Edit Brian’s photo.

My blog buddy Brian who writes the great Epic Edits blog has another project going. It’s a great idea – he has made available one of his photos, and asked his readers to edit it however they like. I’m a firm believer that a lot of the skill in digital photography is in the processing, and this project should confirm that, from the same source, many different interpretations are possible.

The above is my entry for this project. I’ve tried to stand out a little from most other submissions so far (I’m a little late into the game due to illness and business). Without going into the myriad details of the whole process, I edited the RAW file Brian provided in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and pushed the contrast and colours fairly strongly. I played around with quite a few different styles, but settled on a relatively “conservative” one.

Then I tried playing around with cropping and rotation. As soon as I saw this crop I loved it. Suddenly it seemed that it was more than a photo of a seagull on the beach, now it was telling a story. In my own imagination, the seagull is looking longingly out to the horizon, which for some reason he cannot reach. A bit of a chiche I know, but I really think the crop makes a difference to the mood of the photo.

Thanks Brian for another cool project! I look forward to the next.

Photo © 2007 Brian Auer

Welcome to everyone visiting from Epic Edits! I hope you like my entry. While you are here, please feel free to have a look through my photo blog. I have many original photos here, and much that an amateur photographer may enjoy including experiments, some tutorials and ideas. If you like my work, please subscribe to my blog at the top right! I make regular posts with photographic experiments, and I’m planning to write more tutorials in the near future.