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Editing: Aerial Abstraction

So let's dive into these inspire shots. Now we are out in the field focusing in on that mountain peak, trying to isolate it against the bright background and the distant glacier that was massively dominating the scene. But with that 50 millimeter lens, we were trying to scope in and see if we could get some nice compression and really just separate that mountain peak from the rest upon reviewing the shots and looking at the alternate angles that we were covering out in the field. It seems that I wasn't able to really capture the full impact of that, that scene. So even with my trial edit I'm just not too happy with the outcome. So then I've been working on a few of the others. So I have the, the glacier scene that we're looking at trying to centralize that kind of ice cave that was coming down and then looking at the river as we turn the drone around. And this is quite a cool moment cause I just completely forgot like to turn 360 and check out the whole surroundings highly recommend to...

just kind of scope out the area when you are doing your drone work. And we are able to get the shot of the river really stoked with it. But when we were leaving the area I thought I just wanted to get a wider view. So I sent the Maverick up. We didn't film it, but it was just like a a security measure just to get that alternative angle. And I've talked about this a lot in the field. That's cool to get just alternative kind of perspectives on on the scene. So, you know, changing your lenses SI cycling through your wide through to your Teleo so that you get home and you think, all right I have multiple shots to choose from. Let's find the one that has the most impact. And in this case, we're dealing with the Maverick shot. So we have this beautiful top down bird eye perspective over one of the rivers. It just has some cool lines in it. I don't know, just some of these images, they are simple really easy to capture but they just showcase kind of the beauty of the winter. This image for me is about balancing the white and we're gonna dive into the edit see what we can do with this. Let's go backtrack. There's our original can see right off the bat. We've got some really blue hour light coming in kind of infiltrating the snow. So our job is quite simple. We just want to get rid of that, bring the white back try and preserve some of the detail in the river itself. As we kind of begin to edit this we're gonna lose that detail. So we're gonna have to bring it back. So as always, I'm gonna start by just working on the white balance. We can even try the drop a tool in this case and just kind of click on an area and it's going to balance. If you look at the histogram the top, right you can see the three numbers we have now, after clicking on that specific area of snow, we have 89, 90 and 89.8. So it's trying to equalize those three values in the area that you click. And this is how I would try and analyze my whites. In most cases, I really like a bluish tone or bluish hue on my whites. So I'm looking to get that that blue figure a little higher than the other two. And that's what we're gonna do. So I'm gonna backtrack a little bit on this white balance preserve some of the blue, but not all of it. And then I'm gonna begin to yet. So I'm gonna brighten get the white to I would say somewhere around like the 96, 97% kind of mark, we can use a balance of exposure and the tone curve as well to get to that point. But the key thing is we don't wanna lose too much detail. We don't want to completely blow out the image and we can kind of keep an eye on the highlights of the tone curve at the top to make sure we're not hitting the end. And if I bring the exposure up you can see when, when we do, then we lose it completely. So we just bring that back keep some of those details there. Just bring the contrast now through the tone curve and here's where we're gonna lose some detail in the river. It's not a big issue. I feel like the easiest solution is to actually brush that detail back in. And actually the, the water is kind of muddy. I think there was, there's been a little bit of flooding and it's sending a lot of silt down, a lot of this melt water from the glacier and it is quite muddy. So I'm gonna try and rectify that with a little brush of of this blue color over the top. I can even try in the hue of the HSL to preserve that but it's also gonna affect the white. So we have to be really careful to balance this one just playing with color for a minute. See what I can do with the shadow slider. If I bring that up bring this down the exposure, check the values. Okay. We've we've got kind of a good start point for the whites now, and I don't want to go too far with it but I'm gonna continue to push the contrast a little bit try and bring back some of the detail with the highlight slider. This should leave the overall brightness quite similar. So we're still, we're still dealing with this 96% blue on the, on the exposure level which is a good place to be for me but we have this really hideous color in the ice. Now I'm trying to think of some solutions to that. And I think one of the easiest, I'm just start by brushing over the river and adding a little bit of a blue hue to the muddy water and get rid of this strange green that I'm seeing. I'm just checking the mask. I've got the flow quite down, but the density is high. So the more I kind of paint over the deeper and more intense or the higher the opacity of what I'm actually doing. That's good, no need to be overly precise in this point. And I don't mind that I've gone over the snow because it shouldn't be too noticeable if I make that area more, more blue. Now I'm just pushing that white balance to kind of scope out what this is gonna do. I'm seeing that I'm going to have to be slightly more precise on this one because the edges are staying this kind of strange green color. So I'm just gonna go over the edge. See what it does. Okay. Still a little bit weird. So what I'm gonna try now new method gonna create a range mask on this. So I'm going to go by luminance again just select over the dark area of the river, hold down. Oh, to check. And, and then I'm seeing now that it's really worked quite well and it's not going over the edges and falling into the snow areas. So mission accomplished with this this range mask in Lightroom is great. It's really useful. Can even bring it down more and it will further