I am very much looking forward to 2012! I absolutely love meeting and photographing families and capturing their love, their interactions, their wackiness, their very wonderful connection. So, I very much hope I get to meet YOU! Thank you for taking an interest in my work. I know that custom portraiture is your family’s investment – and because you have selected me to provide for you the highest quality experience in child and family portraiture, I’m happy to announce my 2012 Pricing.
It’s not too early to think about booking your portraiture session for the Holiday 2011 season. You might be traveling this summer, you’ll be enjoying lots of time with family at the beach, the pool or the campground. There will be time for sleeping in and taking naps! Awww, summer!
When is the best time to book a session? Shoot for September or October. It takes about 4-5 weeks after your actual shoot before you receive your digital images and prints. It takes me 7-10 business days to cull and upload your gallery. Then, it takes you, the client, 5-7 days to view the gallery and select your images for your collection. After that, it takes me 2-3 more weeks to post-process and digitally perfect your images, order prints, and to prepare them in my wonderfully cute packaging (click here AND here to view).
So, don’t put it off – book your session before your endless days of summer begin!
Okay, how cute are these???? Cute, right??? These accordion books make the PERFECT brag books for mom, dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles! They are small enough that you can toss them in your purse or display them at your desk at work, but they are also prominent enough that they will make a statement!
Someone is about to receive some goodies in the mail! A select sampling of what is included in the Gumball Collection.
Today, another installment of my post processing workflow – how I take a bland RAW file and post process it into my signature bold, bright style.
A few months ago, I posted the steps necessary for a photo shoot from start to finish, from the first email communication, to the packaging of the final product - CLICK HERE to review that information. And, a couple of weeks ago, I shared how I post process a backlit image. If you missed that post, you can CLICK HERE.
Loved this family. I swear, this little girl is the highest jumper I’ve ever met! Look at how much air she’s getting!
I started by adjusting the White Balance (warmed up the picture), then I brightened up the midtones so that it would be more obvious where the light was coming from and where the shadows should remain (you can see the sun was to “camera-right”). Then, I added some contrast – I usually use “Curves,” darkened patches on the ground using “Levels” and as a final step . . . . yep, . . . you guessed it . . . . saturated the color using “Soft Light”! That is it!
I am thrilled to showcase one of the cooooooolest products I offer – Image Boxes! These are definite best-sellers and it is easy to see why. Cute boxes containing your fave images from the session. Each image is matted on styrene and tucked inside this custom-designed, exquisite little box. These make wonderful gifts – I’ve been told grandparents swoon when they open up this gift! You know you want one, too!
A few months ago, I talked about my workflow from start to finish. Click HERE to see that blog post. In that post, I discussed some photoshop techniques that are part of my workflow, that make my images pop!
Below I show you a “before and after” comparison of one of my favorite images. And I’ll explain how I post-processed the image. But before that, I’d like to add that having a great camera, quality lesnses, and photoshop will NOT produce a great image. What will produce a great image is making the person or family that is being photographed feel like themselves and behave like themselves so that the images are truly representative of who they are, their relationship to one another, the moment. I really love getting to know the kids and families that I photograph before, during, and after the photo shoot!
Here is the “before and after” comparison:
So, as you can see, I didn’t process this image too radically – I wanted to remain earthy and organic to suit the natural beauty of S. and her surroundings. I started off with a little bit of cloning. Can you spot what is missing in the “after” shot? See it? See it? Yup! I cloned out the little irrigation tube! If I have to clone/remove objects in an image, I will do that first! Secondly, since this image is backlit, I brightened S. up, especially her face. I love how skin tones turn out so wonderfully with backlit images!! Then I added contrast to the picture to get rid of a little haze. I punched up the color by saturating and that is it!
Oh, and before I forget, I had to do a little bit of processing to this image because I shoot in RAW mode – a camera mode that carries more information/bits so that an image has more “color information.” The client’s final image quality is higher. However, a RAW image comes out of the camera looking bland – it needs processing before it can be turned into a jpeg that will print out beautifully.
I’ll have more “before and after” posts coming up in the next few weeks, so come back if you like this feature! ’Til next time.
2010 Sylvia Borgo {BLOG}
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