Adobe Lightroom Tutorial: Before & After Photo: Saquisili, Ecuador

Lightroom Before & After Photo: Indigenous Market in Saquisili, Ecuador

This photo was taken south of Quito, Ecuador in a small town know famously for it’s indigenous market. The town of Saquisili, Ecuador is well worth a stop if your in Ecuador. The market is open every Thursday and you will find things sold here that you wouldn’t anywhere else; from rabbits, pigs, cows and guinea pigs to cheap vegetables, exotic fruits and handicrafts. The best part of being at an indigenous market is it’s full of indigenous people and the worse part about being at an indigenous market is thats it’s full of indigenous people who hate having their photographs taken.

I’m serious when I say people here in Ecuador are really sensitive about being photographed. I took this photo about 60ft (18m) away and when I lifted my camera to take it (thinking I was all sneaky) she turned her head away and down. How she seen me I don’t know but I knew she did as I held and was waiting for her to look up. She did once to see if I had put the camera down and quickly put her head down. I snapped one shot and walked away as you never want to make a local mad.

The original photo was way over blown and didn’t know if I would be able to recover any of the highlights because so. I decided to crop it as well as I wanted to focus the image on the indigenous lady surrounded by her produce. The light was actually pretty striking, as there was lots of dark shadows and highlights everywhere in this photo.

I started first with highlighting the lady. I wanted to lighten her blue jacket and hat some. Then I highlighted the background around her to darken it some, thus brining more attention back on her and the produce. Last I highlighted the ground in front of her to blur some stuff out and to darken it just a tad. This left a circle of light directed on her which brought your focus to the middle of the frame.

Again, you can see below on the sidebar where I brought the contrast and clarity up. Notice though I pulled the Recovery tool all the way up to bring it back within range. This shot was seriously over blown at the start and is a good reason why one should shoot in RAW all the time. If it had been captured as a .JPEG I might not have been able to recover those highlights without adding a bunch of noticeable noise.