There is something about a lighthouse that demands a certain kind of stillness. I\u2019ve spent more hours than I care to admit standing in the wind, looking at these structures\u2014whether it\u2019s Poolbeg Lighthouse in Dublin or a lonely sentinel on the coast of Portugal\u2014waiting for the light to match the mood I see in my head.<\/p>\n
I love videos like this one; there is so much to learn, and as we all know, the raw file is rarely the final destination. Often, the camera captures the facts, but it\u2019s our job in post-production to find the feeling.<\/p>\n
I recently came across a tutorial by Steve Stain that gets right to the heart of the “Fine Art” workflow. He takes a shot of Dover Court Lighthouse and demonstrates how to move past the distractions of the real world\u2014the groins, the walkways, the clutter\u2014to create something painterly and minimal.<\/p>\n
Steve\u2019s approach is refreshing because he doesn’t treat Photoshop like a scary, separate entity; he treats it like a surgical tool to fix what Lightroom can\u2019t quite reach.<\/p>\n
The “Landscape” Masking Trick: Lightroom\u2019s new AI landscape selection is a bit of a game-changer. Steve uses it to separate the water and sky instantly, allowing him to pull the exposure up on the dark water to meet the sky before he even thinks about blending.<\/p>\n
The Photoshop “Surgical” Strike: While Lightroom\u2019s “Generative Remove” is getting better, Steve isn’t afraid to hop into Photoshop to truly clean the frame. By separating the lighthouse and the sky into layers, he\u2019s able to stretch the sky and blend the horizon in a way that feels organic rather than “photoshopped.”<\/p>\n
Light Direction Is Everything: By adding a radial gradient that mimics the actual direction of the light, he adds a three-dimensional “glow” that pulls the eye exactly where it needs to go.<\/p>\n
What I love about Steve\u2019s process is his admission that he often ends up with three different images\u2014a color version, a high-contrast black and white, and something in between. It\u2019s a reminder that we don’t have to have all the answers the moment we sit down at the computer. Sometimes, you have to “wander” through the sliders just like you wander through the landscape.<\/p>\n
Fine art photography is often as much about what you remove as what you keep. Steve\u2019s workflow is a masterclass in that subtraction. So, next time you\u2019re looking at a cluttered raw file that feels a bit “messy,” don’t delete it. Have a watch of Steve\u2019s process and see if there\u2019s a minimal masterpiece hiding under the surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is something about a lighthouse that demands a certain kind of stillness. I\u2019ve spent more hours than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-218923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}