Re-Evaluate
So I was just going through my set of shots that I have in my “published” collection in Lightroom. This is a collection of images that I have uploaded online. While looking through those images, I came across one that just didn’t seem right. It was underexposed, and it just didn’t seem to fit my style of post processing. Not that I really have a style per-se, but I can look at an image and tell that I worked on it or not. This one didn’t look like any work had been done to it. So I opened up the image in the Develop Module and took a look at the history. I noticed that all I had done, was change the white balance and then just exported it. I’m not sure why I even did that, cause the image looked horrible.
Sometimes in Photography it may be a good thing to go back and re-evaluate your images. If you’re like me you fall into a cycle of processing a group of images one way and then you may make changes to your post processing and process a set of images a different way. This is kind of how I find my groove. As I grow as a photographer and a post-processor of images, images that I took last year, or even a month ago may have a different style to them. With re-evaluating your images, you made find that images you processed in the past may look even better with the tools and tricks you have learned since then. This may be the case with this particular image, but taking just about a minute to adjust some extra sliders in lightroom made quite a difference.
Original Post
This is the image that I originally uploaded to this site and to others. Looking at it, you can tell it was underexposed and there wasn’t really much to it.
Before and After Comparison
Here is a side-by-side view of the same image. The original on the left and the adjusted image on the right. Adjustments included a decrease in contrast, highlights and blacks. Increases in shadows, whites, exposure, vibrance and saturation. Those few changes made a world of difference between the two images.
Finished Shot
Spruce Flats Falls
Spruce Flats Falls – The Great Smoky Mountain National Park