My love-hate relationship...

with editing.  Photo editing and I have had a long (and mostly unpleasant!) history. I have always been of the mindset that I don't want to totally change the ways my photos look...in terms of general color, brightness, and style, I want my end vision to be what comes out of my camera.  If I have to change and modify a picture endlessly, then it isn't a strong enough picture to begin with.  However, sometimes a GREAT picture comes along though that just couldn't be, or wasn't, taken under ideal circumstances, and that is where the "love" part of that relationship comes along.  Editing programs can do some amazing things to a photo- more on that later!

I also am not a person who likes to see my photos completely blemish free.  When we got E's "newborn" photos taken, he was already 6 weeks old because I had  to have them taken by our wedding photographer, Beth, who we just adore...but we live 4 hours apart.  She happened to be coming to Bloomington for an evening when he was 6 weeks old, so we drove up and met her at ISU's campus on an EXTREMELY hot day and took E's photos.  He was a trooper, but we were all sweating and a bit fussy! ;-)  ANYWAYS, because we waited until 6 weeks, he was dealing with a great combo of baby acne (yes, this is a real thing!!) and dry skin, and had quite the issues on his face.  I remember being a little bummed about it at the time, but once we got them, we were so happy to have photos that truly reflected that stage in his life- babies go through it, and his sensitive skin is certainly a part of his inheritance from me!  We got lovely, real photos from the day that reflect him as he really is- which is something I truly love about Beth's photography (whether she means to produce this or not, I have always felt this way about her work!):


*These images belong to the wonderful BethLaurren photography!!!

In the same way when we went out to play in the snow for the first time with E (and by play in the snow, I mean hold in the snow!) and his nose and cheeks were red as could be,  I didn't want to edit that red out- it was a part of the playing in the snow experience!  In the cold winter months, there were endless tutorials online for editing those things out of a picture, and I just don't agree with that philosophy- those are a part of the story too!


Prior to the last 6 months, I was doing all my editing in iphoto.  Yes, iphoto, and let me tell you, there is pretty much no real adjusting that can be done!  Since then, I have completely fallen in love with lightroom4 (and have an occasional relationship with Photo Shop Elements when needed).  You can copy edits from one photo to others like it and it is SO easy to use!  I am not a major preset or actions girl (those are pre-made adjustments that you can apply to photos)- I didn't really know about them when I started, and I think learning to edit my photos using the adjusters and my eye has been infinitely helpful to my learning and forced me to work hard to get images right in camera, even though I believe many people get BEAUTIFUL photos using actions.

My style is still developing as I move forward, but I know I like bright, clean, and honest photos.  As I get more proficient with my camera, my pictures are often looking more and more like I want them to right out, and leaving less and less adjusting to do.  A crop here for creativity, a white balance adjustment for a photo that comes out of my Nikon a bit cool (which happens frequently).  It is becoming an easier and a very fun process for me.  Below are some straight out of camera (SOOC) shots from my senior session last week (blog post on that coming soon!) and their edits with a little explanation for the choices I made.


The one on the left is straight out, and looks pretty good.  I did a little crop for composition reasons, and adjusted the white balance to add a little warmth, and that was all!


Similarly, I cropped the top image because I thought my senior got a little lost with all that extra space.  This photo was also a bit cool straight out of camera, so I did a little white balance adjustment, and upped the exposure a bit and it was done!


This one was a bit different- the SOOC image on the left is pretty warm, but I thought it was lacking in contrast- her black dress wasn't quite black enough for me and it is a little hazy, which I didn't think was the right mood for this image.  So I added a little contrast and deepened the blacks, and viola!  I like both images a lot, and they have a different feel, but I think the one on the right is the one I will use in her gallery.

Do some of my images require a bit more editing than this?? Yes!!  Does an image here or there require a lot of editing to save them, but deserve that chance (a post with some of these will come later!)?  Yes!!!   But ideally, those bright, clean, honest images come right out of my camera.  And...my previous love-hate relationship with editing turns much more loving!