There were a lot of peculiarities about this image, so I decided to focus on corrective editing rather than creative editing. I did basic cropping, exposure, sharpening adjustments in Lightroom and then finished off the image in Photoshop. I will give a small description and explanation a few of the steps I consider more important in an effort to be brief yet provide useful information.
Cropping, straightening, and lens adjustments were done in Lightroom with the goal creating the most compelling composition. I saw the image as a pair of leading lines in the foreground, the far bank and buildings as the mid-ground, the tower as the subject, and the sky as the background. I wanted the lines in the foreground to quickly move you from the foreground to the far bank as I didn't want all of the people in the foreground competing with the tower for interest. With my cropping intent in mind I cropped to get a pleasing composition and give the tower and far bank the most visual weight.
I carried out basic adjustments in Lightroom in order to generally lighten and add contrast to the image. While performing basic adjustments I noticed that the light appeared to be coming from high up camera right, yet there were some dark to light gradients going both right to left and top to bottom. I performed a few neutral density adjustments to correct for the gradients in both directions.
For sharpening I applied a higher-than-normal amount in Lightroom and then followed up with smart sharpening, high pass sharpening, and output sharpening in Photoshop(PS). A lot of this sharpening is part of my normal workflow, but the extra input sharpening and smart sharpen where to specifically counteract the camera shake which was apparent.
I ended up doing a few different RAW conversions; one for the base image, one for the shadow area, and a third for the sky. The right side of the shore, including the walk, people, grass, and trees was just too dark and made the image feel left heavy. I created the shadow conversion just for this area. I had already pulled a curve for the base image, so altering the curve for the shadows and then blending it in PS with a luminosity mask allowed me to open up and add enough detail just on the right shore to balance out the image. The conversion for the sky was to darken the sky and allow the eye to linger longer in the shadows areas where most of the interest is. The sky layer was also blended using luminosity masks.
Aside from the above corrective adjustments I cloned out the closest crane (I felt the further crane provided nice counterbalance for the buildings tower right) and added some warmth which I felt suited the scene.
potncomp by
Doidinho, on Flickr
