quizas Loc: Seattle, WA

I took this a few years ago. Our guide knew a son of the chief of this Masai village and brought us over at the time of a feast celebrating the coming into manhood of a group of boys. I loved the color and the interactions of the tribesmen and caught this photo. The first is the original; the second is my cropping. Photo was taken with a Canon D10 P&S and I am clueless about processing other than cropping.

original

(Download)

my cropping

(Download)

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I think you've come-in a bit too tight. Try returning to the original and grab the lower left corner and raise the bottom margin until it just above the stick (?) between the legs of the man in purple. Then, grab the upper left corner and drag in until the top margin is just above the leaves of the tree. If your tool has 1/3 guides, bring the top margin down until the left 1/3 guide passes through the right eye (our view) of the man with the knife (the eye closer to the hand with the ring). The goal is to remove the excess of blank space on the top and left of the image while keeping more of the scene / background as compared to your crop.

On processing, you can being the highlights down to obtain more separation of the clouds from the sky. Raising the shadows will reveal more of face of the man with knife. You could also lower the yellow of the daylight. A tool that supports the following adjustments (from Lightroom for me), try:

Temp - 6
Tint -5
Contrast +7
Highlights -36
Shadows +15
Whites +11
Blacks -26

Other tools should allow the same adjustments, maybe on a different scale. These numbers range -100 to +100, so just move your tool's sliders to the + or - of the zero point by the same magnitude.

quizas Loc: Seattle, WA

Thank you! The cropping you suggested helped with what I saw as a 'top heavy' photo. I am pretty new at doing more than taking snapshots and hoping for the best. I will work on the processing. I do not have a processing program other than the one that is part of Photos on the mac. I do have the most recent version but have not yet learned how to use it other than to lighten/darken or move the line on color. I will learn what I can do with Photos before advancing to another program. I appreciate your input very much.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Glad to help. The other edit ideas come from a mixture of experience and 'auto' guidance from Lightroom (or similar programs). I haven't used Photos, but I'd expect it offers updates to the White Balance and overall contrast, at a minimum. If you can swap between before and after versions of an image, it helps you to see where 'auto' updates have occurred. My experience is most editing software will take a good idea too far and you'll get a feel for how much to back-off the proposed changes. There's a dedicated section for Post Processing where you can get more help, if needed.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

I think you have highlighted the reason you took the picture. Looks good.

Harvey Loc: Pioneer, CA

Great image to start with - I personally cropped rather conservatively - left some sky & clouds, did not crop any of the green bush, cropped close to the man's arm/elbow - not cutting into it, cropped just at the waist of the men - I used shadow/highlights to bring the features of the men's faces out of the darkness- NOW LOL if this was my photo I would have cloned out that modern wrist watch in that fellows right hand.
Harvey

quizas Loc: Seattle, WA

Thanks for your input.

quizas Loc: Seattle, WA

quizas Loc: Seattle, WA

Sent one before I wrote anything. THanks for the input. I did as you suggested and like that crop with the added lightness (I only have Photos from Mac) to bring out features of faces. As for the watch, well, they all had cellphones, which surprised me as they live rather primitively otherwise in mud and dung huts, sometimes with baby goats or lambs inside to protect them. Very interesting experience for me.