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Thirsty Thursday: Aperture Magic

Rambler: Terry Drink at Hand: 2007 Estancia Zinfandel

Okay, so not the most brilliant wine, but it's enough after the short work week. The photograph for today's post is different than any other photograph I've taken. And no, (for those of you who already looked at it), it's not an extremely edited image. It is edited, but not in Photoshop...just in Aperture...and just barely.

Before I get into the details of the actual edits, let me share with you how I actually took this image. This image was taken the day before the Cote de Tolosa (see previous T.T. post) at Cayucos, CA at the pier. The beach was covered in seaweed and the sun was fairly harsh, but the water was blue. Beth left her camera in the car as we were just checking things out. I wanted to get a shot of the pier with a bit of beach and some people walking. The first two shots I took were completely white.

Oops! I forgot to change my settings from the previous location we were shooting at—rookie mistake. Fortunately, the wildlife (i.e., the people) weren't really moving that fast so I adjusted my camera settings and took another shot. I didn't think anything of the two over-exposed images I just took. When I was able to download the images into Aperture, I saw the "white" images and thought trash. After completing my first round through my photos, I somehow didn't trash one of the "white" images. Oops! Another rookie mistake. But, this time, I was looking at the "white" image in fullscreen and I could see some shapes, just barely, in the center. I decided to edit the image and I was immediately able to "bring back" some of the image by adjusting the exposure slider. With some more tinkering, I was able to get an image that looked like an artist painting of a beach scene. I was mildly impressed...something a bit different.

What did I learn from this? I'm not sure...perhaps pay more attention to your camera's settings before taking your first shot...or perhaps not. Or maybe you can sometimes create something out of nothing? Or maybe, sometimes, you just get lucky, on both counts (the shot and the editing). So, get out there this weekend and make some rookie mistakes. You never know what you'll get!

[exif id="1582" show="location"]

Here are the settings of the improperly exposed image straight out of the camera.

Out of the Camera ISO 500 35mm 0.67ev f/5.6 1/100 sec

Aperture Edits Exposure to -2.0 Recovery to 1.5 Black Point to 50.0 Contrast to 0.06 Definition to 0.33 Vibrancy to 0.2 Highlights to 8.78

What do the Aperture edits actually mean? Well, the Contrast, Definition, Vibrancy, and Highlights are very, very minor edits...they have very subtle effects. The other three (Exposure, Recovery, and Black Point) are the edits that actually matter. I think the exposure is corrected to -1.33 with the 0.67ev taken into account. The recovery adjustment brings back the highest portion of the highlights and the black point adjustment sets the black point to the maximum setting. Basically, three adjustments created the watercolor painting effect.