I love taking photographs, but I have come to realize I dislike editing photographs. Cropping and adjusting levels trying to make them perfect. I just don't find that part fun. If the straight out of the camera shot isn't good enough (and they seldom are even for very seasoned photographers) I just don't play with it.
So in an effort to change this I set myself a one week challenge. Just one week nothing too ambitious, of picking a photo out of my archives, editing it and posting the before and after shots here on my blog. My thinking is perhaps if I could see a weeks worth of posts with the edited photos it will inspire me to keep editing my photos.
So here are today's before and after shots.
Before:
After:
I love taking photos of flowers with my macro lens. I never know what I will end up with as the lens doesn't always want to focus on what I want to focus on. This one turned out okay in that respect but to me the original is a little dark and dull. I wanted to soften the effect and lighten the overall effect.
I started by cropping the photo a little, I did a slight levels adjustment and then added three layers of texture using different blending modes in Photoshop Elements. I am a lot happier with the after shot however looking at it now I see that I would like to go back in and bring out a bit more of the green from the middle of the flowers, and really that's the goal of this little challenge. To allow myself to see what I am missing by not editing.
