I found this photo in my rejected images while cleaning up my Lightroom travel photography archives. I took it during a sunset cruise along the East River on my trip to New York about 3 years earlier. The fire boat was spraying the water for the tourists’ amusement, and I was taking photographs against the sun though the water.
USA. New York. East River
Loc: 40.71165, -73.97082
I remember I saw the potential in this urban landscape, but was never happy with the composition, and after a few attempts to change the framing by applying different crops in Lightroom I gave up and marked it as rejected.
When I saw this photo again 3 years later, right away I knew exactly what to do; I changed the aspect ratio from 3×2 to panoramic and the composition was dramatically improved. It was ready to be posted. I guess sometimes it takes 5 minutes to process an image, but other times, 3 years.
Deconstructing Featured Photo
Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Sigma 17-70mm
Focal Length: 19mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
Bracketing: single shot
Tripod: hand-held
Processing: Single RAW File Processing
Lightroom: straightening, cropping, split toning, export as PSD image
Photoshop: cleaning, noise reduction
Photoshop Plugins:
– Topaz Detail was used to enhance details in areas of the bridge and background buildings
– Topaz DeNoise helped to eliminate noise (river, sky, water spray).
Viktor, not only is your treatment of this photo brilliant, but you also demonstrate a great reason why no one should trash any images during edit sessions (unless they’re accidental shots of your shoes) but only to reject them and visit those images weeks, months or even years later. Frequently (maybe all the time, actually) we are our own worst critics. There are many gems to be found on taking a second look, or maybe a third. Great blog!
Thanks a lot for your kind words. Also, thanks for letting me to discover your Lightroom blog. Love it. I will be checking it often.