallet just isn’t going to work without exposure bracketing, which always looks unnatural, If you had nailed the sky I think the blacks in the foreground would have lost detail. So the work around is to leave part of the scene out, or replace the offending area of the photo. I’m not a fan of sky replacement in most cases, so I went with a crop and some targeted luminance.

[Ellie]

@robertapple Thank you for this. I am with you on sky replacement, and I don’t have the skill to do it in any case!

I like how what you’ve done has given this almost a tilt-shift effect, which I find fascinating because it really draws you in.

[lee kivi]

I agree, too much blown out sky. Also I wonder what effect it would have using a lower perspective.

[Ellie]

@elkay I wonder too, though I would definitely have lost the moment here if I’d been able to get to a point of lower perspective. The woman was walking up a hill and I was at the top of it – I’m not sure how she’d have felt about being asked to pose!

[LightandShadow]

I think there’s a lot to work with here. Your attempts to recover the sky has also produced a loss of contrast, especially on the left hand trees. Even if you had nailed the highlights while preserving the dark, you would have too much sky. I think you have more than you need in all 4 dimensions. You like the golden hour colors in the trees but they compete somewhat with the color that is the theme.

I like @robertapple ‘s rendition though I think a 10 x 8 or square would suit better–still more space around the subject. Preserving the aspect ratio and portrait orientation works better for me. Personal preference: I prefer the distance from the subject as well. I do think the golden hour colors draw my eye away from the red though. I tried desaturating all of the colors except for your subject but didn’t care for my result.

[Ellie]

@lightandshadow good point and useful perspective. In your version, it’s much clearer that the golden light in the trees is distracting. I think I’ll have a go with some selective masking and see what happens…

I do also like the effect of less foreground in your edit, in particular.

[Ellie]

Had another go. I still think I’m fundamentally  disappointed with this one not turning out as well as I wanted it to, although your suggestions of cropping and adjusting the background light have definitely improved it. I think the horizontal flip has helped as well, as it draws my eye better.

Thank you, everyone 🙂

 

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I certainly would not be disappointed with that, @whitehorsephotography  though I might try warming up that light area.

[Anne Hornsby]

Elllie, I like what Robert did and your second go.  If you want a 5×7 vertical, it could be cropped something like this. I did some quick & dirty levels adjustments (Robert’s orange trees are much better) to lighten colors.

[Author]

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