Focus of Episode: Editing Photos Taken in Harsh Daylight

The Story Behind the Photo:

In this episode of The FIX, I show you the editing behind a shot that was posted as Photo of the Week on September 3rd, called Lone Tree in Vinales. I took the photo in 2016 on a trip to Cuba.

On our trip to Cuba, Hilary and I spent a few days in the town of Vinales and enjoyed the quiet of the countryside after the hustle and bustle of Havana. During our time in Vinales, we did some horseback riding, and as part of the trip we stopped at an area where there were caves cut through the natural karst limestone. Once we had stopped, I turned around and looked back down the road that we had just ridden and spotted a donkey sat underneath a big tree. It was the middle of the afternoon when I took this photo so the light was quite terrible but I really liked the look of the photo so a major part of the editing is showing you how I tried to recover the image even though the light wasn’t very good.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How to use local adjustments in Lightroom to isolate areas
• How to make a photo taken in harsh daylight look good
• How to do a basic edit in Lightroom

The Edit:

The editing of the photo is very simple and is done solely in Lightroom. I start out with a basic edit to get the entire image looking roughly how I want it. And then I dig into the local adjustments to tweak small areas of the photo separately. There is some work done with radial filters, graduated filters, and some brushing.