Over the last couple of years I've developed a reasonable facility with Lightroom (and to a lesser degree Photoshop). I can make a picture warmer or cooler. I can open up the lights in the shadows, or recover the highlights in several different ways. I have fairly good intuition for what each slider is going to do to any given photo: temp, tint, exposure, recovery, brightness, saturation, etc. (though the auto settings still surprise me more often than not).
However what I don't seem to have much handle on at all is when and why to do what to my photographs. Looking at a photograph of a bee or a bird, I have really hard time deciding which way to move the slider, or whether to move it at all. Does the photo have a color cast? And if so is it one that should be corrected or not, and if so by how much? How blue should the water be? How bright should the image be? Aside from obvious problems like blown highlights, what should the image look like?
Can anyone recommend any books or videos or such that focus on what to correct in a wildlife photograph rather than on how to correct it? When can I trust the auto white balance? Should I just bring a Color balance calibration target with me and shoot a frame or two of that every time the light changes? Any suggestions?







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