Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Temporarily Open for Business

Hi,
Just to let you know I will accept a few shoots between now and the end of March. Since we are expecting a new member of the family in April, I will be taking a break that month and until we are all settled again!

Thanks!

Friday, January 21, 2011

New FB page, mobile site

I've started a new facebook page to reflect my work as an artist, rather than a local business offering standard portrait photography. You can use the badge on the right side of the blog to go to it directly.

I've also updated my website so that when someone attempts to go to it with a mobile device (such as an iPhone or iPad) they will be redirected to a simple html site that I've created.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Website under development

I'm in the process of overhauling my main website. I'll post as soon as it is live!

I'm also updating my prices. I will now be offering packages, with a minimum required for a session. Hopefully this will help both me focus our sessions on the type of photography I want to offer, and give clients the kind of experience that I'm interested in giving them. I will also be working on an album prototype that I plan to start offering.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Post Processing

I promised to go over some of the post-processing I do to images. I am going to outline the steps I took with one of the images I posted last time. Remember, the exact order that I use varies, and every photographer has his/her own methods.

Let me start by saying that if you have an image that isn't sharp, or the eyes aren't in focus, there is almost nothing you can do to fix that. Also, if your lighting is incorrect, it is very hard to correct this in the post processing.

I will also say, I always shoot in RAW format. Little point and shoot cameras normally save your photos in jpeg. Also, if you use the auto settings on your DSLR camera, the photos will be saved in jpeg. The difference is that with jpeg, the camera does all the guess work about the color balance, contrast, etc, etc, and saves it as it thinks it should be in a rather permanent format. The editing you can do with the photo in jpeg format is fairly limited. With RAW format, the camera shows you a guess, but it saves ALL of the data so you can do all the editing you think needs to be done to make the photo as you pictured it in your mind or what you actually saw.

There are some professional photographers who shoot with jpeg (they are also smaller files to download to your computer), however these photographers do a lot of customized settings in the camera before and while they shoot, to make sure the camera takes it correctly. They do not rely on the camera to do the guessing.

Have you seen blueish images that are taken in the shade? Shade is naturally a little blue. You can fix this after the fact if you have a RAW format image and easily bring the warmth back in. Our eyes adjust to different lighting all of the time, and we don't notice difference in color of the light and reflections on people in real life. The camera doesn't do these adjustments very well.

I do most of my editing in Adobe Lightroom, and occasionally open a photo in Adobe Photoshop to do more precise adjustments in cloning or other changes. Adobe Lightroom has a magnificent subset of the controls that Photoshop has, that are aimed at the photographer.

#1 White Balance!
This is very important. Your camera will guess at the correct white balance and when you download, you need to make sure this is corrected. You can set the camera to several automatic white balances - daylight, shade, fluorescent, etc. It is helpful to set these so the camera is closer to guessing correctly when it takes the photo, but you normally still need to adjust this in your editing. Another example is if you have someone near something colored: the light reflecting off the colored surface (i.e. a red porch like I have) will alter the color of the photo and shadows on the subject. It can also interfere with true eye color, clothes color, etc. Here is the photo I took of my 22 month old daughter straight out of the camera with no white balance adjustment:


The sun had gone behind a cloud, so the light was softer, but the camera picked up the blueish tint. You might also notice the reddish shadows on her cheeks and chin. It isn't too noticeable, but our porch where she was sitting is painted red, and so the shadows show this. The red also interferes with the blue of her eyes which I had noticed that day looked rather striking with her blue jumper.The import settings were a temperature of 3800 and tint of 35 (towards the red)
Here is the photo with my first white balance adjustment:



 I adjust it a little warmer even at the end, but here it is set to a temp. of 6000 and a tint of only 10 toward the red. When I shoot a set of photos, the first thing I do is adjust the white balance of each setting (on one photo) then synchronize it to the other photos taken at the same time.

#2 Here I crop. I was planning to make an 8x10 of this photo, so I did this first. Sometimes I wait to crop to the very end. However, since Lightroom saves every step you do in the editing process, not to the final photo, but as instructions to apply to the photo, I can always adjust the crop larger or smaller later on.


#3 Now I went straight to the adjustments I did to her eyes. Normally I immediately adjust the contrast and brightness here. But in this case I did some work on her eyes first, then adjusted the contrast and brightness shortly after.

I like to bring the eyes out with selectively brushing brightness with the adjustment brush in Lightroom. I actually use this adjustment brush a lot in my work, which you will see later on as well. I like to brush a little brightness in the lower part of the eyes. I do not want her looking like an owl, but this helps to bring attention to the color and depth of the eyes that we often see, but isn't always captured well on camera.






#4 Here I adjusted the blue (in the saturation palette) up to +62 to bring out the blue in her dress a little.


#5 Contrast. I adjust the contrast to right around 50 with pretty much all of my photos (imported it is automatically set to 25). It helps the details to stand out much more.


#6 More brush work on the eyes. I normally adjust the contrast before working on the eyes at all, then do all my eye work together. I didn't do that this time, so I'm showing you what I did when I did it. Here I selectively brushed clarity around the irises, the pupil, and the eyelids (this helps them stand out a touch more), then brushed sharpness to the eyes themselves. I feel the eyes are the most important part of the photo, and my attention is normally specifically focused on them.

I also used the adjustment brush to selectively add a touch (just a touch) of blue back into her eyes. I have found with experience that I might see someone's eye color well, but the red porch reflecting light can cause the color not to show up very well in the photo. I wanted her blue eyes to show up better. I selected the brush, then the color palette and chose a very light version of the color I knew here eyes were, then painted it in to the iris. With most photos, I don't add color to the eyes. If you have them lit well enough, you generally don't need to.


#7 The adjustment brush again! In Lightroom you can choose to vignette your photos (darken around the edges). I do not like the global vignetting options, so instead I brush my own vignetting in. I select to lower the exposure and brush in the around the edges/corners and where I think it will help. I then adjust this up and down to where I like it (here I set it to -1.73). I sometimes like it more or less noticeable, depending on the photo. I don't like it to look to obvious.



#8 Here I adjusted the clarity on the entire photo. It isn't too noticeable, but enough that I like it a little better. Here it is set to +19:





I like this image as it is now. I printed these as 8x10s for her grandparents, and call it good. However, I like black and white images too, so I did change it to black and white, and printed some of these for ourselves, the blog, and the other set of grandparents, as you see in the previous blog.

I have set up my own preset in Lightroom for black and white. Originally I started with the general "grayscale" preset that came with the program, then I adusted the darks and shadows down quite a bit in the curves palette to bring more pop into the image. Here is an example with Lightroom's plain "grayscale" setting:



Here are the adjustments I add, with increasing the brightness and lowering the darks and shadows in the curves palette.



 The last thing I will note is that with this image, I didn't need to do any adjustments to my daughter's skin. She didn't have any acne, cuts or scrapes on her face! I do fix these with the healing tool in Lightroom when people have obvious blemishes.

I also don't do every one of these adjustments to every photo. Each photo I assess individually.

I hope this all helps. All the best in your own post processing!