Colby was not in the modeling mood, but this picture is still a keeper, like most of my favorites from a shoot, I look at it and think what might make it better, then I get to playing. First thing is I removed the little scratch near his eye in about a second using the healing brush. His eyes are obviously the focus of this picture, so I made a selection with just his eyes and made a separate layer to run the sharpening action I have. I wish I could remember the exact numbers for this action, Scott Kelby teaches this particular action in his book 7 Point System book.
Next I used the color selection tool to select the face, and I added a little gaussian blur, really he didn't need it, but I did it for the purpose of this touch up work flow. Next, I turned it to my black and white. It's the same process as I mentioned in a previous post with the addition of a hue set to #30 to make it a little warmer.

Photoshop black and white conversion

I've taken a picture from yesterdays shoot with 2 month old Colby to demonstrate a black and white conversion.




I love black and white pictures, you probably know this if  you've seen much of my work.    A lot of times if I don't like the lighting, or the color cast, or I didn't get the exposure right I'll zap it into black and white with the hopes of saving a picture. I'm not saying that's the only reason I use b&w, no way, I love to take a good picture and make it even better with a nice black and white conversion. I've made it a point of learning the best ways to convert color pictures to bold beautiful black and whites. There are plenty of good ways, but I would highly recommend staying away from the "desaturate" button. Even in the most advanced photoshop  (CS3) the black and white conversion is flat. You need a couple of extra steps to make it really work.

For this example, I've started out with a nicely colored picture, decent expose, decent contrast. In the second frame I added the black and white adjustment layer - sure it's still a cute picture but the black and white is very dull. To make it pop in the final frame, I added contrast using a curves adjustment layer. I also adjusted the levels in another layer, boosting the blacks and brightening the whites. Now this sounds like a lot for 1 picture but with a few extra strokes you can save an action and have it to use every time you need it. I'll go into making actions another day :)

Any questions or comments?  

Ring Dance

What a difference a year makes. I would say that it was about a year ago when I really started trying to get better at photography. I'd always taken pictures, and I thought I was pretty good at it -- looking back now I can admit  I was not. What had happened was I went to photograph my eldest daughter and her friends for ring dance, I'd sent my pictures to my mentor and she pretty much hated them. How did I know that you might wonder? Well she told me clearly everything that was wrong with them, and on some she would say something like, pretty girl..that was code for that's all that is good about this picture. Wow did I have a lot to learn. One of my biggest oversights while photographing was that I didn't pay attention to the background. I tried to work with the light, and I tried some basic posing but I was oblivious to the backgrounds. That's why, while my daughter and her friends looked gorgeous the pictures were super amateur primarily because of the lack of thought that I put into what was behind them.  Not to mention this was also pre photoshop for me. 

This year I didn't want my daughter's ring dance pictures to look like snapshots so we drove to a nearby park -- this almost instantly removed my need to find a nice place to pose, that was everywhere. I didn't even have to worry too much about the direction of light because it was gray outside, what I did focus on was group/couple posing. We ended up with some really fun shots that I shouldn't hate in a year - check back with me in 2009 about this.

Zoe's got curly hair, but for this day a friend of the family volunteered to straighten it, then put some ringlets in, she had no idea what she was getting into - this took about 2 hours. What I love about this pic and why I wanted to share it is because I feel like I captured a true moment - that simple. 



These next two were the idea of one of my girls - I loved it. I cropped them square just because I thought it worked better and I put a cross processed filter on this first one, and did an antique action on the next, just to mix it up some.

All these pics are with my f/2.8L lens that I like to refer to as my baby.  It took me about 10 pictures to get my exposure spot on, with it being so overcast, shooting without a flash wasn't working well so I used a fill flash the whole time.  I kept my settings for the day at f/4.0 - 1/60 - ISO 200  in this case the flash didn't fire but I saved it by making it black and white.  It's got the strong shadows, but I think it works.

This next one is possibly my favorite for the day. My daughters like to make up soap opera-ish scenarios to tell the story of this threesome.  All your creative stories are welcome, but make it outrageous.  

