A photo walk around a neaby village - before & after

Some of you have said you wanted to see the 'before & after' pictures and a small explanation. Well, here's my attempt at what I took, what I did with it and what it ended up like. [Please do not edit the images, although you may use them in any quotes in this thread].

First picture was this one:

I wanted the water reflections and light off the bridge. The original felt a little bit underexposed and I didn't want that white thing at the side, so a bit of cropping and add to the exposure and contrast and the end result was this:

Next picture was this one. A view of the church through the trees.

I knew when I took it what I wanted. But I had the wrong lens with me so it needed a fair amount of cropping to get the church surrounded by the trees (but that is the advantage of a 40mp sensor - you can crop a lot at it still looks OK). Anyway, from the original, I ended up with this after cropping, editing and swapping the boring sky out for something better.

Next was this one. Church & wooden war soldier.

I once again knew what I wanted out of it - the hypocracy of the church 'hosting' a war statue. But the sky overpowered it a bit, so I had a fair amount of work to do. Not a perfect picture because the soldier was fairly damaged (vandals?), but I thnk it gets the point across.

Then, the Falcon Inn.

Just crying out for B&W. But I felt it needed a touch of colour. So, new B&W layer in Photoshop and then erase the bits I wanted with colour. It's a shame I cut the top of the chimney off, but I didn't notice at the time.

Same idea with this picture of the Coach House

I think it works well. I wanted to crop it because the big tree and the door were distractions.

Lastly, a fun picture of what is a boring set of houses.

I cropped the street out, the reduced the saturation and increased the black. Added the sky and my bird to make it a bit of fun.

So, there you have it - what I did and why I did it. Feel free to comment (as long as it's about the pictures).

Alan

Dan,

Thanks for the comments. I don't find the church scene flat, but I am happy to give it another go. I may have overdone some bits as my masking technique is still very basic.

Just FYI, I always edit raw files.But I'd rather not have people edit them at the moment. I'm still learning.

Alan

Thank you. I will try that out when I am next near PS.

Alan

My personal opinions.

1st one - bridge
On original image composition is better, the white thing at the left could be cloned out. About exposure - original is a bit more like painting, edited one is more like photograph. Depend on context and intention either one can be used; I have no clear preference. (I often prefer darker images.)

2nd - church I
Crop is good (there are few possible options, yours is most logical). What I personally do not like, is replacing sky with completely impossible one (light/colors do not match) - either you keep original, either you will edit entire image to create something new.
Was the sky uniform gray/white? You could use some EV stacking or just taking multiple images to recover sky (even gray sky has some gradation). When I'm faced with huge dynamic range of scene, I usually take 3-4 shots with different EV correction; I have not enough skills to set it right once (histogram view helps, but sometimes multiple source images are needed anyway).

3rd - church II
Sorry, too flat. I don't know from where comes the urge to lift up all the shadows (you're certainly not alone) - for me this kills the dynamics. Again, for such a scene you could take multiple exposures and combine them in some HDR tone mapping software - result is often better, containing both shadow details and local contrast.

4th, 5th - selective colouring
Intent is good, I also sometimes keep only red color on b&w. Maybe there are too few of colored objects left - you could try with cropping much more of uninteresting parts of image off.

6th - composite with bird
This I like most - you replaced sky with wrong one, but you altered entire image to match it and end result is balanced and artistic.

This is given.
I don't know about Alans XT5 - my Fuji (X100V) includes very little highlight headroom (at least compared to my previous Sigma), thereby I'd rather underexpose a stop or half. Noise in shadows is possible to remove, burnt highlights unfortunately not. Taking multiple images with different exposure allows me to choose best one; for me that is simpler than analysing histogram in the wild. YMMV.

Thank you all. I have much to think about and I will respond in a while. I've just arrived at our campsite for a few days away and only have my laptop, so any processing will be slow (ish).

BTW, I love the feedback from you all. This, for me, is what this forum should be all about. Keep up the good work.

Alan