RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Very nice.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Nice composition. Did you do any PP? The colors feel a little washed out. Almost like a old faded photograph that was scanned in.

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

It was a dull day which contributed to that effect. Here is the original SOOC - I did a bit of pp to bring out details in the harvester.

(Download)

frjack Loc: Boston, MA

Beautiful shot with a strong narrative.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

This is a nicely composed image of interest with good composition. I do think, however, that you can "get more" out of this image. I agree with dsmeltzs when he said it seemed "washed out" to some degree. I am assuming you used the jpeg option to shoot this as you indicated the "SOOC" thing, which really nothing is ever that in reality with digital, it just means you let the camera make all the decision for you. It would be nice if we all included a tiny bit of background information for people who do want to comment. Did you try to take down the luminance in the sky a bit? This will sometimes help to darken the blue color. The colors also seem almost off to some degree, maybe the browns are a bit dark and could use an exposure uplift to accent them and lead the eye to the equipment and hay stacks, which are very interesting in their arrangement. If the grass was darker that also would help lead the eye to a lighter brown if that could be accomplished. The image seems to be only in one tone, a mid-tone range, and by. lightening and darkening as appropriate you can lead the viewer where you want them to go and create more tones in the image. I do think this image has the makings of a wonderful photograph with a little work.

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

Thanks for your criticism - I must admit that although I use Lightroom, I don't yet have expertise in the finer aspects of it and am totally ignorant when it comes to Photo Shop - a situation I'm hoping to remedy during this winter's down time. This picture is a favorite from a couple summers ago and it really deserves some serious tweaking once I learn the skills.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Use the brush tool in LR and set the brush flow about 1/3 into the slider, this allows you to make multiple smaller corrections as needed. Set exposure around .5. It's kind of a "dance," if you will, between your slider setting and your brush settings. Put the brush feather tool about midway or even a little more to the right. Experiment with this. You can also mask but the tones but the tones in this image are so similar that I don't think that would be the right approach. A very nice image overall. I like the Martin Evening book for learning LR.

Charles P Loc: Southern Central NY State

Hi Sue. I love the composition of this image. I downloaded it and tweaked it a little with Darktable. With your permission, I will post the result here. It would be better if I had the Raw file, but I think it is a bit improved. I'm sure that you could do something as good or better with Lightroom. You made a very nice capture back then.

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

Thanks - I would love to see what you were able to do with this. I just played around a bit in LR and think it made some improvement although there wasn't much that could be done with the featureless grey sky. Here are the before and after images. My biggest problem is trying to bring up detail in the equipment by reducing shadows without losing it in the field and the foreground grass. I really need to learn how to do more than just basic tweaks!

(Download)


(Download)

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

Ahhh … I think I better get the book you recommended - I have no idea how to use any of the things you mentioned!

Charles P Loc: Southern Central NY State

Okay Sue. I'm not great at PP myself, and I'm still learning too.

(Download)

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

This is really turning into a project!! I like how your PP intensified the colors of the field but the harvesting machine is still lacking in definition and the sky is too blue, especially since it was originally grey. I did another tweak using a preset as a base and found that it brought out more detail on the machine and gave a slight bit of character to that blah grey sky. Of course, the easy out of this problem was to simply convert to sepia which gives the image an authentic old timey feel!

(Download)


(Download)

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

There is a lot of interest for me with the sepia toned, except that it ends up in a narrow tonal range, same as the original.

I did a couple of quick selective tweaks with an online app I use with my Chromebook. Just to give you some ideas, and including cropping out most of the sky

If you have the patience, you can lighten around the farm implement carefully and darken + sharpen it selectively to bring out more details.

(Download)

Yours

SueScott Loc: Hammondsville, Ohio

I never thought to crop out some of the sky - it certainly solves some of that problem!

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Well I personally couldn't live with telephone wires and "old timey" in same sentence