Ladies and gentlemen, this is mambo number 5!
Or should I just call it #photofeedback number 5? Anyway, the first week on Steemit has come to an end and I must say that I am surprised by the number of upvotes, comments and followers. Thanks again for being a part of this #photofeedback journey! So far, I enjoyed every moment of it and I'm determined to continue on this path of trying to add value to the photography section here on Steemit.
Today I'm reviewing a picture made by @penticton. In his article he describes a walk along the canal in Dubai. There are many bridges over this canal, one even more beautiful than the other. @penticton shot pictures of many of them and I must say that I really like the results he posted.
You can judge them yourself by reading his article: https://steemit.com/photography/@penticton/the-bridges-of-dubai
Please leave him an upvote and a comment about what you think!
I chose the following picture for my review today:
I'm not a markdown specialist yet, so I don't know how the make the image appear smaller on your screens. What I do when looking at images this big is zoom out a bit in my browser (Ctrl+scroll).
Some first impressions:
Lines, lines, lines! I really like the lines in this picture. Diagonals, horizontals, verticals and even curved ones. Different lines add different 'feelings' to a picture. Horizontal lines make a picture more peaceful and quiet, diagonal lines make it more dynamic, verticals give you a sense of permanence and solidness, and curved lines add a certain sophistication and nature to a photo. The combination of all these lines can make the picture difficult to look at, but in this case I really like the dynamic between all the lines. My eyes are guided through the picture in a very pleasing way.
I like that this picture was taken at night. All the different lights add mood to the picture, and the blacks in the sky make you really focus on the bridge itself. The 'visual weight' of the bright parts in a picture is way bigger than the weight of the dark parts. That's why your eye is automatically drawn to brighter parts.
The combination of the darkness and the lights make this picture somewhat surreal. I like this a lot and I think if I enhance this a bit, it would look even better.
I think the white balance is a bit off in this picture (personal opinion). White balance consist of two things: temperature and tint. Temperature ranges on a scale between cold (blue) and warm (yellow). In my opinion this picture could use a bit more warmth. Tint ranges from green to magenta. I will play with the tint slider a bit to see what happens.
I think the water part is a little bit too big. I would like to keep the pink reflections in the water, but in my opinion the bottom part of the water can be cropped off.
The rest of the crop looks amazing to me. This, in combination with the beautiful lines, makes the overall composition of this picture very nice to look at.The light-pollution in the sky (especially the right part of the image) is a little bit distracting. Of course this is what the sky looked like at that moment, but for the sake of an even better picture, I will darken it a bit.
The image doesn't contain an emotional story or background, but I don't mind this. Colors and lines in itself can create emotion in the viewer.
I made some adjustments in the picture using Adobe Lightroom and this is my final edit:
What did I do and why?
I cropped off a bit of the water to make the picture more balanced. I also tried cropping off a bit of the top of the image, but this ended up looking very weird, so I quickly pressed undo!
I adjusted the white balance manually. There is an option to do this automatically in Lightroom, but I like to play around with the sliders for a good end result. I added some warmth (yellow) and after sliding the tint slider up and down to see what looked best, I added a little bit of a green tint to the picture.
I decreased the shadows in the picture to zero. This makes the dark parts of the picture even darker and that contrasts more nicely with the bright parts in my opinion. This also reduced the light-pollution a lot!
The adjustment of the shadows to zero made the picture look a bit underexposed. That's why I upped the overall exposure a little bit.
The tiny addition of dehaze made the light-pollution disappear some more. Dehaze is used for hazy pictures, and in this case the light in the sky was a kind of haziness.
I also added some overall contrast, which automatically made the colors appear more vivid.
I upped the clarity of this picture a little bit, to make details stand out some more.
I did not adjust the saturation or vibrance of the colors. The adjustment of the contrast already made the colors more present and adding saturation or vibrance made the picture look a bit fake.
I added orange split tones to the shadowy parts of the image. Split toning is a useful tool for adding a certain color to specific parts of the picture. You can add tones of a color to the highlights (brightest parts of the image) or to the shadows (darker parts of the image). By adding orange tones to the shadows, it looks like the reflection of the lights is visible in the dark parts. I really like to add subtle split tones to my pictures.
As you can see I made quite some changes, but the end result doesn't look that shockingly different than the original. I like my edits to be subtle, adding a bit of value to the picture without making it look obvious.
What would I do differently composition-wise?
I honestly don't know. I really like the angle this picture was shot at. This made a huge amount of lines visible which are just pleasing to my eyes.
Something that is always nice and useful to do is shooting pictures of your subject from different angles and maybe even with different settings on your camera. Afterwards you can choose the best looking picture and use that one for an edit or just a post on social media or wherever. I don't know if @penticton did this, but if he didn't: who cares! This one came out very nicely.
Conclusion:
After looking at this picture for quite a while during my edit in Lightroom, I began to love it more and more.
The lines are so pleasing in my opinion and the colors are bright and vivid. The contrast between the dark and light parts of the image lets me focus on the subject even more.
This bridge is beautiful and the way @penticton captured it on camera did justice to what the architects wanted the people to see.
You did a very good job with this picture in my opinion @penticton! Actually not only with this one, but with all of the images you showed in your article. And just because I like it, here's one more of your pictures edited by me:
Thank you very much for reading my post and a very special thanks to @penticton for letting me review his picture!
If you liked what you saw, please upvote this post and leave a comment with your opinion. I will answer them all and would greatly appreciate your feedback!
And if you shot some images and you want one of them reviewed by me, please make a new post on your feed with the picture in it, together with the tag #photofeedback. I will check this hashtag and review your picture!
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amazing specially its lightning & Reflection
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STOP@penticton, is was a great honor reviewing this picture for you, thanks again!
Thank you so much for your review and your great editing tips. Very helpful. I love your edited versions. I'm new to Lightroom so this helps a lot.
My pleasure!
Oh my goodness, an amazing photo and a brilliant write up too! I am excited to be following you now, I think I will learn a lot and hopefully improve my photography even more! I am learning so much every day and there are so many people here on Steemit that are willing to share their knowledge and teach others new skills. Such a fantastic platform :)
Thank you very much @beautifulbullies! I really appreciate the feedback and I hope there's something to learn for you in these posts. Oh yeah, Steemit is a wonderful platform, I really like the friendly people trying to help you out wherever they can.
You've got a follower too by the way :)!
Okay so I've come by and checked it out, your blog is awesome and you have a new follower that knows he needs tones more knowledge of photography. I would appreciate it if you wait to review my pictures until I get a little better. LOL If I ever get a picture that I would like you to critique I'll stop by and ask.
Thanks a lot for the kind words @tbnfl4sun! But I disagree with you on your second point lol. I think it's even better to have your pictures reviewed when you're just starting out/not feeling comfortable yet.
But if you do like to wait a bit more, you know where to find me :)!
Thanks again for stopping by, cheers!
Great review, although I post a lot of photos, I know very little about photography. I think I can learn a great deal from following these posts.
That's great to hear @danpaulson! That was the main reason for creating this Steemit page: providing valuable feedback of which other people can learn :).
Enjoy your Sunday!