Firefighter Buddy Rock Climbing

[superduperwesman]

Firefighter buddy is on the high angle rope rescue team and likes to climb in his spare time. So my wife and I went with him and his wife. I personally like this edit. Not sure how everyone else feels. Essentially the same editing Technic as I did here: High Contrast Black and White

Before:


After:


Let me know what you think. Always looking to improve.

Would a tighter crop to eliminate the lens flare and backpack be better?

[easyrider]

Nope, it's good just the way it is. Nice shot.

[dalcubierre]

I think you did a great job... congrats

[nickbedford]

Honest review? I think the clarity (or unsharp mask effect) is too high. It's a bit glary and it's harder to see the rock wall because of it.

Also, because of the effects used, you're getting colours you might not have intended, lots of blues and the tree's shadow doesn't look real.

I don't think the actual look of the image needs to change. Instead increase the brightness of the two climbers (using marquee selection), bringing them out of the darkness, use the clone tool or a healing tool to try and get rid of that nasty lens flare down the bottom.

Do a much more subtle unsharp mask because the image isn't in dire need of sharpening.

You might even want to use a gradient filter from the top right corner inward to darken that tree up in the corner and take focus away from it.

That's what I would do anyhow

[superduperwesman]

Yeah I did bump the clarity so I'll try it lower

Not sure how I introduced more blue... I'll have to see.. where would this have come from?

Prob just crop the lens flare out?

I'll try the gradient as well

[easyrider]

Yea, the clarity could probably go down just a little bit, it's a pretty sharp image to begin with. However, don't worry about the lens flare unless YOU don't like it. You can't really rely on what other peoples view of your images are. You have to build your style and find what you do and don't like. Yes, a little critique and criticism is good because everyone needs to learn the right technical areas of photography (exposure, etc.). When it comes to having lens flare, or rotating an image a little, or saturating an image, that comes down to personal preference and your style.

You'll want to be careful when you use marquee for adjusting an image, because when you do that you risk it not looking "real". Your shot looks real right now, heavily processed, but still pretty real. If you just highlight them, and then bring their brightness up, they will look bright, but they are standing/climbing in a shadow, so unless you make it look like they were light by off camera lighting (which is going to be pretty difficult) you should try to stay away from using any sort of selection. You can adjust it a little using either fill light (Lightroom) or curves (Photoshop).

[superduperwesman]

Yeah I tried making some of the adjustments suggested and I think I may light it better before?