For something different, I thought I would show a little before and after. I really think there are a lot of people that have difficulties with the editing process, although it is really a lot of fun to do if you try it. I shoot everything in RAW format so it requires attention before it becomes a finished image. I believe in RAW images as I wish to have control over the processing instead of letting the camera make those decisions like if you shoot JPG.

My wife was taking our granddaughter to a play in Toronto and I had a couple of hours to kill so I decided to go and see if I could get an image of the flatiron building on Church Street.

The above image is the RAW shot from the camera, directly into Lightroom. The only thing I had done to it was to crop. My main objective was to get the information for the sky so as not to blow it out.

The second image is after my editing workflow. It was right around sunset so I worked with the colours a bit, warming it up a little to reflect that, enhancing the orange from the sunset. I did a little colour grading to accentuate the warm light in the streets. I straightened buildings as best I could. Since my main subject was intended to be the flatiron itself, I began to work on it, bringing up detail and textures. The light hitting the front of the building was introduced as I thought that would look natural but I wasn’t seeing it in person. I also put subtle light patches on the sidewalk under the existing lights just to add depth to the overall images. I also lit one of the lights that was burned out while I was working on lights.

The overall scene looked cluttered and chaotic with all the wires, signs, lights and such so I took the wires out as much as possible. I think that helped to make things look a bit more clean. I toyed with removing the signs but decided against it, after all, it is a city, right?

For the most part, the finished image is pretty much what I saw with my eye, which is usually what I try to accomplish. Some may like it, others might not but I shoot to please me first