A Simple Lightroom Trick to Transform your Landscape Photography

Sshh. I’m going to let you into a little secret. Don’t tell anybody, ok? This one small Adobe Lightroom editing trick that I’m about to share with you will literally transform your landscape photography. If you’re a beginner photographer, then I recommend that you give this trick a go today to impress anyone that might be looking at your photographs.

If you’re the type of person that spends hours scouring the Internet to look at landscape photography, then you are probably familiar with the term ‘dodging and burning’. This is a trick that photographers have been using for decades to give their photographs that extra little kick when being viewed by an audience. The late, great Ansel Adams made this technique famous in the days of film photography, when he would spend hours in the darkroom, applying physical ‘dodging and burning’ to his negatives.

What is ‘dodging and burning’?

Ok, so you don’t actually know what the term ‘dodging and burning’ means? Well, to put it in the simplest of terms, it is the act of lightening certain parts of a photograph and darkening others. It is a great tool that can be used to create some very high contrast, dramatic images, or to bring emphasis to certain subjects within a photograph.

The best part about this is that, compared to poor Ansel Adams who had to spend hours, if not days, locked inside of his darkroom, we now have the ability to dodge and burn a photograph within minutes, or even seconds once you are up to speed. In most of my own favourite landscape photographs over the past couple of years, I have used the same dodging and burning technique that I am about to share with you all.

Before dodging & burning

After dodging & burning

Why should you dodge & burn?

There are many reasons as to why you should dodge or burn a photograph. The main reason for me, as stated above, is to add shape, dimension and contrast in an otherwise flat and perhaps, lifeless photograph. In certain instances, dodging and burning subjects in the foreground can help you to direct a viewers eye to a certain place, and create a journey through your photograph. In the photograph at the top of the screen, you can see that I have added a dodge and burn effect to the rocks in the foreground, because I feel as though they are of particular interest within the scene; I want those to grab a viewers attention. This technique is particularly effective when you photograph using lateral light during sunrise or sunset. This is when you end up with areas of light and shadow, which can be emphasised using the dodge and burn tool described down below.

HOW DO YOU DODGE AND BURN PHOTOGRAPHS IN LIGHTROOM?

Introductions now aside, this is what you have all been waiting for. The one trick that is going to transform your photography and allow you to wow your audiences with mind-blowing photographs.

Lightroom Adjustment Brush Tool

Please note: I recently reverted back to an older version of Lightroom because of a catalog problem. I’ll upload a newer version of this blog for more recent versions of Lightroom once I manage to fix my issue.

Select the adjustment brush tool and set the exposure slider to around the 0.50 mark, this can be adjusted depending on the level of ‘dodge’ or ‘burn’ that you wish to apply to an area. For ‘burning’ photographs, you’ll want to move this slider into the minuses. As a general rule of thumb, I tend not to go over 1.00 either way because things start to look a little bit too extreme in my opinion. You should experiment and decide on your own formula to suit your style of landscape photography.

It’s also important that you adjust the ‘size’, ‘feather’, ‘flow’ and ‘density’ fields so that you get a lovely soft, gradual transition between your dodge and burn. The size will change depending on the area of the photograph that you want to dodge or burn. The other fields, however, should be adjusted to the following:

Feather: 100

Flow & Density: ~65

Again, you can experiment with these to see the different results that they produce. A stronger flow & density field will produce more extreme results and using a lighter feather will create a harsher transition between areas.

Once you have adjusted the brush to suit your requirements, you can proceed to paint in the areas that you wish to dodge or burn.

For extra fine tuning: Adjust the ‘range mask’ section to ‘luminance’ and increase the range slider to around the 60 mark. This will need to be adjusted to your own requirements. As you can see in the before vs after below, by adding the range mask this will ensure that the brush only applies to the lighter pixels. When applying the ‘burning’ to your photograph, this range mask will need to be flipped; the left slider will be moved all the way to the left of the bar and the right slider will be set to around the 40 mark.

Click to enlarge the images below.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Yep, that really is all there is to it. That is all bases covered; what is dodging and burning? Why use dodging and burning? And a simple and easy guide covering how to dodge and burn your landscape photographs in Adobe Lightroom. I was very surprised myself when I discovered just how easy it is to dodge and burn photographs within the editing software. Now, there is barely a day that goes by where I don’t use this trick in some way within my own photos. It really is amazing what can be achieved using this very quick, easy and simple Lightroom editing technique. Now it’s up to you to go away and see exactly what you have been missing out on this whole time. Have fun!

Brad

In Nature, I Belong

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

- Henry David Thoreau

‘Enlightened’

How did I end up here?

Out in the wilderness with nothing but my camera and the conversations in my head to keep company?

Wandering aimlessly, I find myself stumbling out of the mist onto a winding path that was lined with twisting silver birch trees, glowing in the glorious morning rays.

A sign.

Perhaps the light is reassuring me that I am moving in the right direction.

It may have taken me nearly thirty years, but I think I have finally found my way.

I'm tired but I can't stop now.

I hesitate.

Inhale.

The cold autumn air brings new life to my weary body and I scan the new surroundings with my icy blue eyes.

I keep on walking.

I place one of my feet in front of the other.

I'm scared.

This path shows no sign of footsteps.

I'm alone.

But none more so than in a crowded room, I remind myself.

My mind rests.

Safe in the knowledge that the trees would guide me home.

Diary of a Landscape Photographer | Entry 7

Perhaps I’m too young in my photography journey to put myself into a box and call myself a ‘landscape photographer’. Truth is, I love all kinds of photography but I feel a constant obsession with my task at hand and I’m not sure where this comes from. At the moment, this task is to create the best landscape photographs possible and it has taken over my life. What if this attitude is actually a hindrance?

And by that I mean, what if I am putting too much pressure on myself to create ‘better’ photographs all the time? Rather than just enjoying the ones that I am able to create at the moment because they are 10x better than those that I was creating once upon a time.

Do you see my conundrum?

I often feel unfulfilled with the photographs that I make because I know that there is going to be another one just around the corner. It’s part of who I am and who I always have been. It’s even meant that I have refused to sell a piece of work because I knew that it wasn’t the finished piece. I think I might be programmed to never be completely happy with what I have.

There are so many ideas floating around in my head about the kind of photographs that I want to create, most of which take time, patience, a better understanding of light and a whole lot more maturity than that which I currently have. Three years behind a camera is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.

I know that there are so many other things that I could be doing in the mean time, while my vision develops and matures but I’m scared that these might detach me from where I think that I need to be.

I have so many questions and nobody that I know who can answer them.