Hey All!

I have returned from my blogging sabbatical and I thought I would shared my most recent before and after.

So, this past week I was up in Utah and was able to take my daughter Summer’s one year old photos. For her shoot I wanted her photo to radiate this magical, mystical  mood. In order to accomplish such as a task, I need to the right equipment and editing techniques.

And here are the final results.

Before

After

Curious of how I created this whimsical look?

I’ll tell you exactly how I did it. 

To begin the shoot, I had my Canon 5D Mark III with a 70-200 L 2.8 IS lens. My aperture was set at 2.8. I like to shoot at 2.8 because it has a softer depth of field. My ISO was set at 500 (it was getting a little dark outside so I needed to bump it up), my shutter speed was 1/125, and my white balance was set on sun. Also, I used my off camera studio strobe (Alien Bee B800) with a soft box. I use this flash to add a little pop into the photo, but just enough for it to appear natural.  I use the sun white balance mode with my light and shoot it cooler on purpose.

Once I captured the perfect shot of Summer (which is not an easy task for a one year old), I started the editing process, which took roughly 30-40 minutes for just the one photo. The first thing I do when editing a photo is look for distracting objects. I don’t want anything taking the focus away from Summer so I identify things that I believe are distracting and remove them. For instance if you look at the before you can see that I removed this dark spotted tree on the left. I cloned another tree in the photo to ensure all eyes would stay on Summer. In addition, I removed a piece of distracting grass in the foreground, and a black spot on Summer’s dress.

After I removed all distracting objects, I soften the foreground and background by adding a little more blur to them. Then I used actions and filters to tone the photo to the color and mood I desired. I choose to add lavender tones to the photo to give it a more fairytale and whimsical feel. Lastly, I added a sunburst in the top left corner to finish off the image with a dreamy mood I was looking for.  I do a little skin softening and selective sharpening and honestly it is as simple as that!

Have a happy Tuesday!

And keep your eyes open for more blog posts this week.