PROCESSING & EDITING
These days it’s much more acceptable to heavily process an image, especially for social media where ‘filters’ are often used to give it more punch. For a classic image of your boat, however, or any other image you want to print and frame, be a little more subtle. Print might not handle heavy post processing well. There are many schools of thought as to how much one should process an image. At the beginning I would suggest you only process just enough to get your desired result. You can always save that version for print and then go to town on another version of the same image.
There are still many audiences who hate over-processed images. Postproduction is nothing new and manipulating an image to emphasise certain things was going on in the dark room well before the digital era. That burned-in sky, for example.
Controls in Lightroom and Photoshop programmes include exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, vibrance and saturation. Any editing will work significantly better with a RAW image over a Jpeg. Play with them all as practice makes perfect, and the internet is packed full of informative tutorials on how best to use these programmes. Another adjustment I find myself using a lot is the graduated filter.
You can select an area and adjust just that area. An obvious one is darkening the sky or giving it extra contrast, but how about selecting the sea instead and playing with contrast and exposure there, too?
If you’re using a DSLR camera, the editing may well be done at home on a computer, but most phones will let you do it there and then; the majority of the above controls feature in the ‘edit’ option when you open your picture on your phone, which is a fantastic option to have when you’re on the move editing and posting. Newer Gopros also have Wifi, allowing you to download your pictures to your phone on the go.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Photography is a pastime where this saying really does apply. The more you use your camera the more you learn what it can and can’t do. With digital photography, even in difficult lighting conditions, you can ‘build’ a shot by taking a frame, seeing how it looks on the screen and then if there’s room for improvement you can adjust and take another. This luxury wasn’t around in the days when images where taken on film. We all enjoy a wonderful sport and we all know that it’s not always sunny and bright. So take your camera out on all occasions to tell the world it’s not always plain sailing!