Before And After

Fully edited Amtrak #94 in Windsor, Virginia westbound in the morning with backlight (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 12-100mm f/4 PRO @ 28mm; 1/1000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 400

This is another one of those posts for those readers who have asked me to explain how I edit my images.  The subject in this image is an Amtrak passenger train, which started a new run only 2 days prior.  Since I am a train enthusiast, I will on occasion document trains.  I traveled to this small town to document one of the first runs of this new Amtrak route.  The problem, however, was the position of the sun.  Almost directly backlit and not very high in the sky.  Just the kind of conditions you really don't want.

Same as above but as the file came out of the camera (click to enlarge)

For some background, I am pointing the camera southeast.  The sun is just out of my frame in the upper left.  I am not standing where I originally envisioned making this image.  I wanted to make the image from the other side of the tracks as there are old brick buildings with faded painted advertisements on their walls on this side of the tracks that I wanted to use for the background.  But as I said, from my original position, the sun would have directly backlit the train and the entire left side of the train would have been in shadow.  

So, I moved over to this side of the tracks as a Plan B.  Better but not good.  Although I now have reflected sunlight on the sides of the stainless steel passenger cars, the front of the locomotive is still in deep shadow and the position of the sun now caused the silver surface of the passenger cars to reflect the overhead and rearward sunlight.  But this is better than packing up my gear and going home!  Lol.

The image at the top is the edited image and the one below is the RAW image as made by my Olympus E-M1 Mark II.  For those of you who may think that M4/3 cameras and sensors don't have sufficient latitude to handle a very contrasty scene like this, well, it can with no problem.

For those of you who had previously asked me to occasionally tell how I edit my images, here is what I did.

The first thing I do when I consider an image is to check for sharp focus and no blur from camera movement.  Second, I straighten the verticals to see if the composition still held up losing some of the image on the right and left.  When in the field and knowing that I will later have to straighten verticals, I loosely compose so I have room to lose some of the image on both sides.  Cropping is not prohibited!

Then I go into the basic panel and select a Color Profile.  In this case, I elected to stay with Adobe Color as I found that made the sky the most pleasing blue color.  Normally with my Olympus cameras, I'll choose natural or muted.  I then adjust color balance before editing as if you choose color balance later, it can affect the file's luminance.  I try to find something that should be white or black.  If one of those don't exist, I will set white balance by eye.  Also, I may not like what the white balance dropper tool sets as white balance and will "tweak" it.  Then I go to the sliders.  Here are my Lightroom Basic Panel Settings for this image.

One other note.  The histogram showed the "too small to be any good and inadequate" M4/3 sensor on the MKII showed everything in the scene between the left/right edges.  In other words, this very contrasty scene was handled fine.  Even the black undercarriage of the locomotive.  No bracketing needed.  These sensors are better than some of the pundits will admit or of which they are ignorant of their true capabilities.

White Balance    6125K from the Auto White Balance set by the camera.  It was too warm.
Exposure         +.62 (almost a stop underexposed to retain the detail in the highlights and sky
Highlights         -100
Shadows           +22
Whites/Blacks    0
Clarity              +22  I like a little mid-tone punch
Dehaze             +12  This helps bring out the blue in the sky
Vibrance            0
Saturation          0
Linear Tone curve
Blue Luminance +23   To brighten the sky and not have it look too artifical
Effects Panel     -17   Amount, 11 Midpoint, 95 Feather;  I almost always add some vignetting to my images and I guess 
                                that is a throwback to all those years printing silver gelatin prints.

I then sent the image to Photoshop to remove the power lines in the upper right side of the image.  The image was returned to LR for final cropping.

I cropped the image to remove the front of the truck sticking in from the left at the second crossing in the distance and the leaning telephone pole.  I also cropped out the small piece of the crossing signal on the right side of the image.  Both were distracting to me.  I then adjusted the image up/down according to taste.  I wanted to keep the original 4:3 M4/3 frame ratio.

That was about it.  I didn't have to do too much to make this terrible sunlight look a bit better.  My tendency is to lighten the shadows too much but after looking at my first cut at editing, shadows that are too light look too artificial and invariably I reduce how much I raise the shadows.  They still may be too light and I might go back and darken the front of the locomotive, which brings up a point.

I don't do well when editing photos the first time through or after I've just made them.  The way my brain seems to work is that I need to look at images with what I call "fresh eyes."  That is, I need to edit, put the image out of my mind for several days, then come back to it.  Most of the time, when I come back to it, I find that I change my initial editing.  It has something to do with visual adaption (I don't think that is a formal term).  I sit at the computer for too long and, after a while, I find I add too much contrast, too much saturation, etc.  It is good for me to step away, then come back with "fresh eyes."

If you have any questions about the editing in this image, please ask.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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