27 Dec End of Summer

At this time of year in California summer is a distant memory. The clouds drop down with the temperature; beach time is short and only the brave brave the waves.

This was shot in August, actually, and is not San Diego; rather it’s Newport Beach. Just to confuse. I loved the colours in amongst the gloom and knew it was going to be a good image.

But it is a good example of how Photoshop/Lightroom and post-processing is essential for an image to reach its full potential. Shooting into the setting sun like this inevitably means the darker foreground is going to be underexposed so some corrections are essential. The key elements in the foreground were very dull  in the raw image.

So I made some global downwards-exposure, to recover the blown highlights in the sky.  White-point adjustment to the right was made to brighten up the image without overexposing things (but Highlight adjustment to the left helped keep that under control).  Then radial filters were applied to brighten and increase exposure in the bicycle and the guy. Radial filters in Lightroom are exceptionally powerful – they make the bicycle and the light reflecting on the metal really sing, really pop.

Feel free to right-click/save this image and enjoy it if you like; just retain the “Rod Andrewartha Photography” watermark is all I ask.