Sometimes we take an image of amazing locations, but then things just don’t quite turn out the way we saw them… something is distracting and really pulling away from the focus of your image. And that something isn’t actually what the photo was about…
Well, today I’d like to show you how you can shift focus in your photos by making use of Local Adjustments tools inside Adobe Lightroom CC (Classic).
While most of the tools I use are a part of Lightroom Classic CC you’ll be of course be able to achieve the same results with the older version of Lightroom.
The shot we’re looking at today is a location called Schiessentümpel, located in the heart of the Müllertal in Luxembourg.
It’s an overgrown, arching bridge that stretches over a little stream that features a small, triple cascade right below it. The perfect scene straight out of Rivendell or any other fairy tale really…
Unfortunately, when we were visiting in early December things looked a little different. 2 days of intense snowfall topped with a whole day of rain had caused the snow to melt and the water to collect in the streams.
Overflowing and brown water was blasting down below the bridge. No sight of the cascade… but the atmosphere wasn’t that bad. In fact, I quite liked the difficult shooting conditions. A downpour of rain meant I had the whole location to myself. A slight mist was in the air too. Very moody and almost creepy. The perfect time for a shot that looks like it was taken in an entirely different world. Which of course suited this location rather well.
To clean up the raging flow of water I decided to go for a long exposure. The stream would form the leading line and the bridge the focus point of my shot. That was the idea…
Unfortunately, all the whitewater dominated the shot and the bridge sank away in the distance, almost completely blending in with the background.
While I liked my composition, it was very obvious that I had to change something about the focal point of my image. The bridge was lost in the background and the long exposure had brightened the water far too much.
So here a step by step photo guide on how I did it. Be sure to watch the video for all the details.
And that’s it.
Many local adjustments to get to the final image and shift the focus from the foreground to the bridge in the distance.
If you liked this tutorial & would love to see more of these in the future, or if you have any other questions or comments please let me know down here in the comments.
– Chris
