Mmatthew93

Piximperfect on youtube. If you follow his tutorials, little by little you'll get good at editing. It's the best channel for retouching imo

I'd say composition is the most important thing, because light, color, shapes, framing, are all parts of the composition. You can have the same elements, but put them indifferent order, and the composition and final result will be different or incoherent.

I suggest reading 'framed ink' 1 and 2 to learn a lot about composition, then you'll start to see things in photography, movies etc. That otherwise would be hard to even notice.

With this knowledge you'll be able to consciously read all images instead of just having vague feelings while looking at them

Listen, the problem is that you have no idea what you're doing. So you should learn about retouching and photography more. Buying presets is completely absurd to a good photographer, it's a waste of money. Lightroom is very easy to use and is a minimal part of retouching. 10 years or 40 of experience are irrelevant. Better a month of experience trying to learn new things. So this cold shower was needed because you need to realize that you need a lot of learning,not just some advice on how to edit photos. Once you know the technical aspects of photography and you know the ins and outs of a software like Photoshop, because you studied from good teachers or professional resources, you can easily replicate whatever style you want without having to think much about it. It's like the gym where people work out for years completely wrong and achieve no results, while others study from the best resources and achieve a lot in just 6 months.

Now I highly suggest piximperfect as a YouTube channel. He shows you the correct ways to use Photoshop.

Put some colored plastic or gel in front of the lens and you'll get a strong vibe already. An example would be photos taken in red&black or blue&black etc. It will creare an atmosphere and it could be in that world the light that shines closer to the red or blue spectrum and thus you have those kind of colors. You can also put elements which are strange and out of place, like an aura around people which you can obtain with light effects, double exposures or other ways other than Photoshop. Or people in this universe have halos above their head. Or objects and/or people can walk through solid matter. Easy example would be a double exposure made in the corridor of your house where you seem to walk through a wall. Or people walking on air, or swimming through air, or sliding instead of walking. Or you can make it so that in this parallel world thought streams, or thought forms are visible. Slow shutter speed and you use long plastic strings and pull them, or some festoons, and it will appear as if a sort of colored beams are traveling around. Like two people in a room, and sort of beams or clouds moving between them as if they're communicating through their mind.

Or you can use strange things that don't make sense. An example would be a sort of family photo but the person in the middle is sitting in deep meditation and there's floating stuff around. Or you can show it's a parallel world by using our current technology plus things that doesn't exist yet. An example would be your living room, except there is a sort of floating surface on top of which stands your abat-jour. A sort of floating lamp. You can do that without Photoshop. Just find something.

Try at least to not take boring photos. If you really have no ideas, go and do something crazier than the other kids would do. A little idea would be using high aperture and fast shutter speed plus a flash, as you'd creare a sort of fake night time effect. Other kids will all have photos during the day, you on the other hand will stand out for having them 'at night'. The flash creates cool results. Another somewhat non boring idea that I guess no other kids are going to have is using the other competitors as your willing/unwilling subjects. You just shoot them while they're trying to take their pictures or whatever. Story with objects, you can shoot the shoes of your peers while they're walking around, or their cameras, or their bags.

I think here's a tutorial on the flash thing (you just use the one that comes with your camera) https://fstoppers.com/lighting/using-flash-change-your-photo-day-night-598896