Every once in a while I take a photo that I think is good but that I’m not sure which combo of exposure tweaking, coloring, and cropping is best. I took one of these last night and thought it’d make a good (Thanksgiving Day in the USA) post about getting to the version I’m happy with.

First, here’s the RAW as interpreted by Lightroom. Since taken with a Fujifilm X100VI, the Classic Neg profile I’m using in that custom setting on the camera is applied automatically by Lightroom. I rarely end up using Classic Neg in the final edit, but since I rarely use the SOOC JPG, I haven’t been motivated to update the camera setting.

Embarrassingly, you’ll notice that I have a fairly strong diffusion filter permanently attached to this camera (but none of my other cameras, oddly). This meant that I needed to throw that exposure compensation dial way down to not get a completely bloomed version of the snowflake light. I always forget these 40mp files have more wiggle room for editing, but that’s why the initial version is so dark. Bear with me.

I was shooting fast and not paying too much attention to whether the camera was level, too, so a little straightening will be needed here.

So this photo as-is is fine, maybe crop the edges off. There’s a genre of internet photo lovers (myself included) who would pound that “like” button based on the diffusion glow alone. Ooo, glow. Me like. Orders print.

But there’s a lot of negative space, particularly in the upper left. First, what if we embraced the space and went minimal?

*2. 16×9 crop that uses that negative space*

Ok, dang, that’s not where I planned to go with this post, but maybe that’s the right approach. I’ll stick a pin in that one and come back to it.

Let’s try a vertical crop that eliminates the cruft on the right, and add some of my typical color editing.

*3. 7×6 center crop, my typical too-warm coloring based on Fujifilm Nostalgic Neg profile—sorry, “film simulation”*

For the real version, I’d probably spend more time trying to get those glows looking a little more natural. This version is fine and is the typical thing I throw out into the world. But half the goal of this post is to see if I can arrive somewhere better.

What if I keep the crop and use a little more natural color?

*4. 7×6 center crop with a more generic preset*

I don’t hate the color, but I don’t think the crop is right. I’ve been experimenting more and more with wide panoramic crops when there’s not much going on in the sky or foreground. Plus, with the glow, a wide crop might carry this into “cinematic” territory. And “cinematic” will make every owner of a McKinnon product have a special moment.

*5. 17×6 crop, overall exposure raised, shadows raised*

Mmm-hmm. This I could live with. It’s a movie frame. But because this is not the direction I was going when I took the photo, I wish it included more on the right with the car left of center. On the other hand, the yellow line nicely leads into the frame and the lack of extra details on the right is probably better overall. Just a suggestion of more human activity down the street.

Out of curiosity, what about black and white?

Damn. Do you see why it’s sometimes so hard to decide? This is why people shoot film.

What I like about the black and white is it eliminates the distracting color mismatch between the bright LED snowflake and the classic halogen headlights—or maybe that’s a beautiful thing and I should embrace it?. Eh, I think I’ll stick to black and white.

So now I can’t help thinking how the B&W would pair with that first minimal crop that embraced the negative space. What was that, 16x9?

*7. 16×9, black and white, eliminate right side distractions, embrace negative space*

The thing I’ve learned about indecision is that sometimes you just rip the band-aid off and call it done. Here I’ve kept the black and white, but cropped to 16x9 with slight rotation tweaks from that first 16x9.

I could keep playing with it forever, but I like this. And me liking it is the only criteria that matters.

I understand the irony of reading this far in a post about photo editing and the payoff to be a black and white cop out. But this post is not “how to,” it’s “how I do.” It’s a subtle but important distinction.

Use the comments below to tell me which of these, if any, you would’ve picked. Or what else would you have tried? Is the photo a dog out of the gate and all of this is futile? Is it pointless to publish a blog post on a federal holiday? Let me know. I beg you.

Getting There

Portland in Black and White

When the shooting starts