It's only been almost 4 years since my wife and I returned from our working holiday in the UK. We have literally over 5000 photos taken during our travels, which virtually no one has seen.
Having recently moved into a slightly bigger apartment we decided it was time to sift through the monster collection and find some worthy of printing on canvas and hanging.
So this is a sample of my attempts at enhancing some of the photos that might make it onto a wall.
Feedback most welcomed.
Loch Ness Boat Sheds
Some run-down boat sheds on the shores of the Loch Ness, taken from a boat. Lots of character in this photo.
Attempt One
I tried to emphasize the boat shed by desaturating the background and cropping in tight.
Attempt Two
I bumped up the saturation in the colour and tried to add a little more interest with an unusual background still in monotone.
Roslin Tree
I can't remember the name of the building but it is right next to the Rosslyn Chapel of The Davinci Code fame. The photo is actually taken within the grounds of the chapel.
After
I brightened the foreground and applied a filter to the sky to really lift the whole image. This is one of my favorites and I really like the warm tones of the stone.
Somewhere in Holland
A classic picture of some old windmills in Holland.
After
I silhouetted the windmills and played around with some filters for a while untill I got this dawn/dusk feel.
Colosseo
The Colosseum in Rome is a classic (or cliche), but it is actually hard to get a decent photo of.
After
Just a bit of cropping and desaturation. I also flattened the sky and removed a small bit of lens flare. I don't really like the results, but I don't know what to do with it.
Gondala View
Another cliche is the gondolas in Venice, however I think that this photo has some interest in it.
After I tweaked the contrast and a little bit of the saturation in the top half of the photo. I straightened the photo, which meant I had to crop it a little. I also tried to get the sky less washed out.
What next
As I get more comfortable with Photoshop (Gimp is terrible to the point of unusable on OS X) I am learning more tricks to lift some of the more bland images.
Overall I am quite happy with the results but would like to know what I could try or do different.
I really like your framing and composition, so I won't presume to advise on that score.
You asked about post-production in Photoshop. The Colosseum and the gondola look particularly good. Cropping is the most powerful tool, followed by tonal adjustments. Mid-tones often get crushed when playing around with tonal balance, so using the Shadow/Highlight tool can help punch those mid-tones back up. Getting control of your colour is the next big problem, unless you go B&W in which case desaturate the image one channel at a time for maximum control. The only 'filter' I use is something I came up with to mimic a soft-focus lens and which has been invaluable for me in making colours richer, shadows more luminous, and, critically, washing out detail I don't want. The technique also gives me more freedom to jack up the highlights without worrying about burn out - in fact, burnt out whites and soft-focus can be very pleasing.
I should get myself a blog and post the recipe for this technique some time ...
But the big trick for me right now is cropping. I'm finding new photographs in old source material this way. I'm finding better photographs than were there originally. For me, cropping works best when the borders and especially the corners pick up on linear rhythms in the photo. By pick up I mean almost literally pick up - I like to adjust the corners of the crop to a linear rhythm set up in the middle. Another thing you can do is flip the image upside down and back-to-front and crop it in that state - it helps the brain to look at the photo as an abstract design. (That's an old trick going back to Baroque sculptor Bernini.) I'm also now embracing geometric division of the photo ... even a rough guess at proportions and symmetry yields a stronger, more architectural image.
The critical thing is to know when to walk away. Look at a photo hard and ask yourself: does something in it really move me? Does it still move me shrunk down to thumbnail size? If it doesn't pass that test, I drop it.