How to turn a so-so shot into something fun

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

This is the story of how a little photo on my Facebook page came about. I unexpectedly received a lot of questions about it, which made me think it might be suitable for Photofacts.

The only problem was that I had flattened all the layers of the image published on Facebook long ago, so I could no longer check which route I had taken to arrive at this result. But anyway, what follows is a kind of reconstruction. Just to tell the story after all.

Once again, I was driving past a shed beside the A57 in my little car. I must have passed it thousands of times. Every time, the lonely shed standing in the fields intrigued me, but I never saw how I could photograph it in such a way that it would be worth a second look.

It got even worse when they built some kind of earth bank right next to it. As soon as you got closer, it completely ruined the view.

Until last Sunday. When I was about to drive past it again, and was once again annoyed by the earth bank, I decided to turn into the nearby side road and stop for a moment.

I thought it would probably come to nothing again. It was blowing like mad, so I made two shots from my car window, safely sheltered from the elements. Once I got home, the RAW file looked like this:

I quickly developed it in Photoshop Elements, and it was at least a little better:

Right, that was already a bit better. But the horizon was crooked, so I quickly straightened it and cropped it slightly. It looked a lot better after that, but it still wasn't much. The boring sky did have a few clouds, but it could be better, and certainly more interesting.

First, I prepared the sky for replacing that boring blue. And besides, why not make this image square, so the emphasis would be on the sky?

Also, looking back, the picture could be a little lighter. The fact that a little light blue was still showing between the trees was less important. That would disappear into the sky I would paste over it later.

Right, now to fetch a sky from my collection:

This one might fit quite nicely. I dragged it over the image and set the blend mode of this layer to 'darken'. I adjusted it a little so it fitted better, set it to about 65% opacity to make it less saturated, and it was already starting to look quite good.

But then comes a small, annoying job: erasing the sky that falls over the background and affects the colour. I could also have made a selection, inverted it and then moved the sky onto the light area, but I always end up missing some part or other that way. Now it already looked very different:

And look, the bits of blue between the trees have now disappeared completely! But I'm still far from satisfied. What next? I still find the colours a little too bright, which I have found to be the case with almost all my landscape shots lately.

Although I know most people won't agree with me, something also needs to be done to emphasise the wintry atmosphere a little more. Instead of simply lowering the saturation, I use a different method.

I turn it into a black-and-white layer using the NIK filters and make it a little more contrasty by adding an orange filter. This is what it looks like when I place it over the image and reduce the opacity a little:

A lot better, and it is getting closer to what I had in mind. One more go with the NIK filters, 'Graduated neutral density' and 'Darken/lighten center'. I placed the 'lighten center' a little lower and applied both at a lower percentage. And suddenly it had become much nicer.

Finally, I pasted a few geese from the nearby 'Plan Tureluur' nature reserve into the sky, made a few minor changes to the whole image, such as removing the road in the foreground, and the picture was finished.

So, I had finally captured that shed in an atmosphere that radiates the omnipresent cold.

Finally, one very personal opinion. The saturation of almost all photos is nearly always slightly on the high side with every camera. Most people like this very much, and regularly increase it even further to make the photo even more colourful.

That does produce a very attractive image, but if you look at it for longer, it gradually starts to become just a little boring. In my opinion, but as I said, this is personal, lower colour saturation often produces an image that becomes boring less quickly.

Anyway, you don't have to agree with me. As long as you enjoy the hobby.

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