One of the first things I learned in my photography journey is there is MUCH more to photography than just buying a “good” camera and taking a picture.

There is a true art to capturing a photograph!

Much of it begins with getting to a comfortable level with your subjects, whether it be babies, children, adults or combination – getting comfortable and most of all having FUN! Once you get into that frame of mind it is capturing their TRUE emotion, being able to visualize the image in your mind even before you set it up – yes lifestyle photography does have some ‘setting’ up to it, and … even though you capture these images digitally on the camera – that truly is ONLY the beginning.

Part of a photographers job is to make you SHINE! Capture your TRUE emotion, so true that when you look at those images you FEEL those images. And of course, treasure those images for many, many years to come. Afterall we are capturing Your Life As Art – to be PROUDLY displayed in your home.

So… what do you get if you invest your family art with me…

After the Shoot – My workflow…
So what happens after I get home from a shoot… I immediately download the images – whether I am going to edit them right away or not, they immediately get downloaded – these images are priceless! I also then change the card in my camera – I will not use your card again until I know the images are backed up at least twice (online on Flickr + my back up drive – and also my computer – so 3 in total ;) ). Then… since I ONLY shoot in RAW I imporgt my images into Lightroom, make any basic edits there and then export into Photoshop CS5 – this is where I do the majority of my fine tuning.

Afterall … there is MUCH more to a final image than just downloading the image from the camera.

I have been using Pure Photography Design “Actions” for a while now to assist in my editing workflow. Basically what an “action” is, is a control within Photoshop to complete an edit in just a few steps vs many various steps. However its just not that simple – I love how Chrissy and Rachel describe their actions – they are like Salt and Pepper… lol you do not dump all of the salt and pepper onto your food and its much like that with their actions. By using these actions I streamline my workflow and achieve the final image I have in my mind much more efficiently – afterall, I am a photographer not a photoshop guru lol. I am able to complete the tweaking to an image in half the time as I would going through ALL the various steps myself. It truly is a matter of knowing what you are aiming to achieve and always having control of the image! The well known (to the photography industry) Wedding Photographer Jasmine Star has a fabulous post on this – it is a couple years old but shows how having a true eye for tweating a properly exposed image (which is KEY to any image) using actions can be a photographers lifesaver! Whats cool is that Jasmine is such a fabulous wedding photographer… she outsources her RAW editing – to a company she trusts of course!

So… my purpose of this post was not to ramble on (anyone who knows me knows I do that quite well ;) ). These images below is what I wanted to show…

Above is my SOOC shot (straight out of the camera shot – well perhaps I shouldn’t say that – my actual SOOC shot was vertical, I rotated this 90 degrees clock wise to show a better comparison).

Below… is my final edit (I did in fact provide them with a couple different edits, including b+w, hey Im a mom and I know how much these images TRULY do mean!)

And for fun… here is the B+W…