Okay, I’m going to pull back the curtain here and reveal some behind the scenes post processing. The before and after image below is not a typical example of what I do. I rarely take people out of an image because I prefer a more photojournalistic approach since I think that best captures my client’s personalities. However, when we captured this image at the Bethesda Fountain, there was no way we could control traffic. I thought it could work with everyone in the shot, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that this image would be much more powerful without all of the clutter. Kelly and Jonathan, the architecture, the shapes and lines all seem to get lost. The final image below took several hours to finish but I love it a lot. I used Lightroom for the initial pass – color correction, tone curve adjustments, etc. I then exported to Photoshop for the real heavy lifting. I used a second similar image to cut and paste some of the clean sections of the steps and walls. Finally, I ran the image through a Silver Efex Pro filter to give it that extra film like pop. Again, this is not typical but I thought it was a nice example of what can be done in Photoshop to enhance an image.
RELATED LINKS: FAQ | COMMISSION FEES | ENGAGEMENT PHOTOS
