An Example of Tinkering - Playing with Post-Processing

I'm home from work but can't relax. My head is all over the place. Deadlines at work. Big changes coming at my other job. How to plan for all of this? I need to do this-and-that for my side project! I also need to pay bills and exercise and make dinner and...

I don't do any of those things.

I take some of my own advice and tinker.

Night Shots

Masashi Wakui has some really cool night shots of Tokyo. A lot of the appeal is in his unique post-processing. I like this photo from him:

I take a closer look at his photos, to figure out what he's doing.

Can I achieve a similar look with some of my own photos? I have some shots from Hong Kong that might work.

In Lightroom, I try things until I'm moving in the right direction. I need more blue over here. How does he get his signs to glow? What if I lift the shadows a bit?

I'm pretty happy with how these look. They're more interesting than my original post processing attempts.

I can't replicate the look too well. Turns out Wakui uses split toning and HSL and some effects Lightroom doesn't even have. I call it good enough and export a few photos.

These shots won't make me any money.
I still have a ton of 'real work' to do.

But that's not the point.

For a few hours, my head was clear.
For a few hours, I got to play.

I need to do that more.

Photos taken with a Fujifilm X-Pro2 and the 16mm f1.4