POST PRODUCTION//

When editing my Photos, I didn't want to make any major changes to them, I just wanted to make them sharper and more eye catching. To start with I knew I wanted black and white imagery, as I think as a collection of images if they are all black and white it helps them relate to and compliment each other. To make them slightly more interesting though, I added a Tri-tone effect. I used Black, and two shades or turquoise. These gave me a darker, more contrasting look to my image. Here is an example of the difference between black and white and tri-tone.

B+W

Tri-tone 

I then tweaked the levels to make the image more balanced and correct anything that I did wrong when shooting the photo, for example not balance my shutter speed and aperture correctly. I didn't need to alter much as I felt I set my camera up correctly at the shoot, but I wanted to balance all the photos out, so they needed altering as each photo was shot in different weather conditions.

To emphasis this contrast, I used the Burn and Dodge tool. This allowed me to really bring out the highlights on the bike and rider with the dodge tool, which made them stand out more from the back ground. I also darkened the shadows with the burn tool to emphasis this further. My favourite reason for doing this was to bring back lost detail in the midtones. This was helpful for me as I was able to bring back information which was lost due to the settings which the photo was taken with. As you can see above, there is a big difference in the detail before and after. I think after doing this all over the bike and rider it really made an effective difference. I'm really glad I learnt how to do this as I believe it will make all my future photographs look more powerful and professional.


Here are my final selection of images from the first shoot. As you can see they have a clear relationship, and believe they work well together as a collection. These photos allow me to use them for other purposes aswell, I intend to use them for some more graphic work, and to incorporate them back into my repeated patterns which I mentioned previously.

Here are my images from shoot two. As you can see from all my photos, especially the two portraits immediately stand out. So when I got home from shoot 2, I set up a tripod in my back garden to take a self portrait of myself (at the bottom) like I mentioned in my previous post. I edited this in the same way as I want to try composing these together. I think they will compliment each other really well and I have several other plans for these images for the next few weeks.

Overall I am really happy with these images, and have decided that just two shoots was enough to gather all the images I needed. I'm glad I timetabled enough time for two shoots, as it allowed me to get 3 different locations, to provide variety and also represent the three most prominent riding styles which I am trying to represent, Park, Street and Trails.