Day Seventeen (1am)

So I’ve finished the light editing and have bumped the image count up to 465 with various additions, duplicate B&W and color images, and a few sepia toned thrown in for good measure.

I’m starting on the retouches that I couldn’t do in Lightroom. Photoshop is an old friend of mine and together we make some pretty fantastic things happen. This example is far from fantastic, but I wanted to share nonetheless.

I had an image that contained stray background elements that I could not creatively crop out at the time of shooting. Devilish power lines. Hideous!

Here’s the RAW file:
With some skill and control over frustration, I managed to rid my image of the dreaded power lines. I applied a contrast boost in a few color areas strengthening the red end of the spectrum. I warmed the image up a touch and tossed a slight Gaussian blur ring around the outermost elements of the image to get this:

I liked the image greatly, but also wanted to see what it would look like in Black & White. A few parameter adjustments from the “soft skin” preset in Silver Efex Pro and we have this:

And sometimes (just sometimes) you need to be selective:

I will keep all 3 edits and print them for the proof book. I believe that they all have their merits and deserve a place in the proof book. Let the bride and groom decide which they like best.

More to come!

©2009 DivineMayhemStudios

Day Sixteen

A few more images from the edits. I’m nearly done with all of the “slight retouch” images and moving on the the formals and images that really stand out. These will get an additional level of attention and polish.

And two of the gentlemen…

Stay tuned for more!

©2009 DivineMayhemStudios

A few more

©2009 DivineMayhemStudios

Day nine
I’ve gotten the number down to a more reasonable 429 images. That number will go up, but may lose a few as well. I usually include both a color and b&w image if I can’t decide between the two.

I have been averaging 60 images a day in editing, pusing a select few into Photoshop for some real polishing. Here are a few of my favorites so far.

©2009 DivineMayhemStudios

I finished photographing a large wedding this Saturdayfor a great couple and decided that I wanted to share my process of editing.

A 12 hour day of shooting yielded 920 images. (Pam, yes… I’ve calmed down a bit) The first order of business was to import them into a seperate Adobe Lightroom catalog. I also import them into my main catalog with minimal previews after I’ve completed the final edits.

So, images imported on Sunday afternoon. Yes, I slept in and had a wonderful breakfast with my girl. I had a brief look-through to pick out a few favorites. I chose 5 from memory before even seeing them. They were ones that stood out the moment I took the shot. I flagged them and did the minimal adjustments from camera raw in the develop module. A bump in vibrance and clarity is usually all it takes. I open the images in Photoshop CS4 and proceed to polish the images.

I save and post the pics on my studio page on facebook. This is enough time with the images for day one.

Day two.

I proceed to make a first cut by looking through all of the images in Lightroom. I hit the tilde (~) key to assign an image a flag that will help me sort later. 920 images later, 756 make it through the first cut.

I take generous breaks from spending too much time with the images during the first two cuts so that I can start each round with a clear head and little bias.

Tomorrow will narrow the images to somewhere around 600. Hopefully.

©2008 DivineMayhemStudios