I keep changing my mind about what my favorite picture from Maui is, but right now its this one. I love how warm the evening light is and the red tones on the sand.
And in case anyone is wondering based on my last post, yes, I did edit some people out :)
Now, I know we pretty much all edit pretty much all our photos. But there's a question of editing to improve and editing to change what was in front of you. I just got back from a family trip to Maui for my brother's wedding. (I've barely begun going through the actual wedding photos!) Every now and then, when taking beach shots, I'd get annoyed by all the tourist on the beach and tell my mom "oh well, I'll just edit them out later." But mom thought I should leave them in because that's the way I saw the scene. And that it was ok to have people in the background because it was more real that way.
I agree, to an extent. But sometimes I find tourists in thongs a bit distracting to the beauty of the beach.
Here is one example.
The beach was so beautiful, I found all the people in the water and walking by the shore distracting. But I didn't mind the blue umbrellas and the people laying (pretty much hidden!) underneath.
So I zoomed far in on each person and used the clone stamp tool to gradually "erase" each one. I think the most important thing in this process is to keep the natural lines in your pictures straight and not to create weird broken lines. Like in the top arrow, below. I made sure to keep the white line of the edge of the wave straight, to look natural. The circles are where I grabbed my pattern from, and the arrows where I put them. I always do this on a duplicate layer, so if I mess up, its easy to go back.
I happened to do this on a computer only with PSE, but in Photoshop I think it's even easier because after you click where to copy your pattern from, the little circle gives you a preview so you can make sure to keep your lines straight.
This was my result.
You still see the umbrellas to show this is a beach being occupied, but without all those annoying people :)
I followed the same process for this photo, which I posted a few days ago. Much easier, since there's only two people on the beach and they were very far away.
But I like the result with no people better. I don't feel I'm being "dishonest" to my travel memories, because I prefer to remember the lovely scenery anyways.
Subtle, but I like it better.
I never had a chance this week to post SOOC's for Jill and Ashley's "Good to Wow" challenge, but hopefully its ok to post my edits anyways! :)
Well I am back home now--my trip to Maui went by so very fast! I have soo many pictures to sort through, but am going to just try to post my favorites.
I was able to rent a lens while on the island. I rented a Nikon 14-24mm 2.8 lens. Reviews call it the best landscape lens on the market. And it really was amazing. However it also very large and VERY heavy and sometimes was just not practical to carry around all day. So some shots I still got with my very lightweight 50mm. But I loved having this lens on hand.
We all know Maui can have some incredibly colorful sunsets, but I was also blown away by how bright and colorful everything was during the day as well! Here are some of my favorite beaches and views from my trip to Maui.
This first shot is one of my favorites!
Ok, my plan to post a photo a day while on my trip to Maui tapered off a little, but I wanted to share one last shot before my trip home tomorrow. We got an amazing sunset on the beach right outside our hotel tonight. I must've taken about a 100 pictures of it, so I'm sure you'll see more, but here's one for now!
Aloha! :)
As promised, I'm trying to post a picture a day while in Maui. Today I'm posting this stretch of beach in front of our hotel in Kihei. I took a lovely morning walk here this morning, and plan to spend some time stretched out on a towel here tomorrow!!!
I never got a chance to do my edits for this weeks Good to Wow challenge! I'm so behind! But that's because I landed in Maui today! My brother's getting married on Sunday and my family is starting to gather on this beautiful island. I probably won't have a whole lot of time to blog while I'm here, but I want to at least try to post a photo of the day if I can. Here's mine for today--the sunset over Molikini.
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