Technocrat Tuesday: Making the best from the worse

Making the best from the worse

Lets face it, sometimes the pictures we take go BADLY wrong! (and I mean royally wrong)

Lets take an example. I was working on a shoot in Potters Bar (Near London) with a model, and at the most needed moment, the batteries on the remote trigger went (this was noticed after a few shots)

The cynic would dismiss this shot as totally useless and would dump it without a thought (first shot)

A lot of us use Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Lightroom and the like… so lets exploit these images…

Stage 1- Is there ANYTHING left to recover? In most cases, a camera sensor is very sensitive so no matter what, there’s a high chance its recovered something. For Photoshop users who are using JPGs, hit that wonderful auto levels function. For Lightroom users, there is a wonderful “AUTO” expose and tone function. Hammer it and see what happens

Stage 2 – If your luck has held, and everything has gone right, then at this point, you should have something resembling what you took infront of you… except its probably got a lot of lines and its very pixelated (a sign of camera noise). Image noise can be corrected if you wish – Use Noise Ninja or Neat Image to reduce the noise… or alternately…

Stage 3- Apply filters

This is where the filters can come in useful, as they can completely change an image, and it’s a time to experiment.

For me, I have taken the image, and applied in variations such as the Auto White Balance, A Blue/Yellow filter, A Velvia Filter and finally a Cyanotype filter, with the exposure pegged back a little so the blue is not so dominant.

Images:
1 - According to the eye, there's nothing there. But according to the histogram there is....
2 - Auto Levels.. and bingo! there's an image there. It is very grainy so it can be cleaned or edited
3 - Light levels are adjusted properly, brining out more human tones
4 - A Yellow and Blue filter - not perfect, but nicer
5 - Velvia - Deeper contrasts.. but not ideal for this image
6 - A Cyanotype image, and the exposure corrected downwards.


Image notes: Taken on a Canon 20D, f8, 28-105mm lens. Hotshoe did not trigger flashead. Captured as a CR2 file and processed using Lightroom