Shanghai Street #3, 08/2007
I took this picture down an alley in Shanghai last August. I can’t remember exactly where, but I know it was not far from Tian Zi Fang Art Precinct (or Taikang Lu). It just so happened that I was walking past this lane, and I saw an orange umbrella coming down it. It caught the light… I waited, and without trying to be too obtrusive, took the photo. I quite like lanes and urban landscapes, but having the mother and daughter in shot (complete with Mickey Mouse t-shirt), pretty much summarised my impression of Shanghai.
The point of this post, however, is how I came to this particular finish. The photo, or more precisely the photo’s colour, seems to polarise opinion. Is it good or bad? It doesn’t really matter. But I have had comments from people who love it, and one particularly strong opinion – and I’ll paraphrase – that it is an over-processed, painted-up, manipulated heap of crap (thanks Carl). I was accused of spending hours labouring over masks, touch-ups and other details to make the thing look like it does.
I wish I was that fastidious. Rather, I spent about 10 minutes in Adobe Lightroom making adjustments (as illustrated below).
This is the original Canon RAW file. I took the photo with a
EF-S 10-22mm on a
Canon 20D. I underexposed about -1ev to try and keep the sky (seeing as I was almost shooting into the sun).
[1][2][3] Exposure was 1/400 at f/13, ISO 400. As it turns out, I was able to get a fair bit of detail out of the highlights in the end…
I don’t really have any set work pattern for
Lightroom. I just sort of start at the top and work my way down. I do, however, have an idea of what I want to do to a shot. So maybe that helps. My idea was to go for something that looked quite polarised and pop-ish. It was Shanghai, after all.
I didn’t change the Colour Temp or Tint. I pushed up the exposure +1.15 stops to compensate for the under-exposure when I shot it. I usually underexpose digital stills to eek out a little more highlight detail. I’m sure there are those that would say this introduces more noise (it does), but it hasn’t really worried me so far.
The highlight recovery and shadow/fill sliders get a workout in this shot. I jammed them on full. Then I clamped the blacks to bring back some black.
I tweaked the contrast somewhat to get more definition. Then I turned down the saturation, which went a bit wild with the contrast. Give and take.
I love curves. They make it so easy to make changes to and image, in a simple, tactile way. A curve with a histogram display behind it is even better (Aperture 2.0 lacks this function, which is a great shame).
A lot of what is happening in the tone curve has been affected by my previous decisions, but I have a fiddle here anyway, because it makes me look more pro.
The colour panels are fun too. Well, the key colour in this shot is orange (the umbrella). I don’t really want to make it brighter, but I do want to make it pop. So I turn it to 11.
To stop the whole shot being absolute eyeball terror, I pull down orange’s neighbours–red, purple, and magenta. I boost yellow to look after the highlights in orange. I fiddle with the other colours a bit, but probably not to any great effect.
On the luminance side, because I am trying to fake a bit of a polarised look, I pulled the blue luminance way down.
To warm the highlights up, I used the Split Toning panel. This is where all the tungsten colour gets added to the bricks and slightly forces the clouds towards the opposite part of the spectrum to the blue sky.
Then, to take away the sickening orange-wash over everything, I bring blue into the
shadows. You can see this working prominently behind the legs of the girls.
Finally, I add a little vignette, which makes a $1000 lens about as good as a $100 one, but pulls the sky down a bit and frames the girls better.
And that’s it. The ten minute Adobe Lightroom “Develop” process.
And the good thing is, when you already have set a look. You can save it and use it on a bunch of others. Which is about a two second Develop process.
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