Brightness & Saturation

I'm not real big on editing my photos, for the most part I like to leave them as they are except maybe to make play with brightness. My reasoning is brightness and contrast are things that could be adjusted in a dark room. More recently, though, I've been working with color saturation, too - something else a little time in a dark room can fix. Here are two photos from my Vegas vacation and road trip that I thought didn't quite look right and needed to be fixed.

Smoke Blotted Out the Sun {Before}

Smoke Blotted Out the Sun {Fixed}

Traveling through either Arizona or Utah, a tree-covered mountain was on fire. The smoke was so thick that it blotted out the sun. The first photo was way too dark. The sun struggled through the smoke, but it was slightly brighter than that. The sort-of eerie lighting of the second photo is way more accurate.

Smoked Out {Before}

Smoked Out {Fixed}

The same with this photo, it was just a little dark and needed help. When it comes to saturation, there is a fine line between enhancing and making the coloring look fake. For both of these photos, I made the minimal adjustments to saturation, brightness, and contrast to bring out some of the details and make them look more accurate to what I remember.

See more Vegas Vacation photos at Flickr and at True to Words Friday Photography - Vegas Vacation, Part I.