I’ve made a photo at St. Paul every Sunday morning for about 12 years. I use my iPhone for simplicity and to eliminate the fear of gear. The photo is always edited on my phone with Snapseed. Recently I added Lightroom as its editing and LUT capabilities became more sophisticated.
Today’s photo was an ordinary moment with a slightly interesting balance of ambient and artificial lighting that would have been more interesting If I’d done a proper edit.
Above, at left, is the photo I sent to social media. How bad is that? It’s dark, flat, and oversaturated. After it was too late as I’d already uploaded for the world to see, I made a second edit, at right, that is slightly better but still has the same flaws only this time it is a little bit brighter. And it was too late.
Later in the day, I ran the photo through Photoshop on my laptop.
I corrected the flaws desaturating the colors, brightening it, and adding contrast.
In trying to figure out the reason, I went through the editing process and am still not sure why it was so dark. I made the edit in a dark room so guessing it looked brighter than it was. That would also account for the lack of contrast.
I need to do better.