Missionary

Showing me his favorite scripture.  Philippians 4:13, a classic (by the way, who knew that Philippians was spelled with two p's??).

Happy Little Babe

Happy Little Babe II

Before & After | Photoshop Magic

I secretly love seeing when other photographers show their Photoshop before and afters.  It's interesting to me to see peoples' different techniques and tastes.  For me, I prefer Photoshop in small doses.  Less is, most definitely, more.  I cringe when I look at my photos from years ago when I was a Photoshop novice because I used every feature and tool available and it was just way too much.  I like to treat it the same way I treat wearing make-up:  it should only be used to enhance, not distract. 

My friend, Thomas, recently had some head shots taken by a friend unfamiliar with Photoshop.  It's the details that make the difference, especially if you're printing or enlarging a photo, so when he asked for my honest opinion of the head shots I kindly asked him if I could have a go at touching them up.  So (with the permission of Thomas and his photographer friend) here are the results:

BEFORE

AFTER

It's fun, isn't it?!  It's kind of like photography Where's Waldo style, where have you to look hard to see if you can spot the differences.  : )

(Just a little run down of the process:  the clone tool over any blemish, the dodge tool around the eyes, a little color balancing to warm up the skin, and some slight cropping to apply the rule of thirds and give the photo some movement.)

BEFORE

AFTER

These next photos posed a particular challenge that I hadn't encountered yet in the few years I've been in photography.  Twins.  I really wanted to have my aperture at a lower setting so my depth of field was more shallow, but if I did that then I wouldn't be able to get both sets of eyes in focus.  Now, I don't believe in taking short cuts during the session because you know you could "fix it" in Photoshop later.  But with this particular shoot I knew that Photoshop had to come to my rescue if I were to get both the boys in focus and achieve the look I wanted.  So I took two versions of every photo:  Baby A in focus and Baby B in focus.  And with the trusty help of the handy dandy layering tool I cut out Baby A and pasted him on the Baby B photo and, voila, both babes in focus.  Now your attention isn't just on one of them.  I kind of like the little "baby bokeh" effect going on, but I knew that the parents would want to see both of the boys shine.

Baby A in focus.

Both boys in focus.

And the same thing here...

which turns into...

So there you have it.  Photoshop to the rescue.

Thank You

I love the new updated Blogger interface.  While browsing through it's features I learned that this little old blog had some visitors today from Germany, Latvia, Albania, Brazil, and India.  That is seriously so cool to me!  So to all you people viewing my photos from all over the world, THANK YOU.  THANK YOU so much for making me feel good.  : )

Olivia & Cam + two

What once was a cute little newlywed couple has quickly turned in to a family of four.  Cam is a twin himself and there are other sets of twins in his family, so it wasn't really any surprise when these darlings showed up.  : )  Love those boys!