Help editing a waterfall photograph.

dearlybeloved · May 1, 2013

I was wondering if I could get some help editing this photo. I've been playing with it for an hour or so but it still doesn't look right to me.

A waterfall at Chewacla State Park located in Auburn, Alabama. To give an idea of the scene, it was about 5-6pm this afternoon on an cloudy moist day. I wanted to get the flow of the falls coming down and I felt like the rock leading under the falls gives it a nice touch.

19mm f/20 iso 100 @ 1 second. I used a 4 stop nd filters. Feel free to comment on ways you would have captured this too, I can always go back and take another crack at it.

Here's my edit

And here's a link to the original raw and feel free to edit it and post back if you feel like giving it a shot.

https://www.box.com/s/ox3bxxrraet28vzv2bfs

Desi · May 1, 2013

It feels a bit too dark for me, especially with the brighter foreground rock and greenery competing for attention. Compositionally, the foreground rock acts as a leading line going out of the frame. Not sure how I would compose it differently, though. If you burn it and brighten the falls, that may balance the composition a bit.

Hope this is helpful,

Desi

480sparky · May 1, 2013

A bit too dark for my tastes. I brightened up the water a bit, as well as took out a little of the blue. Then increased the brightness of the shadows. I also edited out the post or whatever at the top left. Then finished with a crop.

bianni · May 2, 2013

Selective adjustment of colors and exposure.

rokstomper · May 2, 2013

Here is my try.

amolitor · May 2, 2013

You gotta decide if you want it dark and moody, or bright and cheerful. The sky is flat and has a really ugly color. and there's a lot of shadow, so bright is gonna be tough. I'd go dark and moody, myself, because I always go dark and moody.

Ysarex · May 2, 2013

I'm at work right now on one of the lab computers with some time to kill -- lab computer means calibration is shaky.

Joe

dearlybeloved · May 3, 2013

Ysarex said:
I'm at work right now on one of the lab computers with some time to kill -- lab computer means calibration is shaky.

Joe

View attachment 43816

wow, I really enjoy looking at that. Can you tell me what you did there? I really like the blue in the sky and the vibrancy.

i really enjoyed everyone's edits and think this scene represents what I want it to. These falls aren't really that big and I wanted to capture it in a perspective that made the look bigger than they are. great job guys and thanks!

Ysarex · May 3, 2013

dearlybeloved said:
Ysarex said:

I'm at work right now on one of the lab computers with some time to kill -- lab computer means calibration is shaky.

Joe

View attachment 43816

Click to expand...

wow, I really enjoy looking at that. Can you tell me what you did there? I really like the blue in the sky and the vibrancy.

i really enjoyed everyone's edits and think this scene represents what I want it to. These falls aren't really that big and I wanted to capture it in a perspective that made the look bigger than they are. great job guys and thanks!

Glad you like it. Actually I'm a tad embarrassed -- as I said I was at school using one of the lab computers that aren't well maintained and the school only has Adobe so I only had ACR/LR to work with. Back home this morning I ran it through again and I did a better job. I converted the raw file through Photo Ninja and then used Photoshop to finish up.

As for the approach; I opened up the shadows in the converter to the point where the photo was too flat overall. I set the white balance from the water going over the falls.

In Photoshop I built the contrast back in with a Soft Light blend but I created a mask for the shadows so that I could protect them and raise the contrast disproportionately more in the midtones and highlights.

I did a little burning work (hand brush) on the big rock, foreground water and the far waterfall.

Then I added the fake sky. It's just a gradient. I added a blank layer. Laid the gradient on that layer and set the blend mode to Multiply. Then I selected the sky in the original and used that selection to create a mask on the gradient layer.

Joe