Focus of Episode: Creating Contrast Between Warm and Cold Colours

In this episode of The FIX, I show you the editing behind a shot that was posted as Photo of the Week on July 2, called High Above Lake Wanaka on Coromandel Peak. I took the photo in 2017 while living in Wanaka New Zealand.

Since arriving in Wanaka, I had wanted to spend the night on top of Coromandel Peak to catch the sunrise from the peak. So, when the weather looked to be alright, I climbed up to the top of the mountain, watched the sun set, spent the night, and then woke up the next morning to take photos of the sun set.

The views from Coromandel are probably some of the best around and lots of people fly up here in helicopters to take photos. Unfortunately I don’t quite own my own helicopter (although I should really make a point about budgeting it into my 50 year plan), and I can’t justify paying for a ride up, so I was not part of this group. Still, however, the view was totally worth climbing up to the top for.

In this episode you’ll learn how to:

• How to provide colour contrast between warm and cold colours
• How to draw the eye to a lone subject with local adjustments
• How to create high contrast in an image

All of the editing for this photo is done in Lightroom and it’s quite a simple edit. I focussed on creating a contrast between the warm grass hill that I’m standing on and the cold blue of the lake and mountains. I tried to bring out the red of my jacket to isolate it against the blue of the lake. Then, a lot of the edit is focussed on adjusting the brightness and contrast of the image to create a high contrast type of look.