Processing photos...

How much is too much?

I recently completed a photo assignment of nighttime Christmas lights at a historic village. Usually I modify photos very little out of the camera, remembering my high school photography teacher’s advise from 30 years ago about composing in camera right the first time.

These photos are more technically complex to take, as it is long-exposure photography. Tripod, cable release, pose, wait 20 seconds, etc – lather, rinse, repeat.

But playing around in Adobe Camera Raw, I thought I’d try modifying the images a bit more to lighten the exposure, allow for more silhouettes of the trees, and capture some of the ambient glow from the lights.

As a test, I posted to Instagram Stories the two photos, one modified, one not, to see what people thought. I like what ACR allows me to do, but I don’t want to do what some photographers do, which is over-saturate and/or make the photos look unnatural.

Here is the original:

And the modified:

The result of my poll, people picked the original over the modified image by a 2:1 ratio.

Looks like the advise from my teacher 30 years ago rings true to this day. Thanks Mrs. Elliott!