Amanda Takes Off...

In Vietnam I took this picture. (Click on it to see a larger version.) I took it using my temp travel partner's camera since my cheap digi is on a long, slow, painful death slide right now. Her camera was some sort of digital point and shoot.

We were at Hoan Kiem Lake at approximately 6:30 in the morning, trying to get shots of a crowd of at least 5 dozen people doing aerobics. As I was standing there, one of the women with baskets started walking toward us. I wanted a picture of her but didn't think I'd get it since I had no control over ISO, aperture, or shutter speed.

This is what I got.

Vietnam Art Photo, Before

I actually really like this photo. The road is empty (very unusual for Hanoi). The colors on her basket are bright, you can't see any of her face, and you get a little bit of street traffic on the other side, which adds some depth.

What I didn't like were the two pairs of legs that my eyes immediately went to whenever I looked at the picture.

I recently signed up for a newsletter from All Things Photography. Poking around the website, I found a tutorial for subtle spot coloring.

I was so excited; that was exactly what I wanted to do with this photograph!

I tried it once and emailed the site's author. I told him some frustrations I was having learning how to use the Nikon D80. He wrote back very quickly and gave me some good advice. He pointed out that I dropped off film at a photo lab, someone was doing the color balancing and exposure correcting. And before that, people did it in their own lab. Now I had to learn to do it with a DSLR.

That was like a smack to the head. I developed my own film in high school and never thought burning or dodging was cheating. I never thought using the correctional ink to fix dust spots was cheating. And I even worked in a commercial lab and corrected other people's film! Duh...

Back to the photo. I attempted the photo a second time. I am still not very happy with the "cloning" done to remove the people. But I am happy enough to post it since it was the first time I'd tried cloning. In retrospect, I chose a difficult (to me) photo to work with for the first time since it didn't have hard edges to use as guides for the color.

Vietnam Art Photo, After

I am pretty pleased.