Sundays Are For Climbing

[Tri Danimal]

This past Sunday I went out climbing with my wife and a few friends. After the rocks chewed up my fingertips, I ran back to the car to get my camera and started taking pictures of the rest of the group enjoying thier climbing session. Take a look, please let me know where you think I can improve my shots. The tough part is being limited in composition by being bolted to the wall acros the valley (I should have gotten a photo of my safety setup, I will for sure next time).


Taking a short rest:
F10, 1/160s, ISO-100, 20mm


Left Foot High Step:
F10, 1/160s, ISO-100, 48mm


Exposed Slab:
F10, 1/160s, ISO-100, 18mm


Enjoying the Sharp End:
F10, 1/60s, ISO-100, 49mm


Trust your Rubber:
F10, 1/160s, ISO-100, 105mm


End of the Day:
F10, 5s, ISO-100, 19mm

[Manfred M]

Two technical issues strike me right away.

1. Your horizon line is not level; and

2. You have a yellow colour cast in the shot.




Both are noticeable in the first few shots where you show the distant horizon.

[Tri Danimal]

1. Your horizon line is not level

I noticed that as well. Ill need to learn how to adjust that in Lightroom, if it can be adjusted in LR.

2. You have a yellow color cast in the shot.

How did you correct for the color cast? I have the white balance set as "As Shot" and I think I used the "autotune" function for adjustments. Whenever I adjust them by hand it always looks kinda fake, see photo #2.

[Manfred M]

I don't use Lightroom (or it's twin, Adobe Camera Raw) for any of this work, so I'm not 100% certain that my first answer is correct. In the Develop Module there is a Transform tab and that has a lot of adjustments that let you move the image around. I suggest trying some of these to see which one works best for you.

The colour cast is far easier. The problem with the "as shot" or "Auto" white balance is that both can be fooled by certain types of images, especially if they have a lot of one colour or tone family. Here I would go to the "Temp" slider and move it toward the blue side a bit. Sometimes the Tint needs adjustment as well, but in this shot, I just went with the Temp.

[Geoff F]

In a couple of shots you have lost the tip from the tallest peak, which is a pity. I would prefer to see a slightly closer crop where the tip was deliberately missing rather than a slightly clipped tip. Also a little bit of colour/saturation tweaks as Manfred as mentioned.

Otherwise, these have worked well.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, 4 and 7 are the best of the group, although the sunset has a bit of flare and not a lot of detail in the foreground shadows.

[davidedric]

Adjusting the horizon in Lightroom is very easy.

You can go to Transform, but for an easy case like this, I'd just select Crop in the Basic section, and draw along the horizon .

Dave