This week for One Photo Focus, Stacy from Visual Venturing brings to us a photo from Loré Dombaj from Snow’s Fissures and Fractures, called Scene from a Salzburg Cafe. Actually, I have a sneaking feeling that I’ve been to this very spot many many years ago!

Here is the original photo:

201503_OPF_original-1

 

I had a little trouble trying to figure out where to start with this one. I confess that my brain is a little foggy this evening, so that might have something to do with it.

In all edits, I increased exposure and contrast slightly. I also decreased highlights and whites and increased the blacks and shadows settings to lighten them up slightly.

So, first I wanted to remove that sign at the top of the photo, but I don’t have that level of editing skill, so I cropped in and converted to portrait orientation, and I added a dark vignette around the image. This also served to highlight the cherub’s face. I also increased clarity and vibrance slightly to bring out some more detail.

201503_OPF_DJPedited-1

 

For this second edit, I chose to crop in the original orientation and focus in on the face. I also wanted to warm up the image somewhat by slightly tweaking the white balance settings (temperature and tint). A slight increase to vibrance and clarity again to finish it off.

201503_OPF_DJPedited-2

 

 

Finally, I wanted to do a black and white edit, because, hey, you know I love black and white. Also, I haven’t done a square photo in a while, so I thought this might work. I was careful to keep all those little tendrils of the plant inside the crop. I lightened up the exposure a little and increased contrast and clarity a little more. I find this is usually the best for black and white. I was tempted to add some grain, but held back 😉

201503_OPF_DJPedited-3

 

Thanks again to Stacy and Loré for giving us this fun challenge. I really enjoy this and I encourage you to join in if you want to extend your photo editing skills.

x desleyjane

 

 

Posted by:desleyjane

photographer, blogger, planner, scientist, dog lover, frequent flyer, daughter, sister, BFF, human

33 replies on “One Photo Focus 3”

  5. Yes with all the distracting bits in the background it was a bit of a challenge, like you I dont have the skillz to remove those things so I tried to cover them up. I liked your portrait crop, that works well, and the BW with the very tight crop uses up all the lovely tones nicely 🙂

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  9. Okay, Desley, how to choose between the three? 🙂 I had to laugh that you chose the portrait crop because you didn’t know how to get rid of the sign – there’s always more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes, and I love how the crop works with this photo. I never even considered it. Your edits in each really work to focus attention on the cherub’s face, but I think of them all, the second version ekes ahead as my favorite — I really like the warm tones you brought to it! Thanks for having so much fun with 1PF 🙂

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  10. I liked seeing the experimentation! I can’t really pick a favorite – they all turned good, but for very different reasons.

    As for cloning out the sign, what software are you using? I use Lightroom for my initial edits and the clone tool in there is pretty easy to use. Photoshop, not so much. However, I’d encourage you to get the original photo back out and play around with the cloning. That one was pretty small and didn’t have to be very exact to cover up the sign. I had to move the clone around several times before I hit on using the vines from the tree. It just made a jumble that no one looked at twice. The tree itself is the only thing that needs to be exact; the other rest of the sign needs to be tight, but not exact.

    Nancy

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    1. I also enjoyed reading “about you” as I was curious what kind of scientist you were. My daughter works in software design, another field with few women in it. One of the things her husband liked when they started dating was that she was in STEM (he has a PhD computational chemistry) and they could talk a lot of shop.

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      1. Ah! Thank you. Yes, it is an exciting time to be a woman in STEM I think. We are getting a lot more attention and respect now and it’s great! Now, if we can just get some more funding sent our way….. 😉

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        1. When my daughter was in college, she got a scholarship her junior & senior year from a large chip manufacturer (yes, it’s who you’re thinking of) to encourage women in engineering. What was funny was she didn’t have the best GPA – it was good at 3.3, but not the best in her class – but she had a personality and they felt she would “fit”. Unfortunately, none of the interns got a job offer due to a downturn in the economy when she graduated.

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          1. That’s a shame about not staying on, but that’s such a great achievement to be selected. I just did a career mentoring day for students at my old alumni and that’s one thing that came out of all of us panellists – if there are two candidates with the same grades or the same number of publications, then we will always hire based on how we think they will fit in. It’s about what else you can do, how you communicate. Your daughter must be well rounded and engaging.

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            1. She is and that’s what gave her the edge. She figured she didn’t have a chance of getting the scholarship, so she just went in and was herself. We were all surprised when she got it!

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    2. Nancy, I am so so sorry to have not replied to your comment here. I have spent the last hour going through all my posts and finding comments that I’ve never been notified of! Apologies.

      I use Lightroom for all my editing. I found the clone tool but I am not great at using it, I can’t seem to get a seamless cover-up. Any suggestions would be appreciated 🙂 Using the vines from the tree is inspired!!!!!

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    1. Lore – again, I have to apologise for missing this comment. As I said to Nancy above, a lot of my comments didn’t make it to the notifications area. Apologies, apologies!
      Thank you so much for your comments. I think the warm one is my favourite too. Yes! Salzburg was gorgeous. I was only there for a few days, but the company I was visiting made sure I saw as much as I could. It was so lovely. Thanks again for providing this photo for us 🙂

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