limit the edges of the brush. Just makes it so much faster with the range mask. Okay. Pretty happy with that selection. I'm gonna actually go for it. Add a little magenta to this and it's gonna count to that green color. There's a few areas I know I'm gonna have to make further adjustments to the color. I'm gonna go ahead and do that now. So I'm just gonna select new brush. I'm gonna bring the flow up in this one and be a little bit more intrusive intense on that area, but that's fine. I'm going to go over any area that carries this strange muddy color. Like, so, and then what's quite cool is we can actually use this range mask again, but on the color function. And we can drop over the area with that specific color and it's gonna isolate the brush that can even make the amount less. And then it's going to really bring it in. You can hold shift and add points. If you have extra area that you want to cover. And if there's some areas that you don't want to include you can then put the dropper back and hold option down to a raise around the edges. We're getting somewhere now it's kind of a slow slow process getting rid of this muddy color but it's so worth it. So detail that a lot of people actually might miss as well. But well, that, that didn't work. Maybe even just desat trading it. Gotta try a few things here to get it to work. I think I've just here we go. That is better. We don't want it to be obvious. We want it to be natural. Okay. Back to the other brush and adding a little bit more tint to it. Gonna try one other technique because I'm still finding the strange color here. If I go into the shadows of the split toning and I try and apply a slight amount of blue, then it's going to counter the existing color in the water and override the entire section. So now we're getting this quite intense Blue color and it's overriding the brush that I did earlier. So I'm just gonna go in and take some of that away. But I think we're getting pretty much closer to having a neutral color now. So yeah, just some of those, some of those things require a little bit of extra effort, but it's really rewarding to step back and, and see what you've made. Just gonna try and remove some saturation. It's gonna affect again, the entire image, but that is okay. I think try a few radials to bring some extra blue to the middle, just because I'm still seeing again this strange muddiness, especially over here. I think I just, I like radios because, because they're you can put the feather up so much and you really can't notice that they're being used. They're just a very subtle way to let this reset. There we go. Get it to balance just like that. Now I'm going to do some final touches on the whites, these that trait slightly, it's almost a black and white photo but I think that's pretty cool. Work on the sharpening. Now, as I punch in, I'm just seeing that it could really use just a little bit of enhancement around the edges of the river. Just gonna punch in with the masking tool Again, looking for that chalky consistency and trying to get rid of that. And as I zoom in I'm also notice noticing a couple of last muddy areas. I swear, this is the mitigating mud. We should title this one. Yeah. All right. Now I'm just gonna scan over the image. I'm gonna assess the whites and I'm seeing that there's a slight vignette on this image. So we can approach this a few ways. One way is to try with the profile corrections which are a simple click to get to access. I'm gonna select DJA and Mavik pro. I'm gonna go before and after to see how it's affected it. And you know, it's okay to do this manually. In fact, this, this has not sufficiently repaired the things that I'm seeing. So I'm going to go in and do that myself via the manual vignette slider. I'm just gonna brighten the edges a little bit and you can do this manually. You can do this with graduated filters. This is of course the quickest solution and quite an easy one. And just to balance one last thing with this mud I hope everyone's seeing what I'm seeing. I'm not going crazy, but as I said, many times during the the field shoots that just like, you know finding these unique perspectives and applying a little bit of attention to detail is so worth it in in the long run can really, you know, separate you from from other people that are shooting in similar areas. Okay. I think we've reached the point now where we can't really get stray too much further because the whites are pretty even the, the darks, the the shadowed areas in the river itself were getting now a nice balance of blue. Just adding a highlight, split tone. Now, just to see if I can make some subtle kind of blue, I guess, overall appearance to the shot cuz it was looking like very much like a black and white Small adjustments back at the top, looking at the before and after. Now we have it. It's quite cool. This one, I could even bring the fade in which of course I would, if I was editing for social media but then it's gonna mute the blacks. So I might even have to bring in a little more of the blue. Dealing with now 96, 94, pretty happy with this and there we have it. I think that this is one of those ones that I would definitely come back to when I've placed it in a grid format. And I'm looking at the whites of the skies in other photos and maybe I would decide, oh it's it just needs a little bit more blue a little bit less blue to really fit into the overall theme. So for now I've set this image up for a really easy just quick process, whether it's on my phone or on the computer in the, in the long run this one is pretty much done. So final takeaways of this image. We really have to do quite a lot of fine tweaks to get the whites perfect. And also countering with small adjustments in the shadows to make the overall appearance very balanced. We've gone for this subtle blue theme with this but we wanna retain the the overall kind of monochromatic effect that the image has just because it's in the middle of winter and the water is naturally quite dark. So by doing that we have this kind of just even neutral image very good for putting into the grid format and balancing against more intense images that have maybe a lot of blue or a lot of orange, depending on what, what you're shooting. It's just, it's a good good feeler image and has still a lot of impact and things that you can explain. Maybe people don't understand what it is creates that talking point. And it's just really valuable to have as part of your greater story.