FOGG Odyssey » Photography Examples

Before & After Photo: Converting photos to Black & White

T-roy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:00:32 +0000

Wedding flowers in Quito, Ecuador

This photo was taken at a wedding in Quito, Ecuador. I wasn’t the official photographer for it but did try and get some good photos of the event to give back to the bride and groom later. To see more photos of my first “non-official” wedding event click on the links below:

FOGG Odyssey: Before & After Post-Edit

This photo wasn’t Photoshopped and used Adobe Lightroom only to edit it. I used the adjustment brush (my favorite tool in Lightroom) to highlight all the area around the flowers. Then I turned down the saturation all the way to give it the Black & White feel, leaving only the flowers in color. This is a very simple way to add a different perspective to your work and people really like this style. It can be a little hard depending on the photo you take, as this one took a little more time as I had to zoom in around the flowers to clean it up.

After I got everything desaturated that I wanted, I then highlighted again around the flowers to add more clarity and contrast to give the background more depth. In total this took me about 15 minutes of editing, most of which was spent on zooming in around the flowers. If you have tried this technique and have a photo you want to share, please leave a comment with a link to show us. Would be great to see what others have done.

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Before & After Photo: Ica Desert Ica, Peru

T-roy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:31 +0000

Desert Odyssey in Ica, Peru

This photo was taken in Ica, Peru on a desert dune buggy ride. Most people would think I got this photo in Egypt or Dubai but Peru has a huge desert close to the coast. Everyone just thinks of Machu Picchu for Peru but it pretty much has it all; jungle, mountains, and coast.

I didn’t have to do much to this photo to make it stand out more. All I did was raise the black levels, clarity and saturation to bring out the colors more. This photo was all about the lines of the desert and following them with the eye. I wish all photos could be edited this quickly, as this only took about 10 sec to do.

FOGG Odyssey: Before & After Post-Edit

Notice above how the histogram is mounded in the center. This is ideal for a perfect exposure, if it’s to the far left the photo was underexposed (dark) and if it is to the far right it was over exposed (blown out skies). Below the histogram you can see where I raised the black levels, clarity and saturation. Big difference from start to finish but it only took a few tweaks to make it better.

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Before & After Photo: Indigenous Market in Saquisili, Ecuador

T-roy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:10:46 +0000

This photo was taken south of Quito, Ecuador in a small town know famously for it’s indigenous market. The town of Saquisili, Ecuador is well worth a stop if your in Ecuador. The market is open every Thursday and you will find things sold here that you wouldn’t anywhere else; from rabbits, pigs, cows and guinea pigs to cheap vegetables, exotic fruits and handicrafts. The best part of being at an indigenous market is it’s full of indigenous people and the worse part about being at an indigenous market is thats it’s full of indigenous people who hate having their photographs taken.

I’m serious when I say people here in Ecuador are really sensitive about being photographed. I took this photo about 60ft (18m) away and when I lifted my camera to take it (thinking I was all sneaky) she turned her head away and down. How she seen me I don’t know but I knew she did as I held and was waiting for her to look up. She did once to see if I had put the camera down and quickly put her head down. I snapped one shot and walked away as you never want to make a local mad.

Before & After- Indigenous Market in Saquisili, Ecuador

The original photo was way over blown and didn’t know if I would be able to recover any of the highlights because so. I decided to crop it as well as I wanted to focus the image on the indigenous lady surrounded by her produce. The light was actually pretty striking, as there was lots of dark shadows and highlights everywhere in this photo.

I started first with highlighting the lady. I wanted to lighten her blue jacket and hat some. Then I highlighted the background around her to darken it some, thus brining more attention back on her and the produce. Last I highlighted the ground in front of her to blur some stuff out and to darken it just a tad. This left a circle of light directed on her which brought your focus to the middle of the frame.

Before & After: side-by-side view

Again, you can see below on the sidebar where I brought the contrast and clarity up. Notice though I pulled the Recovery tool all the way up to bring it back within range. This shot was seriously over blown at the start and is a good reason why one should shoot in RAW all the time. If it had been captured as a .JPEG I might not have been able to recover those highlights without adding a bunch of noticeable noise.

