Sunday, September 13, 2009

RAW to the Rescue -- and Back to Blogging

San Juan Sunrise, originally uploaded by Eduardo Veguilla.
Well this is my first new post in a while, but now I'm hoping I can get back on track with my postings. I also wish to start doing something new, and that is what I'm doing right now. I want to share more of the story behind each picture I'm posting. Like this one for example which is sort of symbolic. Let me explain, the reason I practically stop posting new pictures was that, little over a year ago, I moved back to Puerto Rico after three years living in Baltimore, MD. And well, with that also came the new mission of starting my own business as a freelance designer/animator/photographer (yeah, I know it's a lot). Well, I've been a 110% on to that, which of course, didn't left me with much spare time to keep up with my blogging duties. That's why I'm choosing this particular photo of a sunrise here in Puerto Rico, to mark the new start after moving back home, but also the new start coming back to blogging.

Now, the real story behind this picture. I took this while prepping for a Lovestory Shoot for one of my best friends, a couple of weeks before his wedding day. We planned to do the shoot all over the Old San Juan area because of the great scenery and the perfect flexibility it offered. We got there extremely early (well at least for me, it felt extreme) to catch the morning light.

This was the spot where we met to start of the shoot. So, while we where prepping I snap this quick shot of the amazing sunrise. I loved how the morning mist fixed up with the sunlight giving this ethereal feeling to the scene. But really, I wasn't thinking much about how to achieve this shot.

I literally took my camera and snapped it quickly so I could move on with the rest of the shoot.

Well, it figures, this was one of those. I know many photographers have had this situation where in the rush of a shoot you take this "great shot" just to find out later at the studio that in fact it was over or under exposed, or god forbid, was out of focus. Thank god this wasn't out of focus, but, the sky was blown out and the colors where really washed out because of the white balance.

You be the judge...

Original Shot

Well, every once in a while, knowing your way with post processing becomes a good skill to have under your belt.

Well, this was one of those cases where I put my graphic designer hat and save the day with some nice post processing. You see, as a graphic designer, one usually get a lot of bad pictures or maybe just pictures that don't match the exact look of what we are after. So, we are accustom to retouching our way into that specific look we want. Being also a photographer I'm always self-conscious of trying to take each picture right the first time around and not having to go over retouching every single shot, after all, it's not the same to fix just one, than say, four hundred.

There for I present my 1st commandment of the photo geek (and any wise photographer :P).

1. Thou shall always shoot in RAW.

Thanks to having a RAW file was able to get this shot the way I originally intended in just a few simple steps.

Step 1: Fix Exposure
First of I start fixing the exposure. One of the many advantages of shooting RAW is that even though and image look over or under expose it doesn't necessarily mean the photo doesn't have that information. As with this case. I was able to easily tweak my exposure within the basic parameters of the RAW file the get the atmosphere I wanted for my shot.

Step 2: Fix White Balance & Color
Now that I have a good exposure I need to fix the WB. Once again, RAW power. White Balance is one of the best things about RAW format.

Let me take a minute to better explain this. You see, when you shoot JPG one of two things happen, either you set some specific WB before hand, or the camera tries to determine it for you. In both cases, once the WB is set, the camera just uses it, and that JPG file is saved with that color information. On the other hand when you shoot RAW it's like if the camera saved all the posible WB settings into that one RAW file. So when you are post processing, you can tweak, or change altogether the WB, no matter how it was shot in the first place.

So, back to my image, I wanted to give the shot that same morning light look that my eyes where seeing at the moment of the shoot, but that the camera didn't get right.

So I do that by adjusting the WB manually in the RAW file, and just eyeballing it really, until it looks right. After that, the tone looks fine but the colors are still looking pretty monochromatic. So I bump the vibrance up a little to get better color variance in the whole scene.

Step 3: Final Touches. Cool it down a little for that morning light feel.

It has come a long way, but there's still some final touches to do.

I really want to give it that morning light feel. In order to do that, I need to cool it down a little more in the shadows. Doing that will give it that distinct look of a sunrise ratter than a sunset. So for my final step I go over to the split toning section of the RAW parameters and bring in a little blue hue in the shadows and play with it until it looks right.

After that I take a minute to do some final tweaks that consist of a subtle fix in the crop and the vignette. And then, viola, the final image! Nice right?

So, lets recap really quick....
Original shot
Step 1: Fix Exposure
Step 2: Fix White Balance & Color
Step 3: Final Touches. Cool it down a little for that morning light feel.


Remember to check below for the technical data for this picture, and for a more complete list of the RAW parameters used check the EFIX data.

Share your story of rescuing lost photos and stay tune for the next update.

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TECHNICAL DATA
Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XTi

Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM + EW73B Lens Hood

Software: Lightroom 2

EFIX DATA
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1 comments:

Edu said...

No wallpaper? Buuu!

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