Accidental, Creative Exposure.

[Bitter Jeweler]

I was playing around in Lightroom2 (Demo) with some older images that have been sitting around. I pulled up a couple of an old falling down shack that were way underexposed. I almost deleted them straight off, but I boosted the exposure and the brightness, and I got something that I really like.

This is the way underexposed image. It was nearly black.
#1
Shutter 1/400
Aperture 4.5
ISO 100

I really like the warmth, I like the noise/grain, and I love the overal feel this image has. But when I look at a "properly" exposed image of the same subject, I don't like it as much at all. I tried to PP to look like the image above, and really didn't come very close. See below.

#2
Shutter 1/50
Aperture 4
ISO 100

No matter what I did, I couldn't get the shack to "brown up" like the first pic.

So my questions are which image appeals to you the most as far as color, sharpness/noise, and overall feel? Is this "creative exposure" acceptable? I could see doing this for certain shots, to get that feel. What can I do to get the wood in the second photo to match the first image?

Thanks!

 

[paulpippin29]

I definately prefer the first one Bitter.... looks like the "Shade" white balance was set... I keep it on Shade for shots like these, always saturates and warms everything, not always the thing to do, but for the most part anyway, at least, for me. Again though, #1 all the way for my taste.

 

[musicaleCA]

Curious. If it gets you the effect you want, it's acceptable. Anyone who thinks otherwise is arguing semantics (or technicalities), in my opinion.

Oh, and I definitely like #1. Don't care for the noise so much myself, but given what you were doing, that's unavoidable. I find it confusing that the sky is still overexposed though.

 

[Samanax]

Were these shot in RAW or JPEG?

To get the wood parts to show as brown in the second shot I think you'd have to go into Photoshop and select just the wood and play with the color channels until it shows more brown. In Lightroom you'd affect the whole image when adjusting the colors.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

paulpippin, I didn't think about that (shade setting), I'll give that a try....Ok, I tried it (no really). It made everything more yellow, playing with tint and temp didn't help much. This is tricky, but I seem like I am getting closer. I am going to experiment more with taking some more very underexposed pictures, then boosting the exposure in PP, and seeing if I continue liking this effect.

musicaleCA. I kinda like the noise here, but this was sort of my point, if I can achieve the same tonal quality that I am liking in a correctly exposed shot (no noise). I am trying to sort out if I like the image for the tonal quality alone, or in combination with the noise. Don't be confused about the sky. You can see the sky in the orignal image, but the building and trees were all a very very dark, indescernable mass.

Samanax, ok. I was hoping I could change stuff with a few sliders and tweaks here and there (yes shot in RAW).

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I'll keep experimenting.