Every once in a while I revisit older images to see if I could do a better job in editing the them. Thats what I did with this one.
It was taken a few years ago at Disney World while on vacation. This coke machine intrigued me because of the lettering as well as colours and bottles on the table.
The first thing I did was to crop the image square. I think this made the image more interesting.
As I was looking at it, the background was very distracting. What was there on the right side was a cream coloured stucco wall, the left side had a half wall, a dirty cream colour. Above that were some plants. I found this very distracting. So I decided to change the background for one I had saved on my computer for future use. To me this made a big difference. I was happy with the background now and I could play with the image.
Next was a little colour grading on the background as well as some contrast and a bit of a clean up to remove some lighter areas. The image looked better , but wasn’t there yet. I added a bit more colour grading and a little saturation for the yellow and cyan colours as well as the red coke machine which also helped the bottle tops. I still wasn’t happy so decided to add light to the upper right and to the top of the bottles to bring them out a bit more. The bottles are a very important part in my opinion. The bottles and the table really add much more interest. They sort of tell a story. The bottles are waiting patiently for their turn to be put into the coke machine. A very light vignette and I was done.
What do you think are the TWO most impactful features that make your image a good photograph? Don’t be shy!
The background helped quite a bit, a little more interesting. Enhancing the colours and adding light from the upper right creates more interest in the image. The bottles do add a lot of interest to the image as well and without them, I feel, it would just be another image of a vending machine.
If you would be able to make this photo once again, what would be the ONE thing you would like to do better or different?
I did already changed the background and that would be it.
Jerry Golab shared this photograph in the FRAMES Facebook Group.
Photographer
Jerry Golab, London, Ontario, Canada
Equipment and settings
I believe it was the Sony Alpha NEX-5 at that time.
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