eaglize

John Eagle: Not much editing, just what I consider standard color retouching. I shoot in RAW format to get the most detail possible. Nor sure if your camera has that option. Then in the software Camera RAW there are many tools for color correction. On this photo I tweaked the exposure, brightness, clarity and saturation just a little, then used the Unsharp Mask filter to sharpen the image slightly and finally cropped in. But this is still very close to the original image I took.

My technique is to get as close to the ornament as possible and focus in on the eyes of the figure. The closer I get the greater the DOF or blurry background. Then I take a moment to look at the background verses the figure – foreground. What are the colors, what is the composition. I usually just go with a gut feeling of I like that or I don’t like it. If I don’t like it I move around until I get a background that is more satisfying. Also I usually pull back just slightly to leave myself some room for cropping in later in Photoshop.

Trust me I have a lot of unsatisfactory shots as well.

It takes practice, patience and a lot of clicks but you will get there in time. I did and i still have a long way to go.