"Bank Street Bridge"

Built in 1912 and restored in 1993, the Bank Street Bridge is the most attractive piece of civil engineering in Ottawa, Ontario. Beautiful lighting makes it especially eye-catching at night.

Odd-looking color casts are always an issue when shooting in artificial light. Your camera's white-balance settings may help but probably won't solve all the color problems in situations like this so corrections with image-editing software are necessary. To get rid of the yellowish-bluish cast in the BEFORE image I desaturated and darkened the yellows, reds, blues, cyans and magentas.

But while I wanted to reduce these colors in some parts of the image, I was careful to retain them in other areas. I didn't want to lose the yellow lines on the road, the red streak of tail-light, the yellow sign above the arch on the right, the yellows/reds in the foliage and the subtle color variations in the cobblestones. A photoshop layer mask allowed me to precisely target the areas where color would be altered.

The BEFORE image is well exposed but the light looks flat. I used fine-contrast and tone-curve adjustments to add sharpness and detail. I especially wanted to bring out the detail of the cobblestones.

An ultra-wide angle lens (14mm) created perspective distortion - notice in the BEFORE image how the edges of the bridge seem to be twisting away from the center. I corrected this.

I cropped the image to make the bridge more prominent and remove dead space in the upper right. I used the clone tool in photoshop to eliminate the distracting orange and black pylons in the upper right.

And oh yes, I could find no way to set up the shot without including my tripod's shadow. I got rid of it with the clone tool.

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"Boat Tour"

On a boat tour of Western Brook Pond in western Newfoundland two women focused on the spectacular scenery while I focused on them. The pastel colors of their windbreakers contrasted with each other and with the natural tones of the land, water and sky. The image tells a strong, simple story: two people awestruck by 600 meter (2000 foot) cliffs towering over a remote, pristine lake. This image required less work than many of the others featured in this blog. It's a good example of how even relatively modest adjustments can transform a photograph from merely "interesting" to "worthy of displaying". I wanted to separate the women from the landscape - make each part of the image stand out in its own right. I was taken by the colors and textures of the jackets so I increased vibrancy a little to bring out the color and used fine-contrast and tone curve adjustments to highlight the fabric's folds and shadows. I added drama to the background through t

"Trepassey"

The isolated coastal village of Trepassey, Newfoundland sits in the southeast corner of Canada's eastern-most province. The vantage point of this photograph makes for a classic Newfoundland scene: a sliver of human settlement poised between sky and sea. Ethereal, other-worldly: I wanted to capture that feeling. Because I had pointed my camera slightly upward to get more sky in the frame, I had to correct the resulting perspective distortion - notice in the "before" image how the lines of reflected light closest to the sides of the image are twisted away from the center. I fixed the color temperature to eliminate the strong bluish cast. I corrected the vignetting - notice how the "before" image is significantly darker at all four edges. I cropped from the bottom of the image to bring the bottom border closer to edge of the reflected lights. How do you convey "ethereal"? For me the key elements were delicacy, l ightness, and a sense of &qu

"Rodeo"

While travelling in Oklahoma in 2014 I stumbled upon a rodeo in the town of Chandler. This photograph of a young cowboy wrestling a steer was one of my favorites. I cropped the image to make the cowboy and steer more prominent and create a more intense feeling of movement. The cowboy and steer are more off-center in the AFTER image and the diagonal line extending from the puff of dust through the cowboy's extended leg and torso draw the eye nicely from lower left to upper right. And the AFTER image has a stronger tension between that same line and the opposing diagonal line formed by the steer's tail and backbone. I adjusted the color temperature to remove the yellowish cast. I made fine-contrast and tone curve adjustments to create more separation between the background, the cowboy/steer and the cloud of dust.

The After-image

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