A New England wetlands scene edited using Aperture 3 - photo by Eric used with permissionFor Eric's second DSLR photography lesson (first), he brought some photos of his recent visit to various New England areas with him on his laptop. We found a spot at an outdoor downtown St. Petersburg cafe and starting going through his shots made using his Nikon D300s. The one featured above was taken when Eric hopped off his bike (bicycle) because he wanted to remember the beautiful scenery he was riding through. Upon first look at the shot, I liked the sine wave shape of the treeline, but thought the foreground was dominating the image too much and not the best feature to focus one's eye on.
So we began by making the panoramic crop you see above, that eliminated many of the distracting foreground elements, and also made a shot that was not taken at a wide angle appear to be of a much wider landscape. Adjusting various filters added some contrast and tones to the marsh grass. Painting with the polarizing brush in Aperture 3 brought back some blue to the sky.
This is another example of why I highly suggest that one learn how to shoot well and how to edit well simultaneously. Eric cannot easily return to that marshland to frame the shot in a different way, but with editing skills he can improve a shot and make it look more like what he initially envisioned.
For more on learning editing and shooting simultaneously check out this blog post featuring my own photo example.
I look forward to seeing how Eric puts these editing skills to use in future shots.