I took this photograph of two girls sitting on a dock at sunset while I was in Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago. It's not a great photo, but I think it's pleasing to the eye. When I posted the image on Facebook it received a lot of "Likes" from people who normally don't offer their opinion on things I post. The thing is though, the above image is the raw file and is unedited and posted exactly how it came off my camera. There's nothing wrong with this, but as most photographers know—even amateurs like myself—nearly every photograph can be improved.
Years ago, these improvements were done in a darkroom or in post-development, but now with the benefit of software programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop, editing pictures has become more easy and diverse, and with much less work and mess.
As a little experiment I decided to send my picture to five photographer friends. I told them to edit the picture however they wanted to, and with the software of their choice. I also told them to treat the photograph as if it was their own.
While doing my own edits to the image, I wondered if my changes would be similar or completely different to those of my friends. In addition to the usual variables (color, lighting, contrast etc...) there's other things that could be changed in the photograph. Some of these things are: Thanks to not holding the camera straight (or because of standing on the wonky pier) the horizon tilts slightly to the right. Second, you can see the ass of a goose sticking-out from behind the large pole. Third, the sky is dull and boring. Lastly, the original image dimensions are of an uncommon size and in my opinion, should be cropped to a more suitable format, such as in a 5 x 7 or an 8 x 10 ratio.
Here's the images as returned to me by my fellow photography friends:
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Carl Polgar
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Carl used a tilt-shift effect with vignetting. This reduced the saturation of the image while it's selective focus draws your eye toward the girls. Carl often uses these two effects in combination with a few other effects, and you can see a lot more of his images on his Flickr page.
If you're intrigued and would like to try your hand at tilt-shift photography, there's a simple generator you can download at ArtAndMobile.com.
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Jennifer Duffy
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Professional photographer Jennifer Duffy sent a few different versions, however I liked this one the best. The blue filter makes the image more uniform, and I love how the fade of the blue sky (from the top of photo down to the mountains) is similar to the fade of the lake (from the mountain shores to the foreground). I think it enhances the horizontal layers very nicely.
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Steve Smith
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Fellow Las Vegan Steve Smith of DigitalHotShots.com apparently hates geese. He completely erased them from the image, but added a nice background. I'm not sure where he found the image of the mountains, but it does closely resemble the terrain that surrounds Lake Tahoe. With his deletions, the image becomes more isolated and thought-provoking.
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Steph Agar
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Steph applied a series of effects by using a Power Tool Photoshop plug-in. The result is a retro effect that most of us would associate with Instagram or Hipster, although those apps could never handle an image of this size. Steph also erased the goose's ass from the image and added a realistic rainbow. You can check-out Steph's other photographs on her Flickr page.
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Nick Koudis
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Advertising and celebrity photographer Nick Koudis straightened and tightened the image, and then he creatively cropped it. Vignetting has been applied and the contrast tweaked. I like how he matched the sky with the warmth of the sunlight on the dock.
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Me
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This is my edited image, complete with an over-saturated lake and a still rather dull but orchid sky. I erased the ass of the goose, and even turned some of the geese around so they're now paddling toward the girls. This was a bush-league edit on my part because a keen eye can tell that the geese on the left are now facing away from the light source but the sunlight still somehow manages to shine on their front plumage.
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So there you have it—five different versions of the same photograph from five different photographers. Do you have a favorite? If so, keep it to yourself. This wasn't a competition, but an experiment to see how different people view and interpret an image. Personally, I thought my contributors would all have a tendency to make the water more blue and the sky more azure, but I'm glad I was wrong. Think about how boring the world would be if we all saw things through the same eyes!
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Just please don't submit anything from Blingee.
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FiN.
