I almost never get the pictures I imagine in my head (think NFL posters) of the actual football action, likely due to a combination of poor light, lacking gear (no 200-400mm or fixed 300mm lens) and a lacking muse after standing around for 3 hours with a bunch of smelly football players.
This week, I managed to get a shoot that I like, though it isn't of football, it was taken at the football game.
Here for your enjoyment: the image before any digital darkroom work, and then two shots showing how I visualized the image two different ways when I shot it.
Before: color balance is off, not enough contrast.
Visualized image 1
Visualized image 2
It was a fairly simple process to get from the original shot to something that doesn't hurt to look at. Here's a look at the process:
Notice: I brought up the black point rather than decreasing the exposure. I increased the brightness and the contrast to get those whites in the flag to really be white, and then increased Vibrance to bring out the reds and blues. I used the dropper tool to auto-fix the white balance.
I also added some sharpening (heavily masked as well) and of course, the vignette. I did all of this in Camera Raw, so no Photoshop was needed.
For the second visualized image, I brought the finished file from Camera Raw into Photoshop, added a Black and White adjustments layer, and then using a mask painted away the black and white with a 12% brush to add just a hint of color.
That's what I got for today! I don't expect this will ever become a how-to blog, but its fun once in a while to show how I got from a picture that really sucks to one that doesn't suck quite so much.
Enjoy your Monday (i know, it's hard)!
(still no spellchecker in the blogger UI)
