Editing Style (Before & Afters) {Fresh, Clean, & Simple}

I thought long and hard of how I wanted to explain this post - my style & artistic view behind my work. I've been asked the same questions over & over again - "how do you edit your images"? I think for a lot of non-photographers (or maybe even photographers too) they somehow think it's magic & that you could take any image and turn it into something beautiful. I want to clarify that for one, it's not magic, and two (most importantly) you cannot take any image and turn it into a work of art with just a push of a button. The first most important part of photography is taking a good image & then being able to build on it. When I first started photography I thought it was fine to make mistakes thinking "I could fix it later". Looking back, I realize I wasted a lot of time & didn't even get the results I wanted to. About halfway through my first year I challenged myself to shoot in nothing my Manuel Mode on my camera. I was pretty apprehensive at first & felt overwhelmed with the idea of setting my own Aperture, Shutter Speed, & ISO levels, but one very important thing I found by doing this was it gave me complete control over my exposure & how my images looked in SOOC (straight out of the camera). It made a huge impact on my workflow & there was no more "I'll fix it later".

As far as the editing goes...I do all my workflow in Lightroom. It's a great tool & can be a powerful one once you truly understand it & all that it can do. I prefer to edit very quickly & I never spend more than a minute on each image, because for one, I don't need to, and second, I don't have the time. I normally edit 30-75 images per session I do & generally my turnaround time is 5-10 business days. My editing goes pretty fast & I don't usually spend more than 1-2 hours editing a clients proofs of 30-75 images. This wasn't always true - like I mentioned before, at the very start of my business I took wayyyy too long editing. One reason was I didn't know my style -I was still figuring it out. Once I dialed into my style & how I wanted my images to look, it literally cut my time in half. My style of editing is clean, fresh & simple. I don't want to take away from the image, but instead build on it by enhancing color & correcting skin issues. I edit all of my images the same, so my customers are guaranteed consistency - skin is always softened & color is always enhanced.

Below are some examples of images SOOC (straight out of camera) & after my Lightroom edits. As you can see the images where in focus, eyes are sharp, and exposure is dead on making it easy to adjust a few things to end up with final images that look like this:



This first image of Alex (isn't she gorgeous!) was shot mid-day with my 85mm 1.8 (LOVE this lens).  I set my my aperture at 1.8, shutter speed at 1/500, and ISO 160.  As you can see they eyes are sharp & exposure is dead on.  Editing = I simple softened the skin & enhanced the color (I did not add make-up or anything to her face, but just simply brought out the light pinks in her cheeks & lips).

This image of Kelly was taken right before sunset (first image = SOOC and second image = Lightroom edit).  Again, I used my 85mm 1.8 lens (did I mention, I LOVE this lens) and set my Aperture to 1.8, Shutter 1/200, and ISO 320.  Edit = Skin Correction, color enhancement, and vignette.

This image of Kristen was taken about an hour before sunset.  Again, I used my 85mm 1.8 lens and I set my Aperture to 1.8, Shutter 1/500, and ISO 100.  Edit = softened skin, color enhancement, and vignette.

This image of Danielle was taken about  20 minutes before sunset (first image SOCC / second image Lightroom edit).  I used my 50mm 1.4 (another favorite lens) and I set my Aperture to 3.2 (a higher apeture since Danielle is angled so that both eyes are sharp and in focus), Shutter 1/80, and ISO 100.  Edit = softened skin, color enhancement, and lens vignette.

This image of Madi was taken around 11am in the morning (SOCC / second image Lightroom edit).  I used my 50mm 1.4 lens and I set my Aperture to 4.0 (another high apeture so that Madi is completely in focus while the background is blurred).  If I was to attempt shooting this wide open at say a 1.4, her eyes would probably be the onlything in focus & since I wanted her whole face and beautiful hair to be tact sharp, I opted for a 4.0 (I usually never go above a 4.0 unless I am shooting a nightshot), Shutter 1/125, and ISO 100.  Edit = softened skin & color enhancement.