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Before & After Photo: Future Cuban Soldier

T-roy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:10:12 +0000

I shot this photo from a moving bus on the first day in Havana, Cuba. It was one of the first pictures I took while in Cuba and might well be one of the best shots I got while in Cuba. The look of the boy standing with a straight stance and the framing made it come together but it lacked that pop to make it stand out. When I loaded the photos from the day and seen this I couldn’t help but think he looked like a kid in training. That today he was standing their like a solider and in 15 years he would more then likely be standing their again, only this time in his uniform and weapon. All males must join the Cuban military after graduation.

Before & After- Future Cuban Solider

As you can see below there is a big difference from original to the edited version. I wanted to show how rugged the wall he was standing next to was so that it would highlight him more. There was so much going on in that wall and wanted to make sure all the shadows, tears and multi-colors were the second focus spot for the photo. The boy would be #1 for sure but if you look at the before photo the wall doesn’t really draw the eye much does it?

So, I started with clicking on the “Adjust Brush” in Adobe Lightroom and selected the wall to add more contrast and clarity. I then selected the background to darken the street behind him some. Not a lot but just a little to make it feel more moody. Last, I highlighted everything except the boy and upped the contrast and clarity.

You can see the histogram on the upper right and the overall adjustments below it on the sidebar. I upped again the contrast and clarity, plus raised the black level some. I’ll sometimes do the same thing 3x in one section to get the feel I want (ie; raising the clarity levels over and over). I thought about turning the tempature down some but liked the feel of it just the way it was.

If you have any questions or suggestions please let me know. All tips are welcomed!

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Before & After Photo: Old Cuban Men

T-roy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:10:10 +0000

This is the first of a weekly post I plan on doing showing the Before & After of a picture that I take. I often read other photography blogs/websites and when I see their work I always wonder how it originally looked compared to after it had been post edited. It can get really discouraging to the new photographer when he sees work that looks perfect 24/7 but odds are most of the time it’s been edited to get it to that point.

The first two things I always want to know about a photo when I first see it are:

What was the photo info: If you highlight over my photos on my website you will see this info (it will look like this: Canon 5D | 24-105mm | 1/100 sec | f4.0 | ISO 100). This lets me know what type of gear he/she was using, ISO, speed exc and helps me to learn about how to set-up for a similar shot in the future when the situation arrives. Most people won’t add this info because frankly it takes time to embed.
What did it originally look like: I want to know what it looks like so I don’t get frustrated and want to throw my camera out every time I see someone using the same camera as I do but always has better stock. Odds are he/she doesn’t capture better images than you but rather is better at post-editing than you. But it does help reinforce the positional of a shot and will help motivate you to learn more post editing techniques. You will only see a before and after shot when someone is trying to either A) teach a technique or B) sell a product. I have rarely ever seen anyone who posts both pictures because most don’t want to show what they did and it takes twice the time to do so.

So this is why I will be starting a once a week before and after shot with a little info on how I edited it. Feel free to ask questions,give suggestions or leave comments in general as I hope this will fill a void for a lot of people. We all do better if we learn from each other so I hope people will like these posts.

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This was a great picture I took while in Cuba but knew as soon as I took it that it would need some work to make it pop even though the framing was great. As you can tell below there is a big difference between the before shot with no editing and the after with heavy editing. I say heavy but to be honest it only took me about 3 minutes to edit this picture in Adobe Lightroom. I adjusted the exposure down some and raised the black level up to show the deepness of the photo and make it pop. Then I started working on certain sections.

Before & After Post-Edit (Old Cuban Men)

Above highlighted in red is what I selected to add detail to in the photo, using Adobe Lightroom. My #1 tool when editing is the “Adjustment Brush.” I normally will select someone’s face and color correct the skin tone, raise the contrast, up or lower the exposure and adjust the clarity. I always select the face nearest to the camera, then work my way back if needed, always finishing by adjusting the background last (see the 3rd photo with the most red).

Cropped to show detail. This is why a DSLR blows away a point-and-shoot camera.

I threw this picture in to show you the detail when cropped. You can see what kind of camera gear I use here, but it goes to show you how a DSLR will kick a pocket cam butt any day of the week. If you’re only going to post pictures to Facebook or a travel blog then they work awesome. If you want to ever print something larger than an 8×10 though it starts to get complicated. There is software out there that will allow you to increase a photo size without loss of detail but it’s best to have the detail to start.