Tonight I thought I would try something completely different… I wanted to push the limits and process a photo in a totally different style to what I normally do. The first objective was to find a photo to use … and I chose the above photograph which was taken back in September 2014 at Joss Bay…

As you can see from the photograph on the right which is SOOC, there were some elements I wanted to remove, mainly the ship on the horizon and all of the surfers except for the girl that is just about to enter the water.

I started off in Lightroom and exported my photo into Photoshop, where I used the ‘Spot Healing Brush’ and ‘Patch Tool’. I already knew preset I was going to use once I returned the photograph back into Lightroom as I had already applied the preset before I sent it to Photoshop to see if that is what I wanted to create.

So I reset my photo, sent it to Photoshop and removed the objects I didn’t want. Then I re-imported the photo back into Lightroom and applied the preset I had chosen, which was one created by Serge Ramelli called ‘Tone: Bleak Mountains’ which comes from his Landscape collection.

I like the midnight blue tones of the preset.. but it wasn’t what I wanted to achieve.. so I altered the radial filter to remove the red tone that is in the clouds. I lighten certain areas down and reduce the clarity of water using the ‘Local Adjustment Brush‘. After that I added another radial filter to highlight the water and surfer girl… I then did some more dodging and burning on the cliff face. And I added some clarity to the buildings.

What I like about the final image is the midnight tones to the picture… Using another person’s presets, some might think, is cheating.. but I like to alter them to suit my style… I play around with the basic settings and any settings that are used via the radial filters and local adjustment brushes.

Sometimes it is nice just to try something new… and I thoroughly enjoyed processing this photo.