Practical Photography - UK (2020-02)

Thisimagewas

completely

unplanned.On

th e way back

to the car from

a walk in the

forest with my dog, I could

hear the distant rumbling of

a tractor, which eventually

crossed our path. The sun

was setting and the tractor

appeared silhouetted against

the brilliant orange-yellow sky,

so I quickly took a few shots.

In Lightroom, I dropped the

shadows and added a touch

of yellow to emphasise the

nectar-like sky, as well as

a grad filter to darken the

foreground detail.

adamcurriephotography.com

Ben says: Much like Dean’s

incredible landscape on p80,

this is another evocative

scene captured on the spur

ofthemoment.It hasall the

ri ghtingredientsin all the

ri ghtplaces– theskyis

a rich orange ochre, the sun

is partly obscured behind

the trees, and the tractor sits

snuggly on a rule-of-thirds

‘power point’. There’s also

bags of space for headlines

andothereditorialpage

furniture,so I’minstantly

thinkingAdam’simagewould

work brilliantly in a rural-

themed book or magazine.

Image quality is superb,

with oodles of detail visible

in the tractor and midground

mist, and the grad filter that

Adamappliedworkingwellto

removeunnecessaryclutter

and directtheeyeto thestory.

The onlychangeI would

makewouldbe to cloneout

the telegraphpoleabovethe

tr actor,andthewiresleading

the eyeoutof theframe,as

thesearea littledistracting.

It ’s a 5-minutejobwiththe

Spot Healing Brush Tool

(see panel) and would further

simplify a wonderfully bucolic

scene. If I were Adam, I’d be

tempted to send this to a

suitable picture library...

PRACTICALPHOTOGRAPHY.COM 83

Much like Photoshop’s Healing Brush Tool, the Spot

Healing Brush Tool is ideal for removing distractions

and imperfections by painting with sampled pixels

and matching the texture and lighting as accurately

as possible. The difference is that the Spot Healing

Brush Tool automatically samples from around the

area you’re retouching rather than requiring you to

take samples manually. Here we’ve used it to quickly

remove the telegraph wires behind the tractor and

clean up the middle part of Adam’s image. Tick the

Content-Aware box for the most realistic results.

Heal away distractions

This would work brilliantly in a

rural-themed book or magazine

Amber sunset by Adam Currie

Nikon D7500 | 140mm | 1/800sec | f/11 | ISO 100

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