teo crawford
October LR-Preset: Ueno Lanterns
Published: October 30th 2024, 2:09:42 pm
1. The monthly life update (infos for the LR-preset are below)
Hello! I hope you've been well and doing alright throughout October :)
Mine has certainly been extraordinary... in a very good way! The first week was a little wet so I was out shooting some rainy photography of which some will be coming up on the channel too hehe. Otherwise I had a lot of work to do during the beginning of this month.
Then towards the middle I had an exciting and wonderful new experience. Maybe you remember me promoting a group-trip to Japan earlier this year? That trip was scheduled to begin on October 10th and so on that day I got to meet the 10 lovely people who had signed up to join together with me and a local guide to explore Japan as a group for a week. I didn't really know what to expect and just went into this quite open to anything. To keep things short, it was great! It was so cool to experience the progression of us as a group slowly befriending each other and getting closer throughout the trip. The diversity in photographic styles, interests, setups was of course a fun thing to connect. And I couldn't believe how well the trip was working out in terms of logistics with our super competent guide and the weather, which blessed us with some gorgeous lighting :,)
Right after the trip I was on to the next adventure, a work-adventure: I got to work on my first ever Japanese freelance photography gig! I had the pleasure to shoot some photographs of a luxurious watch for a watch magazine. It was such an honour for me, to be able to do this and it was an interesting learning experience, especially because my communication skills in business-Japanese are veeery rusty (more like actually terrible haha). I filmed the process and will be showing you the behind the scenes and the final results probably early next year, once the magazine is published.
Anyway, with that job done I've now continued to work on the next video which is coming out just in time for Halloween (not that it's spooky or anything). This one is a BTS video from a night out in Ueno with the Lumix GX80. So here is a little teaser of the photographs that will be taken. This session directly created the preset for this month, which I shall explain below :)
2. The monthly LR-preset
This preset was created in order to give the photographs from an evening in Ueno a distinct stylish look that aims to emulate some of the colder leaning features you see from a tungsten balanced film such as CineStill 800T, while keeping the rich warm atmosphere that the lanterns in Ueno add to the scene. This preset is a bit specific and not so easily applicable on any photographs, except you like very blue photos.
The look contains a lot of blue that in combination with these warm photographs doesn't appear as strong as when the look is applied to a more neutrally coloured photograph from an overcast day. I recommend using this preset for night photography, especially when dealing with lots of warm lights like here in Ueno. However as can be seen in the preview, the preset can still be used with white-coloured lamps, which will simply give you a cool tone.
The preset will automatically brighten your image (supposing you underexposed your shot) and set your White Balance and Tint to ensure the intended look. Of course, this preset is not a one-click solution - please do adjust any settings according to your personal preference. My recommendation is to keep an eye on the Exposure slider especially and maybe the Shadows slider, in case you'd like to pull it back down a bit for some extra contrast.
Btw. I've also made a mobile version which is also attached to this post as a .xmp or a .dng file, whichever you need. Unfortunately this is not 100% the same look, because with mobile Jpegs it is not possible to apply the Adobe Colour profile, that Lightroom adds automatically when editing RAW photos. But it's very close and absolutely usable.
I hope you enjoy this preset! If you have any questions, you can ask me any time either in the comments or via a DM here on Patreon :)
Wishing you a lovely end of month! <3
Teo