Pop!

On my quest to improve my photography, I've been spending a lot of time on different photography blogs and forums, reading everything I can on techniques, post production, lighting and equipment to achieve different effects, as well as skimming through photos on Flickr that other people have taken trying to identify what I like about different styles.  Recently, I read a little piece on Digital Photography School about taking photos with color that pops, and this is definitely something I wanted out of my photos.  I feel like the colors I see in some things are so bright and vivid, and then as soon as I snap the picture a haze settles over it on my LCD screen.  It's very frustrating knowing what the photo was SUPPOSED to look like, and seeing what it actually looks like.

The gist of the article, which you can read here says that while choosing a subject and background correctly, for vibrant colors, post processing is almost always necessary.  I equate minor work in Photoshop to what a film photographer would do in the developing process.  I've been making an effort to work with my pictures to see what they could become with a little post processing, and while this might not be the best example, I think it gets my point across. 

Here's my Straight Out Of Camera shot, blah, flat, boring.

This is just changing a couple settings in RAW.  Exposure: Reduced, Sharpness: Increased, Contrast: Increased, Color Booster: Increased

That was less than 5 minutes of processing.  I'll probably work on this one more round before I'm finished, and may do what the article said about separating the foreground (child on bike) from the background (everything else) so that she pops, and everything else fades away.  My digital SLR came with the RAW software, Nikon's ViewNX, so I could get to this result without Photoshop (I did for this one).  I've heard you can do some of these edits in Picasa too if you don't have a RAW editor, or don't shoot in RAW, or have a point and shoot, and I know there are other options out there.  As far as my subject matter goes, to get a picture that pops, I would have been better off showing some spring flowers,

but I've been practicing panning, which is a topic for another time.