Editing Your Photos, Vol. 1

October 14, 2019

Alright - I’m going to try something new today! I’ve only ever featured my own photos on this site and on my Instagram feed, but the other day my cousin Kevin sent me a photo he took during a recent trip to Italy, and asked if I wouldn’t mind doing a quick edit for him. I thought it would be fun, and it was! Here’s the original photo from Kevin:

Positano, Italy

Right off the bat, I really liked this photo. There wasn’t very much I wanted to change! The fact that it was sort of overcast on this day gave the photo nice even light distribution. I love the unique and colorful tenements perched on the hillside, and how the lines of blue chairs on the beach draw the eye towards the middle of the frame. The mountain juts up and out of the earth, extending towards the sky, and… uh oh. Now we’ve found our problem. Or at least I’ve found MY problem with this photo: that big, bright hole in an otherwise beautifully textured sky.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that photography is subjective. Give this photo to two or three other photographers, and we’ll most likely all produce different finished products. My way is not necessarily “right” or “wrong”, it’s more about what appeals to me and what I think looks good.

For this edit, I started with some very minor adjustments to balance the highlights with the shadows, and added a bit more color to make the oranges, greens, and blues stand out a bit more. The photo was starting to look better overall, but the hole in the sky was actually starting to look worse!

 So, what to do? When Kevin first reached out to me to work on this photo, I figured I’d just give it a quick little tweak and shoot it back to him, but after putting a certain amount of effort into making it look good, I decided I needed to bring it all the way home and just fill in that hole in the sky. I brought it into Photoshop, and with the clever use of the patch and clone stamp tools, managed to come up with something infinitely better!

 Kevin’s photo, colors adjusted, and big hole Photoshop’d out.

Overall, I think this turned out great. It’s kind of straddling the line between real and fake, which I think is a good place to be. The clouds and colors look like something nearly out of a storybook, but maybe someone just took this photo around sunset with some heavy clouds starting to roll in.

A fun little exercise - would do it again! If you liked seeing this process and want me to do more, shoot over some photos and we’ll see what I can cook up!