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Any ideas as to how I should edit this one? I have not been able to get this anywhere near what it really looked like. The colour that came out of the camera is terrible – nothing like what I saw when I was there – especially in the foreground. The light in the foreground is from a sodium vapour light (street light), which is normally a yellow-ish colour, not red.
Besides adjusting the levels and tone curve, basically the only thing I did was reduce the green-magenta contrast everywhere except where the lightning is.
The original is the one without the watermark.
Next time (hopefully there will be… how often do you see lighting when it isn’t raining?) I will think a bit more about composition and hopefully use a better lens. 🙂
- This topic was modified 54 years, 9 months ago by .
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Well, I’m certainly no expert when it comes to post processing, and of course, I wasn’t there to see the lighting in the foreground as you saw it, but just in thinking about what the light from a street light would look like, I think your editing has made it a little too yellow. I took your original and adjusted the red and orange colors in LR. I went with +30 on the red hue. For the orange, I slid it to +24 hue, and +20 saturation. I also worked with the exposure to bring out the outline of the barn. It’s great that you got a chance to photograph some lightning. That’s something I’ve been wanting to try!
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After the last time I tried shooting lighting, I got a whole new appreciation for those amazing lighting pictures you see taken by the pros. 🙂
You really don’t have much to work with in your shot, the original exposure being incredibly underexposed. Did you shoot using bulb? If I want to include the foreground in shots like this (usually with fireworks), then I use a flash or paint with a flashlight to illuminate the foreground while using a long shutterspeed for the fireworks. Otherwise, just use a super long exposure to expose for the foreground and take enough pictures until the lightning comes out right in one of them. I guess it depends on the frequency of the lightning, I guess.
Also, I probably would have used a zoom lens, knowing that the storm was far away.
But as for editing, I would use masks in Photoshop over a Curves layer to neutralize the too-yellow light.
Check this article out: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News=15553
Thanks for all the comments! I was using bulb mode, and I guess I really should have left the shutter open longer – maybe I would have had more lightning flashes, too. Maybe 30 seconds or so. Oh, well I’ll know for next time… I sort of wanted to get the silos in the picture, but maybe that should have been for another time.
@JamesStaddon Thanks for the comparison between lightning and fireworks – I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I learned from a photographer who specialized in fireworks that he uses iso 100 or lower (!) and f11 – f18 depending on the type of fireworks. I might try that next time, too.Wow! That’s good info to know; the ISO 100 thing for fireworks. What aperture does he use? Like f/1.2?
Here is the link for Robert Burch’s technique: http://www.montreal-fireworks.com/photo-tips.html
and the link for some of his fireworks pictures (in conjuction with a couple of other photographers): http://www.montreal-fireworks.com/photos-montreal2015.htmlBasically, he
usesused to use 100 ASA or 50 ASA slide film and changes his aperture depending on the type of fireworks he is photographing. 🙂 Don’t ask me how he knows what kind of firework is going to go off next…What surprised me is that he normally shoots around f/11, so I tried it out at the Montreal International Fireworks competition and it really does work! Using a larger aperture over-exposes the fireworks. I even had a few quite over-exposed at f/11.
Have fun looking at their photos – they all have the exif data still attached. They use a Sony ⍺ series camera and a Canon 1D Mark IV and from what I saw vary their apertures anywhere from f/4.5 to f/13, with everything in-between. And, more surprises, they shoots in aperture-priority mode on Canon. And they edit with the Gimp.
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Well, if I’m reading it correctly, it looks like f/11-f/18…
he uses iso 100 or lower (!) and f11 – f18 depending on the type of fireworks.
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