Learning session

For me, one of the most difficult things to do is shoot good night images.  I went to Peoria, IL for a CLE seminar on Thursday and the hotel was on the river.  So, I thought I would give it another try.  Of course, most of the images sucked and just didn't turn out how I wanted at all.  I ended up frustrated.  I've since learned that I had the fstop wide open and that was the problem.  I should have stopped it WAY down and then I could have controlled the lighting issues that I was having.  Now I know....I'll write that note down in my notebook.  Hopefully, next time I'll do better!  Here's the result anyway after some creative editing in LR.

With this first one, I just sharpened everything:

With this second one, I cooled down the entire image a lot and sharpened the images.  The biggest issue I was having with this image is that I have these crazy light reflections in the sky.  I spent a great deal of time correcting those spots and removing them from the image.  I was able to remove them from the first one and the third one without so much trouble.  But, this second one really gave me problems.  I'm sure it was because I cooled it down so much and really worked on sharpening everything with high contrast.  Live and learn....that's what this is all about.

This last image I put a rosey hue on it.  I think this one is my favorite and what I feel is the most acceptable of the images.

This image was a real pain in the ass and I probably shouldn't even include it.  The left side of the image is more blurred and you can tell that it was windy outside.  Again, I should have had the shutter open to f16 or somewhere around there and then let the shutter open for 30 seconds in order to have this turn out better.  But, it's all about learning.

This image is from the next morning.  It was a cloudy, rainy, grey day.  It was pretty difficult to find any kind of character in the images.

Like I said, it was a grey day.  I think this edit of the image relays the true feeling of what that morning was like.

This is just playing with different editing--this is a matte finish with some vignetting.

This is a more artsy edit adding this overall blue hue to it.  Just for fun.

I wish my friend, Tina, would have been with me correcting my mistakes as I was shooting.  But, I was able to consult with her later and find out what I did wrong.  Now, I just need to get out and practice some more!  I can say that I really prefer to get the images damn near perfect in camera because editing is just not a lot of fun for me.  When I had a black and white darkroom, I loved developing my film.  However, this is different and not nearly as much fun.