This original raw image was created during the golden hour. It was my intention during this photo walk to photograph with a 35 mm prime lens and practice being inconspicuous as I photograph people.
Raw image
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/160 s 35 mm 400 ISO
The post processing of the above raw image included adjusting the white balance, contrast, sharpening, shadows, and highlights as well as tweaking the exposure warnings, saturation, clarity, and structure. I also used Nik Effects Dfine to address noise and Vivezaz to lesson the shadow of the two young men. The horizontal field was slightly adjusted using the building in the background before cropping. I thought that including the path’s curve would be more likely to allow the image to breathe and to invite an imaged story about the family.
I have found that adjusting for sharpness, clarity, and structure requires a bit of attention to highlight and shadow adjustments. When I read Raj’s explanation, “the white balance of a camera is a setting where you tell the camera what actually white color” reminded me about past tutorials that have recommended using the color picker to set the white balance from a grey color or color natural area. Grey to create white?
The cropped monochrome image (processed within Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4) below is an example of the sharpness of the 35 mm lens. I found that the closer cropped image invites me to image a story more about the two young boys than the family and reminded how I found myself smiling as I watched them engaging life as the sun settled in the west.
Thank you Raj for this amazing opportunity to explore and expand my understanding of photography.
a meditative journey 
I love how you crop the photo, the result tells the joyfulness of these two boys were having. You photos
OOps… I hit the reply key by mistake.
I was going to say that your photos always tell stories. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your thoughts…it is always great hearing from you.
I enjoy reading this. It’s a very nice post for the lesson, Brenda.
I like your original photo a lot — the colors are rich. It has that golden hour’s magic in it. Editing is not my strength. Can’t wait to read Raj’s comment.
Have a great evening.
Thank you for visiting and sharing your thoughts Helen
Thanks Brenda for your express submission. Great to see you here.
The great family moment captured candidly. The candid nature of the picture makes it much more interesting. I generally spend too much time watching each and every detail in such pictures as these are natural ones. Like the contrast and the richness of the colour here in the raw.
Crop: I feel that still the image is tilted to a small angle. When you look at the gate in the extreme right the image looks tilted. We can’t rely on anything man-made, as it all depends on the orientation of these things. I would crop a bit of the right and top. This way family and their walk towards that building make the story. However the edits kind of overexposed the shot. I know you try to show the kids in proper exposure, but see unless you are shooting a portrait or a group photo that’s not required. Here the story is the “family”, not the “individual”. If you carefully check woman’s jacket, it looks kind of overexposed. The image also needed a bit more saturation. Whenever you have a picture with greenery think about adding bit more saturation. In this case, saturation looks reduced from the raw. When there are people in the picture, be very careful about increasing the sharpness, because it tends to add more lines and that is not liked by any.
B&W: This makes the story clear as there are no other diversions here. You can even see the expressions of the boys here. Also shows how girl child is stuck to mom irrespective of the action from boys. Mother looks to be in her own world.
White Balance: Actually grey is considered to be more neutral in terms of exposure and colours combined. So mid-tone grey is used as reference point. Pro-photographers always recommend using a grey card to set the white balance. But I must confess I always put my camera in “auto wb” mode and do the adjustment later in PP. I know that’s not the right method.
This critical review is part of XDrive’s photography learning sessions. Thanks Brenda for being here.
Raj
Thank you so much for your feedback. I appreciate the time you invest in this process and your attention to detail. I will redo this image with your suggestions and will “re-hand” in the assignment in another post. 🙂