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Bruce Grant's picture

From Bad Mistake to Attempted Recovery

Gen and I were at the waterfront from early evening to nightfall. We'd gotten some amazing shots on steps, in front of the boats, on the boardwalk. I wanted to try something I'd never tried before and set up this shot under a marquee. Sadly, I forgot to change the white balance and as you can see in the first picture the outcome was garish. I did catch my mistake and rebalance so all was not lost.

This was one of my favorites (and hers) from that shoot so I knew I had to recover it. The result is some the most extensive editing I've had to do in Lightroom. Used Photoshop to remove the pole.

What's an example of a mistake you made and had to recover? Or was it not recoverable? Would you have edited this differently. What's your feedback on this edit?

Canon EOS 77D
Sigma DC 17-50
38mm
ISO100
1sec
f4
Ambient Light

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5 Comments

The color looks very good but the blurry people don't really add much, cropping them out keeps the attention on Gem.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah it fell short of what i was trying to do - blur to make her the center of attention but the crowd was too thin. I plan on trying this again sometime.

The most common mistake I deal with is missed focus on sports shots, but on this particular image, I had acceptable focus, but garishly blown highlights on her uniform. The highlights were blown because I was trying not to lose detail in the black of the uniform. I was unable to fix it in post, which I found rather disappointing.

As for your edit, I do like it. I think the only thing I would have done differently is in regards to the branch of the tree that crosses the rightmost light. I would have removed the branch.

I can definitely imagine how hard it is to consistently focus in sports. I see what you mean about the highlights.

I appreciate your input. I hadn't considered the tree branch. It would look a lot cleaner without it. Thanks!

I'm working with the 5 year old Nikon D5600. It has a 39 point autofocus system, so that makes it hard in and of itself. There is a reason sports professionals pay thousands of dollars for cameras with hundreds of autofocus points.

I'm always glad to offer my input.