Flying Cowboy? (candid)

[Ree]

At a farewell party at the flying club we attend... meet K2 cowboy/instructor. To this day he doesn't know I took this shot from my deck chair

opps sorry my Sony edited to a smaller pic

Think I need to fix the exposure or maybe decrease the shadows in PP?

Any tips

[Alpha_7]

Hi Ree,

Firstly the shot is larger then the 800 pixels on the longest side, just a heads up that posting pics bigger then that is being cracked down on so you might want to resize.

I'd say a bit of fill flash wouldn't have gone astray here to counter-act the shade. If you shot in Raw you might be able to fix the exposure a little, perhaps combining two exposures so you don't blow out the background?

[Ree]

Hi Ree,

Firstly the shot is larger then the 800 pixels on the longest side, just a heads up that posting pics bigger then that is being cracked down on so you might want to resize.

Fixed up now.

Always shoot in raw will have a go at fixing the exposure...how can I ...

perhaps combining two exposures so you don't blow out the background?

[ozczecho]

Another option is to spot meter of the subject (in this case the cowboy), instead of matrix meter. The background will be blown but you care about the subject.

[mudder]

Spot metering when taking the shot would have helped, or using some fill flash, but if you want to play with this shot in PP...

One way that might help is to use the magic wand in PS, and select everything around the subject, then invert the selection so you've now only got your subject selected, feather the selction a few pixels, then use levels to bring the highlights of your subject up maybe? Only suggesting selecting everything around the subject first then inverting the selection as it would probably be an easier selection to make, rather than trying to select the subject itself at first...

There's probably heaps of ways, that's just the first that came to mind...