Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

Here lately, while I’m waiting for the fall colors to really get going in Wisconsin, I’ve been going through some of my old images from the Eastern Sierra. Mostly images from the fall of 2005. I shot a lot of photos in Sept. and Oct. of ’05 and I remember being disappointed in many of them at that time. Looking at them now, four years later, I’m finding that I really like many of these images.

What I’m seeing are images that were composed nicely, but have some exposure and color issues. I’m sure at the time I was disappointed in these images because of that. I knew Photoshop very well in 2005, but I wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable as I am today. Now I can fix exposure and colors issues without even thinking to much about it. Another big difference between now and ’05 is Adobe Lightroom. It wasn’t even out back then. I think it came out in 2006 if I’m not mistaken. Lightroom has now become my main tool in post processing. It gives me the ability to fix the white balance and exposure  issues that many of these images have just by moving a couple sliders.

This image of an Eastern Sierra aspen grove is a perfect example. The white balance was very blue on it and it was slightly underexposed. I shot this image as a JPG, not a RAW, but I was still able to fix the white balance and exposure in Lightroom. Just by adding yellow and magenta I warmed the picture up and with some contrast made it look as I first envisioned it.

It’s pretty awesome to go back through my files and find these types of hidden treasures. I’m finding that as I become more knowledgeable with Lightroom and Photoshop, I can save images that I thought were lost.  Sometimes I turn them into black and whites, and sometimes I’m able to make them look as I wanted them to look when I first shot them.

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