Happy Halloween!
I carved that pumpkin last night….I’ll post a pic later today or this evening.
I wanted to get a head start on my blogging today, I have a busy day planned: I have about 798652314 photos to process, then a Halloween party at my daughter’s school, then carve one more pumpkin, make dinner, then trick or treating!
Today’s topic was easy for me to think of… I was asked a question in the previous post so I decided to answer here. Jen asked: “I’m very curious about the b/w horse one – was the light effects (and the arc) achieved in editing, or did you just luck out with natural lighting?” And on her blog she wrote: “Her photos are stunning. I’m going to have to spend some time figuring out how she got these shots. Photoshop or camera?” (thanks Jen!!)
In that particular horse photo, that lighting was achieved in Photoshop. The original image was a hot mess, but I loved the composition. Like a dummy, I forgot to change the white balance on my camera (I shot this jpeg) so this was the result:
I played with it a little, and tried to fix the color, but I wasn’t happy with the result. Color just wasn’t working for me, so I turned it b&w and added the vignette since the sky was so blah:
I liked that, but I wanted to play a little with some textures. There are some great things being done lately, using textures to create mood, particularly in wedding photography. Wedding photographer Jesh De Rox has been a big influence for a lot of people, and he has sets of actions that can be applied to create mood and feeling in photographs. But before I invest in anything like that I just wanted to play around a little, and see what I could come up with on my own. I like the textures, but it’s only something I would want to use in moderation. And the result was this:
It’s a little more processing that what I normally like to do, but I was still pleased with the result.
To answer the second part of Jen’s question–she basically just wanted to know how much PP I do. The answer is pretty simple: Aside from the occasional image like the horses, I don’t do much. I learned photography on film, I shot film for about a hundred years, and I only began started shooting digitally earlier this year, when I decided I wanted to go pro. When shooting film, you quickly learn to get it right in as few shots as possible, and you learn to create the image IN camera. Back in the day, unless you wanted to spend hours in the darkroom (I never had the attention span for that) you really had to know how you wanted your final print to look beforehand and take that into consideration before clicking the shutter. There are about 10 billion debates on film vs digital on the web, and I’m so not interested in getting into that here, but I really do believe that film is the best way to learn the fundamentals of photography.
Now that I shoot primarily digital, I still try to apply those same principles to my approach: consideration of the final print, trying to create IN camera. I love bright, punchy color, and I use different camera settings to achieve the look I want more consistently. When I post process, I usually only touch levels, a boost in contrast here and there, since I have the habit, albeit purposeful, to over-expose by a half stop or so. I will also sharpen a bit, then perhaps add the vignette. I don’t know why, I just love that. And that’s pretty much it. There are a number of great Photoshop Actions out there too. I haven’t used any yet, but I’ll definitely be purchasing some before the next wedding season begins.
Obviously, there are images that require a bit more, maybe a warming filter, a color adjustment or whatever, and I’ll do that when necessary. But as a wedding photographer, when I’m facing 1500-2000 images to process, I have quickly learned to come up with the most effective and efficient method of enhancing my images. And creating the best possible image IN camera has been the most effective way for me to minimize my time correcting or enhancing images on the computer.
I hope that answers your question, Jen!
