MS MOLLY
COMPOSITION - choices, choices!
Sometimes you need to figure out just why you gravitate to a certain subject, and to know how you should treat it. In this example in Stockholm, Sweden, I liked the ship, the name and the blue and orange twilight tones. I took the shot on an overcast day and (a) is exactly how the camera recorded it. The tonal balance (range of tones) has been determined by the sky, the brightest object in the scene. Therefore the shadows are darker than the sky, which is correct. But it is NOT what I saw. It has not captured the tonal range that my eye saw, nor the overall blue tint.
If you want to present the image as YOU perceive it, then you need to redress this in post production. There are a number of choices;
1. You could leave it as is
2. You could do a mono treatment as there is minimal colour anyway
3. Change the tonal balance in post production to optimise it
4. Don’t record the image in the first place.
I opted for 2 & 3, and edited it in Photoshop (b and c). It is closer to what I saw and felt at the time. Because most of my work is destined for print, I always oversaturate colours a bit, as an image on the printed page will lose about 15% of its intensity compared to what you see here on screen.
All photography and information © Jon Davison 2021