Raw Transcript
our next image is a little bit different it’s a remote flash photo so let’s have a quick look at the stats it’s got a higher ISO than we’ve seen before so if ISO 1600 I might well introduce a bit of noise so we’ll look at that in a minute it’s got a 91 mil f/4 1 250th of a second so shutter speed here is significantly slower than I would recommend for shooting action but because it’s a flash that’s actually the the fastest shutter speed you can use with a standard flash a speed light and to sync to make sure that you’re synchronized with it there are there are other options for high-speed flash we have different hardware and things but I haven’t experimented with those this is my bog standard DIY remote flash kit that I knocked up so although it’s 1/250 of a second and if this was shot using natural light then you wouldn’t see these these this crisp fan of spray the actions frozen like that because the light from the flash is such a short duration and as you can see everything else is so dark that if you shot if the flash didn’t go off and you shot with these settings then you wouldn’t really see much at all you’d be seeing this kind of background but this small areas lit up at for just a fraction of the 250th of a second and that means it’s frozen so as it’s this special type of photo and what I want to do first is kind of crop in I want to fill the frame with my my nice image a little tip here if you if you hold down shift while you drag the corner then it maintains your aspect ratio so let’s go crop in quite a bit tighter but I want to keep that whole fan of spray so let’s try that okay that’s quite cool you see all the detail on the spray in that case let’s try hitting water white balance mmm it’s got a bit Brown it don’t think I like that okay it’s an even try moving it more towards blue I think I quite like that what I want is this it’s quite quite I want the contrast between the white and and the dark in the background blues helped there he’s also got blue suits now that’s quite a nice he’s the skin border by the way so this he’s skimmed out into the short break and done that turn so it doesn’t look like a natural kind of surfing cut back because he’s always kind of wrapping into the into the oncoming wave rather than riding along it so that’s experiment a little bit with picking your plate no I don’t like that because it’s brought up the background and I really want to separate this flash scene from this background so I’m gonna patrol Zed and what I’ll probably do up the contrast do you see how that’s separating us even more from the background and then I will I might my lights I think are fine I’m your eyes always drawn to like the the brightest part of an image so I want that to be this fan of spray basically this is quite off-putting in this graph thing so I’ll show you how I’m gonna deal with that in a moment but for now I want to kind of drop down you see this little bit white will do I’m making sure that goes down your histogram in this case it’s you don’t really want to see that like bell curve shape because I’m this is an extreme style of photo and I really want to have the real extremes of exposure in there so that’s fine I’m not I’m not paying much attention to at all and I’m just making sure that that’s bit sphere I’m just making sure that I’ve isolated this this thing I do want enough enough going on here so that you can tell it’s a wave so I think that’s about right I will see can’t be so easy to ever do so I’m going to back that right off so one thing I said was the ISO 1600 can introduce some noise so I show you if you look here carefully there’s some kind of bluey kind of tint to some of this spray and you might see some pinky tint as well and that’s from there that’s from the not the color noise that’s introduced by the sensor upon a higher ISO so if I for instance if I take it automatically applies some reduction to the color if I take that down straight away you can see these little specks if like pink and turquoise and it just looks distracting if you look at if you’re looking it like this and don’t really see it much but you can see it straight away so I’m gonna I’m gonna take it beyond what it’s set it to originally there you go I think that’s bit that I can’t see as much of that color noise so I’m gonna go right up it you don’t really have to be too careful with with the color noise reduction I find I’ll show you the the kind of luminance noise reduction which is which is kind of the main one which will really affect the look of the photo so let’s try it look flush do this when crank that up for instance straight away it looks almost like a like a strange painting filter it looks like like a plastic resin sculpture or something let’s get rid of that you do you might want to list a bit of it and you can also apply this selectively so let’s let’s be honest I don’t I wouldn’t bother applying it in this case because it’s really obviously the dark image and I quite like the little bit of grain that is introduced and so let’s just deal with this bright area here because it’s on the left-hand side of the image your eye comes in from the left it’s bright it’s quite distracting and it it it takes away from this nice fan of spray in this area as well so I think I’m going to try with this adjustment brush I can just basically I can paint so this is a lower exposure I’m going to do there you go about 3/4 of a stop exposure so if I should paint this onto the image where I want it to be darker that’s fine I can to you that fit as well and that’s just making sure click there that shows you where I’ve masked so that might be here to get you so I’m gonna do this bit as well also not I’m not actually trying to color it in red I’m just reducing the exposure in those areas but that’s just to make sure I’ve covered everything I want to cover let me do this day as well and if I set that off so then I can play with changing the adjust the exposure just those areas straight away you can see this bit I’m not paying attention to at all and because of it this is such an extreme example of a contrast a shot with the flash I don’t think it looks too unnatural to have it even kind of more than a stop darker than than the rest of the image and because like because for all the viewer knows the flash is aimed really specifically at this area it wasn’t of course we know that because it because we’ve just adjusted it but that I think gives us gives us a makes it more likely that the person who’s looking at this image they might they’re gonna look at this bit and pay more attention to this bit and not be just as distracted by this bit but I think I might just do another one I might just drop it a little bit more one nadir is yeah I think try and get this balance right because I know when it’s be totally unrealistic at the same time like I say I don’t think there’s much reason to hold back on this particular shock there you go that’s a bit better I think I think that’s quite cool so there you go that was um obviously this type of shot is pretty extreme and not usual anyway but I think that gives you a good idea of the some of the things you can do in Lightroom to direct people to look at the thing that you want them to and and I’m I don’t think I’m being kind of dishonest in showing in that light that’s how I saw it at the time through my viewfinder for a fraction of a second and and I think thing that yeah people will understand if if they saw the original they wouldn’t be shocked having seen this one it’s not like I’m replacing bits of the image or anything but I do I think directing people’s attention to the bit you want to see is what you’re doing all the time with things like aperture by blurring out the bits you don’t want them to look at and to a certain extent shutter speed if you’re if you’re panning for instance things like that so it’s just a kind of extra trick you’ve got and in our case we’re doing it digitally in a non-destructive environment so we can really go nuts and if I decide next week I didn’t like that then I can just come back here and I can save a preset and oops don’t import preset so I want to you great preset now I can do like land run light flash and if I think then I can you know reapply that – mine – another shot in the sequence and then I can not do this it’s adjustment brush here and things like that so there you go that’s a slightly more creative edit of a of a surf photo