Dramatic Effects

[100219]

Before and after of my Daughter at the beach

[Duncan Rawlinson]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for submitting another assignment. (I think you made a typo on your photo competition submission that you might want to look at)

For this assignment the goal is really to get people to think about the power of post processing techniques.

In your photos below I’m not sure exactly what you we’re trying to achieve.

The young girl looks like she is sitting in a sort of yellowy soupy water. I’m not sure how this actually improves the look of the photo or creates a dramatic effect.

Maybe you can enlighten me as to what you we’re trying to achieve here and we can go from there.

[100219]

I was actually trying to achieve a golden river look. I really haven’t spent much time with Photoshop but having played with it a bit further have come up with another photo which depicts the sort of effect I was hoping for in the first one. This new photo highlights the colours and beauty of my gorgious little girl while still presenting the surrounding landscape but allowing her to be the focal point.

[Duncan Rawlinson]

Ah yes. I now know what you we’re trying to achieve.

What you’ve done here is far superior.

This technique of isolating colors is one of the great creative things you can do with photoshop. For the most part I find that people get way out of control with photoshop and they do crazy things.

This technique is more subtle and serves to isolate your most important element, in this case the young girl.

I’m glad that you’ve gotten into a little bit of post processing. You have certainly created a dramatic effect here.

What’s important here is that you have fun and you actually improve the overall images you shoot. If you overdo it you will detract from the original photograph.

One more thing to remember here is to never work on your original files. Also make copies and work on the copies. That way you can always go back to the originals.

Given I’m not a photoshop guru and that’s not what this course is really about we won’t dwell on this topic.

Just know if you have any post processing or photoshop questions there are very many photoshop tutorials online. Especially on youtube!

See you on the next lesson.

[Author]

Posts