I was lucky to catch this moment when a morning bike tour stopped by the river. I really like the outcome but am not sure how to process it. the bicycle reflections are the main element but the river and surrounding adds to it. as I wasn’t sure what to emphasize I wasn’t sure where to add light or how to put more emphasis on the bikes (if it is needed). Thanks for your help.
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Tamar, without downloading the image at this point I might recommend a crop from the bottom to make more of a pano type scene. As an ex-cyclist myself I really like the main point of the scene which is the bicycle groups reflection here.
I could see a bit of adjustments between the darker and lighter points too. It does make for a unique image here…
I finally had some time to make changes that I’m sure are a bit radical, however, as stated I was a competitive cyclist years ago and so my processing leads toward that arena more.
Nice chalenge. My edit would be that much diferent from yours.
I added a bit of a tilt, a dutch angle, to create some dinamic lines and use the water ripples as a fake horizon line. Raise the blacks a bit to fade those shadows a bit and lowered the input level of the whites to get more brightness on the water. Also intruduced a bit of colour grading, just a tad of blues on the shadows and bright oranges to the whites.
All frame it in a 16:9 to really get the attention on the areas with information.
Edit was made with C1 with just some global ajustments.
wow. This looks amazing. Thank you so much. I didn’t consider tilting it. it is so much more powerful this way. the color and brightness balance is also more pleasing. Thank you!!
I had to rotate it 180 degrees. Then I cropped out all the dirt swimming on the water’s surface. I quite liked the surreal look.
I cleaned up the water’s surface with the Healing tool in ACR. I removed many of the small things to emphasize the illusion that we do not see a reflection here.
I tried to emphasize the water ripples in the upper part of the image
it is amazing what a complete different picture it becomes. I would never have thought of playing with it this way. Thank you for opening my eyes to another option.
And now for something completely different! I liked the abstract nature of this and thought black and white with little detail would work well to enhance this.
This is indeed different but very interesting look. I am so glad I uploaded the picture and used this opportunity to get ideas. it helped me tremendously to open myself up to new ways to see things. Thank you so much!
Wonderful image. I find the color distracting and would suggest b&w. I like the mud area at the bottom as it provides an environment for the scene and also helps with the composition of layers. Here is my suggestion. This is the sort of scene Bresson would shoot (Cartier Bresson isn’t it?).
