Get what you pay for...

I may upset some photographers with this post, but I am a believer that no matter how good of a photographer you are...almost every picture can benefit with just a little bit of post processing.  Now that being said, I am not saying that you should process images TOO much.  But I think if someone pays you to take professional images of their event, you are obligated to give them the very best final product you can.  At a minimum, I always check all of my images in lightroom to see if I think they need a teeny bit of a boost.  I do not include advanced editing on all images though.  Typically I will pick 5 to 10 of my favorite images from each session to do advanced editing on.  This gives my client a good idea of what can be done on the images they pick, if they decide they want it done.

I recently had a friend who was married in another state and paid a very handsome price to a local photographer to provide engagement, first glance and wedding images for her.  She selected this professional photographer because she really liked the artistic nature of the images she saw on the photographer's blog and website.  She decided to forgo having a videographer so she could afford to pay more for this particular photographer.  Once she received her final images after the wedding, she was extremely disappointed and asked me to take a look at them.  I explained to her that the images themselves were not the problem.  It was the lack of post processing that was the problem.  With her purchase she received a full copyright release for all of the images, so at her request, I edited some of the images to illustrate my point.  She was thrilled with the difference.  Her package also included a photobook of her wedding.  When it came time to pick the images for inclusion in the book, she took the comparison images along with samples of the images that influenced her initial decision to select this photographer with her to her consultation.  Her request was that all of the images she selected get at least the minimal edits needed to push them from good to amazing.

I want to point out that not everyone has the same taste in styles.  So it is the responsibility of the client to do their due diligence and pick a photographer whose style appeals to them as my friend did.  She knew what she wanted and went for that look. It is important that you make sure the photographer is aware of your desires ahead of time.  Outline clear expectations and if you don't feel they deliver on those expectations, feel free to discuss it with them in a professional manner.  I have gone out of my way to make sure the photographer I am speaking of is not identified, because this post is not meant to bash them or their skills.  On the contrary, I think they are very good at what they do.  I just think this situation was an anomaly in time.  Below I will share a few examples of my point...

This image is boring an uninspiring...

After just a few minor but dramatic tweaks, this image is incredible!

Notice the red line?  

Notice no red line?

Love it!!!!

Incredible!

 Wasn't this a beautiful bride and wedding?

Playing with Depth of Field (DOF)

I went on a field trip with Kylie's class on Tuesday to the Chickasaw Cultural Center.  While I was there I decided to play around with DOF on some photos of some flowers.  While I think some of them might be slightly under exposed...I think the DOF on these SOOC (straight out of camera photos is pretty darn cool!

Notice anything creepy crawly in this one?

In the next 2 pictures I was playing with sun flare..

Kinda cool and fun for pictures that have absolutely no editing and were taken with manual settings.   Get out there and play with your camera and see what wonderful pictures you come up with!

Doing Extractions in Photoshop Elements

Doing extractions can be both excruciatingly time consuming and extremely rewarding at the same time! There are multiple ways to do an extraction in PSE. Several tools will get the same result, but some will get you there faster depending on what you are trying to do. My current project of the baseball poster required me to do an extraction. The original plan was to take the picture outside on the actual baseball field in front of the backstop. But alas, that plan was foiled by rain. So we took the picture inside the sports facilities building with the plan of me extracting the wall and adding players to a picture of the backstop taken at a later time in appropriate weather. Now...I will start off by saying I made this exponentially harder on myself by standing them against the white wall instead of the blue wall. Extracting a white background from around white uniforms is a royal pain in the bootay! I am hoping the weather is nice for the next day or so allowing me to go get the picture of the field that I need. In the mean time, I am quite pleased with how my extraction turned out. I used both the Magic Wand Tool and the Quick Selection Tool for this extraction. I am also including a few other samples that included an extraction at some point in their process.

This is the baseball picture after the extraction. Although that is hard to see now since you see a white background. If I had placed this on a colored back ground it would look different. To help with my final extraction, I used a neon green background color. This made any missed areas stand out.

This was the original photo (SOOC) that I used for the extraction.
This picture has made previous appearances here on the blog. It is a good example of several processes. Editing, extractions, background replacement and color enhancements are a few processes utilized.

In this scrapbook page I extracted Kylie from a photo where she was walking down the street after we picked her up from school on her birthday. She is my gift! lol I will be teaching a class on extractions in my online classes. But if you have any questions...please feel free to leave them in the comments.

You can find more information on the classes on my Meet Up group site here.

Happy "Early" Valentine's Day & a Freebie!!

I wanted to pop in and wish every one the very happiest of Valentine's Day's! And also to give you a small Valentine's Day gift. It is a clipping mask and I hope you all enjoy it. Have a great day everyone!

This is a preview of the mask used with a picture of my son and niece on a background paper from ScrapGirls.com (paper not includedw/freebie). You can find the download here. Enjoy!

Update

Hello world!


It has been a while since I posted here. But that doesn't mean nothing has been happening! There has been a lot going on recently. I am now teaching local Photoshop Elements Classes here in Allen and we are planning some crops as well. There is a new Meetup.com group to help organize these classes. You can find all the details here. I have a couple of locations I am working with and should be posting the new dates/times soon.


One of my most resent projects is the Senior Soccer poster for Allen High School. Everyone was very pleased with how it turned out! I attended the game against McKinney Boyd the other night and the pictures are posted on my website. Switching to soccer from football is an adjustment, but I was getting the hang of it by the end of the game.

Now I am working on the Senior Varsity Baseball/Softball poster. I plan to have the proof of it done this weekend.

More news is that I have decided to start offering freebies here on my blog. The freebie might be any number of things... maybe ready to print recipe cards, textures, clipping masks, templates or who knows! For now my plan is to have them on posted on Fridays. Today's freebie is a recipe card that I made recently for Southern Style Salsa. This is some yummy stuff! I like making it because my family won't try it and I don't have to share it! bwahahaha!

You can download this freebie from 4shared here. This is my first attempt at using 4shared so please let me know if you have any problems with the link. Each weeks freebie will be available until the next freebie is posted then the link will no longer be active, so don't wait! Download them now! If you would like to receive notice of the freebies or special offers, you can now sign up for my newsletter on my photography website http://www.memoriesbylisa.com/. And as always, you can follow me on blogger as well as on facebook. Thanks for helping spread the word and enjoy your salsa!

Pretty ladies and a china doll!

Anyone want to see more wedding pictures??? Oh...you know you do!!! And even if you don't...it is my blog so I get my way! So here are more!



Emily did soooo good and looked adorable. Considering she had been running a fever and was still ill, she did amazing!
I threw in a beautiful big eyed baby girl in case your cuteness saturation wasn't met with the other pics!


More down...more to go. Once they are all done, I will post them all in a single gallery so everyone can see them all together.