Fix photos creatively

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In this article I am going to give you some ideas how you can recover a bad or somewhat uninteresting photo and make something extraordinary of it. I am going to be upfront with you, as the title of this post says, this is not your fixing poorly exposed photos, that is for another day. Instead we are going to look at this from a more creative mindset of rescuing photos that aren’t the best but have potential. So let me set the scene for you.

I was out in beautiful Glendalough here in Ireland with a good mate of mine for an evening shoot. I had been there early in the morning and the weather was good for the evening so we decided to go back and see how it would fair in the evening. As the last light of the day was fading we were walking past a small section of forest with some trees with a beautiful small path going though the trees. It took me into this enchanted forest type feel. With the soft evening light it looked pretty special and we both got some shots of it.

When I got home and downloaded the photos to my computer, what I saw and felt when I was standing on-location didn’t quite translate over to the final image. But I still felt that there was something in this photo that had potential and I kept coming back to it. So rather than throwing it away, I thought I would try to do something creative with it instead. I had this vision of a surreal painterly effect where the trees becomes just stretched objects in a sea of green and the path that guides the viewer through it. 

Original exposure

Nikon D700 | 25sec @ f/8 | 42mm | Manfrotto 055XB Tripod | Kirk Enterprises BH-3 Ball Head | L-Bracket | Nikon MC-36 Cable Release

This is the original exposure and while there is nothing really wrong with it from the technical side, it is neither over nor under exposed, out of focus or anything like that. Yet that enchanted forest feeling that I felt when I was standing there doesn’t come across. 

The way I work when I develop my photos is that I address the things that are bothering me the most first. One of the issues is that the foreground is littered with branches and other debris that is preventing the viewer from following the path into the forest.

Therefore we needed to clean up the mess in the foreground to lead the viewer's eye into the picture.

 
 

Clean up

Forground cleaned up from dead branches

The first step to take this to a better photo was to clean up the foreground. I wanted the path to lead the viewer into the forest itself, but with all the fallen branches the eye gets caught on these and therefore the viewer's eyes doesn’t look much further into the photo.

After getting rid of all debris it already looks better and the viewer's eye is no longer distracted by all the branches that was in the foreground and is now having an easier time following the path into the forest. Cleaning up photos in general is a very good idea as it helps your viewer to see what you want them to see when you get rid of distractions.

 

Defining the path

Inpaint and cloning to define the path better

Now that the foreground had been cleaned up I wanted a narrower path that was more defined, again helping the viewer into the photo and the forest. If you notice especially on the lower right-hand side of the image there is a lot of worn-down grass due to people that have been walking or standing there.

I exported the photo from Lightroom to Affinity Photo and started closing the gaps, sort of speak, by using the inpaint and cloning tools to end up with this result. 

Again an improvement and I could have stopped here, however it was not my goal and I still felt that there was more that could be done. 

 
 

Adding colour

Green overlay paint to match with the existing green in the photo.

With the path now defined and all debris cleaned up, the foreground looked a bit too bleak for my taste and I wanted to have it a closer match to the lush green colours seen further in the image. I took a colour sample of the green and then painted in the additional colour on the foreground using a low opacity brush with a suitable blend mode, which for this particular photo was overlay.

If I was not going for the surreal effect on this photo, this is probably be where I would do a little dodging and burning and sharpening to finish the photo off.

I am not saying it is an award winning photo but still a big improvement from where we started. 

 

 

Adding surrealism

Blue effect added in Affinity Photo to give painterly surrealism.

Now to add that surreal painterly effect that I had in my mindset when I started developing the photo that probably came from something I’ve seen somewhere in a painting. With this in mind I started looking for a suitable filter or effect in Affinity Photo that could help me achieve what I was looking for and found the motion blur filter to my liking. 

All I now had to do was to play around with the with the blur strength in Affinity Photo until I got the desired effect I was looking for.  After several different settings I chose the one seen here. 

The cool thing with these types of effects is that it has such a different impact on different people. Some might think the effect horrible, some love it, some think it's enchanting, some sinister, but hey that's what it's all about to invoke feelings in the viewer.

 

The takeaway

Everyones in a while you come across a photo that you keep coming back to. Sometimes it is just a matter of cleaning up the image, sometimes you may need to go to black and white or sometimes maybe just getting into your creative space and thinking completely out of the box is the way to go. I hope this was an insightful article and that you will get some ideas of your own, who knows perhaps you are sitting on several photos with potential for greatness.

Does this mean that something like this work on every single “bad” photo? 
Honestly, I don't know, maybe, maybe not. I will all depend on the effect you apply which might work great on some photos and not at all on others. Sometimes a photo can't be saved no matter what you do and this is completely fine. It happens to all of us at many different times. The important thing is to play around have fun and in time you will learn what will work for your photos and what won't.

Thanks for reading and till next time keep experimenting!