Hello World

[Renee M]

Jumping in and looking to expand my photography. Here are a few photos I have taken. I am open to constructive criticism. One thing I am having trouble with is exporting from Lightroom. The clarity here is poor. Suggestions? These were taken with an Olympus EM1 Mark II.

My main focus here was feedback on composition and post processing decisions but I'm open to any advice or thoughts. Thank you

[Donald]

Hi Renee

Great to see you posting already. Can't help with the exportinmg from Lightroom issue, but there will be lots of folks who can.

Re your images - We can only see them as thumbnails attached to the post. More people will be inclined top reply if they can see them properly in the post. Have a read of this thread that this links to - https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/fo...faq_postimages. Hopefully it will help you be able to post inline.

[Rufus]

... One thing I am having trouble with is exporting from Lightroom. ...

Hello Renee and welcome to CiC. Are you having difficulty exporting from Lightroom in general or specifically in order to post to this site (for which Donald has helpfully included a link)?

[DanK]

If you are having difficulty exporting from Lightoom in general, then in the export dialog, make sure that quality is set in the high 80s (more than that just wastes space for showing the web), and set sharpening to "for screen" If that doesn't work, you'll have to describe what you are doing.

[Renee M]

Thank you Donald. That was helpful! I hope this looks better.

[Renee M]

Thank you Donald. That was helpful! I hope this looks better.
Rufus and Dan, I'm definitely still learning to use Lightroom! These are my first exported photos. I'm not sure what I did. I will try your suggestion. Thank you 😊

[Geoff F]

Regarding composition. With that particular scene the foreground buildings seem to have equal importance with the sky so I wonder about cropping either the bottom or top (possibly something like 5 x 4 ratio) so either the buildings or the sky become a dominant feature.

[rpcrowe]

Renee...

The buildings in your image seem a bit skewed and the implied horizon is a bit tilted. I suspect that this is from shooting with a wide focal length and having your camera tilted a bit when shooting.

I usually will correct tilted horizons (implied or actual) and skewed verticals as the very first step in my photo editing workflow.

I don't use light room. Instead, I open my images using Adobe Bridge and do the first corrections in Adobe Camera RAW. However, I believe that ACR reflects the capabilities of Lightroom.

I used the transform tool with a -15 vertical and a -1.2 rotation correction



With only a bit of cropping and no additional editing, the image looks like this: with the buildings straight again and the implied horizon level.

[Manfred M]

Agreed Geoff & Richard - my question would be are the sky and hill playing an important role in the composition and if they are not, why are they there?

Richard - I'd build on your correction and do a heavy crop of the top (plus a bit of dodging and burning)...

[xpatUSA]

I agree about cropping the top, Renée. Additionally, the blown clouds were a bit bright for my old eyes. So I cranked in some highlight compression which had the added benefit of making the clouds look more ominous:

[Renee M]

Thank you all very much for taking the time to give feedback. I like the idea of cropping off more of the sky. It does improve this photo 😊

[Renee M]

Did the first picture warrant no feedback? No like or dislike? I am a little confused with this.

[DanK]

Did the first picture warrant no feedback? No like or dislike? I am a little confused with this.

In my browser, the first image is only a link that doesn't work. Perhaps others were able to see it.

But apart from that, people here respond when they have something they want to say. They won't necessarily respond to every image in a post, and most won't respond to any given thread at all. For example, I just looked up one of my recent posts. It was viewed roughly 150 times, and two people commented on it.

In this case, I would try re-posting the first image in a new thread, following the instructions in Donald's link. It may generate more comments.

[Manfred M]

Renee - the link to your first image appears to be broken and that is why you have had no responses to that image.

I would suggest you post it again.

[Renee M]

Oh ok thank you

[selig1656]

Still feel too much of a blue tint,especially in the far part of the pic.

[xpatUSA]

Still feel too much of a blue tint,especially in the far part of the pic.

Quite so, Raymond. Spot color-balancing a 32px square in the bright cloud above the horizon gave about 7000K and a slight tint shift in my editor, so an Overcast in-camera preset WB might have done gooder.

[Wavelength]

Very good image; towards the end of valley , the sky is too bright, which needs a bit tone down