Before and After

I have received a number of emails as of late asking how I process my images. It has been a while since I have shared a before and after with anyone. I would like to share a lot more. (More on that to come a little later in the post.)

The purpose of this post is to outline my thought process when I edit an image. Some of my biggest ah-ha moments in photography happened while printing images during my early years as a photographer. My digital work flow is based entirely around my approach to printing b&w film images.

Above is my straight out of camera image. I will be honest I am using an image that requires more editing than most of my images. For my liking, it is a bit flat. It was raining during this shoot. As you can see over the brides left shoulder, there was much heavier rain coming our way fast. If I had more time and wasn’t afraid of getting my gear a little wetter than it already was, I would have added some direction to the light with a video light or off camera flash on the bride. Unfortunately, time and lack of rain wasn’t a luxury I had, and I new there was an image to be made.

To make my editing as easy as possible and give myself the most flexibility in how I interpret the print, I want to create an exposure with as much information as possible. The same goes for my RAW conversion. My main concern is that my color balance, brightness, and tonal range are as close to what I have envisioned as possible. I don’t want to make any wild global adjustments that may cause me to lose detail in the highlights and shadows at this point. I want full tonal ranges with detail in the blacks all the way through the brightest areas. Today’s cameras, really shine when it comes to making these kind of exposures and allow for a good amount of post production without any problems with noise.

One thing I see a lot of photographers doing, is slapping down a little funk on their image. I like funk! I have been known to use a texture or color effect action in my day. There are many photographers I absolutely admire for the moments they capture that I see applying these looks very consistently to their work. The above has more life in it than the original and only took 15 seconds and three actions to produce.

This may be the old man in me creeping out, my fear is this look will be as dated as spot coloring a few years down the road. (Trust me I fight the urge to use textures in particular. If you look back at my work two years ago, you will see plenty.) My feeling is color and B&W images will have a much more timeless feel when a couple shares their images with their children 10, 15, 20 years down the road. Does the texture or color effect add to the image? That is your call as the artist!

The above image shows all the layers and selective adjustments I made to create my final vision for this image. This is definitely a more time consuming method than the last edit. Though, most people would be surprised how quickly these adjustments can be made with the proper work flow in place. Is that extra time worth it? That is up to you.

Almost every adjustment I made is selective. I want to individually adjust very specific areas of the image’s brightness, color, contrast, saturation, etc. to direct the viewers eye to the bride.

One final look at the before and after.

I am considering producing a series of live video demonstrations of before and after images if anyone is interested. I think what could be especially fun is working on your images. If you have an image you would like considered, please send me an email with a 800 pixel wide image (PLEASE NO FULL SIZE IMAGES!!!) that hasn’t been retouched to biff@vada-voom.com If I select your image, I will request a full size file.

Happy editing!

Biff Ulm – VADA Photography