Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Photo Editing Challenge #1

Shanghai Day 3 039
Can you fix this dud?

It happens to us all at some point. You are walking along and you see the perfect photo opportunity as I did for this shot, but as you rush to get it you blow it and the opportunity is lost – or is it? This image was shot in raw so it can probably be saved to tell the story I had envisioned when I reached for my Rebel XTi in March 2007.

The story I wanted to tell is about poor man in Shanghai pushing his wheel chair in a lower income area where people hang their underwear out on power lines to dry, but in the background there are these gold roof buildings in the banking district. It’s the contrast of rich and poor all in one shot, but I did just about everything you could do wrong on this shot. Of course this was only my second day shooting digital at a time when I would only shoot in manual mode.

I’m going to edit this photo to see what I can do to save it, but on the recommendation of one of my readers I’m going to open this challenge up to you. That’s right, you can use the crappy raw image (just like Scott Kelby does in his 7 Point System book) and work your own magic on it.

You can use whatever tools or demos are at your disposal like HDR Efex Pro or Photomatix for a single shot HDR edit, or Silver Efex for a nice black and white conversion, or just whatever your normal editing workflow is with the tools you are comfortable with.

Are your skills better than mine? Let’s see, show me what you can do!

Click here for more details on how to get the challenge file and submit your masterpiece.

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1 comment:

ronmartblog.com said...

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