Split-toning a Dublin sunrise
I'm continuing to experiment with split-toning in Lightroom and really liking it! Have you tried it yet?
As I mentioned here a couple of previous times, I have started playing around with split toning in Lightroom, and I've come a good ways in understanding how and when to use it (though honestly, each application is different). It's a very simple yet powerful tool and I highly recommend you give it a whirl on some images, at least just for fun. You never know what you might learn, or what result you may get in the image (and I am working up a blog post about how I use it, along with my thoughts on it, and that will go live on Thursday, so come back and check it out!).
So that's what I did today...I tried a little split-toning and liked the results quite a bit!
I caught this beautiful sunrise one morning in Dublin, Ireland on my last trip there. It's always worth getting up and heading out early no matter where you are, but I find it especially productive in Europe. These tourist areas are always crowded, except at sunrise - so that's when I prefer to start my shooting.
The sunrise was pretty to start with, but split-toning gave me a little extra "oomph" in these images and really made them pop. If nothing else, it added a little extra drama to the already beautiful light.
All of these were shot with my old camera, the Olympus OMD EM-1, and shot with the Panasonic/Leica 15mm f/1.7 prime lens attached. While I have since sold all my Olympus gear and moved over to Sony, I did not wait long to pick up a comparable prime lens for the Sony camera. I am now using the Sony 28mm f/2 prime lens, and really loving it. You can see my recent review of it here. Let me know if you have any questions!
And in case you were wondering, all of these images are just single exposures - no HDR. While I still love HDR, I am only using that technique when I feel it will really help the image, or where it's just sorely needed. Especially with my Sony camera, I can capture so much in a single exposure that there isn't always a need to use HDR. Plus, I don't always want the light to be perfectly and evenly distributed (which is what I generally think of as the main benefit of HDR). In today's photos, I intentionally left deep shadows, which in my opinion helped the image, and there's nothing wrong with leaving a little to the imagination, right?