I converted this picture to sepia with one click in Lightroom.  I also had to clone out the towel we had under Zoe to protect her dress from the wet bench. 

This pose worked out really well - 

Here again the flash did not fire, so what could have been a beautifully exposed picture like the one just above this turned out terrible with these strong shadows and blurry to boot.  I would normally just delete it, especially when I have 5 other perfect ones on the bridge, but I felt it was such a fun picture that couldn't let it go, I saved it by making it this bold black and white. Does it work?

Rock & Ryan

I may not know Rock very well, but after a couple of hours with Rock and Ryan I knew one thing for sure, he loves her! It's sweet, romantic and clear that these two belong together




I went with a romantic black and white for this one, giving it  little blur and a softer black and white conversion than my normal  high contrast black and whites prints

This picture was taken an the road to Back Bay, I love this spot, it's like God placed this tree here just to set up  great Kodak moments for me.

Mike and Janee

I'm so lucky that Janee had to change the date of her wedding and that she found me. They got married in a an old church in Norfolk, I love those old buildings. I was able to process 900 pictures for her in record time. I had them 1 week later. I posted 300+ pictures of the day in a gallery on my website if these shots leave you wanting more.

I think this is a great example of window light, sure it would have been nice to have reflector on her left side, but I like the strong shadows the window light created.





I grabbed this one as her cousin was taking their picture, I couldn't let someone else get the shot right? I love how her son is looking at me.










I've never been one to take pictures of stuff, I've always been all about people, but it's a standard shot to get the rings, and usually in some creative fashion....we'll mine isn't very creative, but I like how the rings look so I posted it. I had to do a bit of color correction with the white balance tool in Lightroom and I sharpened the rings to give them a little extra bling.




This is my favorite grab of the day, it has that paparazzi feel to it, and i can feel her excitement in the picture.

Chase and Drake

Giving this little man the freedom to run around the park made for a challenging shoot, but when I was able to get his attention and his older brother's at the same time it was all worth it.

Steve & Genna

I think engagement portraits are my favorite of all shoots. It might be because you get to have fun with the couple. I have the bad habit of taking too many pictures any given trip out. On this day I took 270 pictures. Way too many.  The first thing I do is upload them from my camera into Adobe's Lightroom.  Then I back these files up onto my external hard drive. Next up is going through and deleting anything that's just not good - in this case I think that blinkage had me delete about 20 pictures, then I had to look at a picture and figure out the tiny differences that would make a picture better. Then I make sure the color is what I want it to be in LR. Now comes any Photoshop playing.  I like to offer a wide variety of pictures so that's my excuse for taking so many pictures....even so I am trying to cut back on the number of pictures I take because I  end up with more work after the fact. I ended up loving 67 pictures and you can see all of them at their gallery

Every shoot I end up totally in love with 1 or 2 pictures, this is the 1. On our way to Norfolk Brandon (my assistant in training) and I were thinking up ideas, it's good to have a vision in your head of some of the pictures you want to capture,  and in my case, brainstorm. The cool thing about this picture is that it wasn't directed. Most of the other poses were directed if only a little but in this case he came out of nowhere and kissed/dipped her, just like in the movies. I only had time to get off this one shot and It was perfect.



There isn't much to this picture except the smile on her face and his "I'm so charming" expression....you just can't stage that, priceless!



Every engagement session has the shadow shot doesn't it? I cranked the color and contrast to make it a little more fun than the original.



Here is another classic pose, I'd say the sheer happiness dripping from their pores makes it a winner.

please feel free to leave your questions and comments about this shoot or any other. 

Thanks for stopping by ---  Andi

Austin

Here are some pictures from a senior shoot today at the oceanfront. I don't get to work with guys very often, it's a whole new world. Things that work with girls, are totally out the door, I am constantly focusing on the "manly-ness" of the pose. He was a good sport and since we he wasn't a big "poser" I opted for more variety in the backgrounds. Color! I went on a search in Virginia Beach for bright walls, and we also went to Fort Story to take some pictures there. I think him sitting on the rocks is against base rules, but we moved quickly and got out of there. As for the editing, aside from making high contrast black and whites, I boosted color and contrast. That was it for today's shoot.