Editing, post processing, it all means the same. A lot of time in front of computer, and in some cases it can be a very taxing experience for the photographer. I truly believe that all photographers are perfectionists hence the reason that we edit, or post process which ever term you prefer to use. I also believe that we seek the approval of others above all else, other wise I am not sure there would be all the photography groups on Facebook. I say all this to say, that over the last few weeks I have learned quite a bit in this area.
In my last post Wrestling Team Photos, and what I learned I talked about what I learned while actually shooting for the high school wrestling team. Now I am home, and all the mistakes are so much more noticeable as I am trying to edit and make these the best photos that these kids have ever had. With this in mind I thought that I would share a few more things that I have learned, and things to watch for.
1. Lighting.
We all know that lighting is key. With this shoot I struggled much more than I thought with this. I used an on camera flash for the individual shots, and thought that bouncing the light would be enough. I have realized now that this actually did not work at all. I was holding the camera in the portrait orientation and so the light was not bouncing the way that I had anticipated for one and created some shadowing that I was not prepared for. Another issue is the lighting of the room. There were different types of light bulbs in each of the light fixtures. I thought that we were far enough away from the tungsten lighting to not cause an issue, however I am still having to make adjustments in post because you can see that the players are to "warm" due to the lighting.
2. Background.
Sometimes there is just nothing that you can do about the background, and this is the situation that I was in. This is what I had to work with:
Not that great right? Let me tell you it was horrible. What you can't see is that there are columns on either side of the frame, so there was not alot of room to move these kids from left to right so that the V could be seen. It was a nightmare once I got in front of the computer. So I decided that I would build my own. This took some time and some work in Photoshop but I built a background. I know this sounds like a lot of work but believe it or not it was not that bad. I will write a separate post about how I built the background in case you chose to do the same. Just keep in mind all backgrounds are different and in Photoshop I may show you how to do it one way, but I can promise there are 10 different ways to do it.
3. Player Posing.
During the session I made the sad mistake of trusting someone else to pose each of the players purely because I had never shot or seen wrestling photos done before, so the parents wanted to go with the "poses we have always done". I was OK with this because it was going to be a learning experience for me and that was the part that counted. So I was up to the challenge. However now that I am in post I realize that I should have taken some control of the posing. I said before there was some shadowing that I was not anticipating and it was not just on the wall. The way that the students held their hands or positioned their heads or feet caused shadows to fall on their faces and body that I was not prepared for. Now that I am in post production I am having to find ways to get rid of or hide them.
As you can see in this photo right from the beginning there is shadowing behind the player, and if you look closely there is also shadowing on his leg from the way that his hand is positioned. Another area with shadowing is the player's left side of the face. It is not much, but it is enough to cause me great concern. So the question becomes how to fix the problem. Part of the issue is corrected with the creation of the background that I discussed just moments ago. That corrects the shadowing behind the player, but does not correct the shadowing on the player. There are several ways that this can be done. In regards to the shadowing on the face I will use a brush in light room and brush in some light. This will hopefully eliminate the shadow on the face and give it even tone, if not I have a brush that is to even out the tones and lighting of the skin that I purchased from Pretty Pretty Presets. The shadowing on the leg created from the position of the hands I will use the content aware and fill tool in Photoshop as I feel this will be more effective in this area than trying to brush light in as I did on the face.
As I said before there are hundreds of ways to do things in Photoshop. How would you correct the second photo?
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