Before and After: Wenatchee candid portrait photography

It started to rain the other evening. The sudden kind of downpour you get in the summer when the sun is actually still shining but one black cloud unloads right above you for a fast drenching and then leaves just as fast. That's what happened here, I heard the rain, drops big enough to "thump", I grabbed my camera, ran upstairs and called to my daughter, "it's raining, do you want to come outside for some photos?" She came down just a minute later but the rain was already coming to an end. I got a few shots where you could see the last few seconds of recordable drops. Nothing much in most of the shots, but this one was what I was hoping to get. I was shooting into the sun to get that magic backlight and handholding an SB-800 flash set to 1/64 AAL (at arm's length) to camera left, pointing back at her to fill the shadows that the backlighting causes in the front. The flash also froze the movement of those last few raindrops. She had spread her arms outwide, feeling the rain and it all came together to make one shot I love.

Not too much in the processing department, but the small changes were significant. I balanced everything to taste (like cooking, ha ha, 'season to taste') in camera RAW, then opened in Photoshop. There I converted to LAB where I dealt with some noise in B, increased contrast, ran a couple favorite TRA actions (Get Faded-Warm and Oh Snap), highlighted a few areas of hair and adjusted sharpness.

I [heart] faces: Sepia children's photography

The theme this week at I [heart] faces is "Sepia". This is one of my favorite photos of my youngest daughter. Her relaxed expression made her appear older than she was (7 here) and I think wise beyond her years. The sepia toning enhanced it, removing color as an element and suits the graininess, which is part of what I love about the photo. Wanted to use a photo of her for this entry as this little imp is visiting her grandparents for 3 whole weeks - her first time away. I miss her so much. Today is my birthday and it didn't seem right without her here (or my oldest who is also gone for the week helping run a volleyball camp.) I decided our family tradition of birthday dinner out at the birthday-ee's restaurant of choice would have to wait until they're both home. No fun with 2/3 the brood gone. Love and miss you girlies!

Here comes the rain: Wenatchee photography

We've been having a lot of weird weather lately. Specifically, lots of rain, in a place that typically has 330+ days of sunshine a year. With the rain come thunderstorms, which are always pretty cool to watch and listen to. We learned our dog, Gator, a massively large Golden Retriever, is afraid of thunder, and each boom sends him trying to hide in a ridiculously small space, usually under my feet.

Two of my three daughters are out of town for a bit and it feels so weird to just have one here. And the one here is 16 so we don't see a whole lot of her right now either. It's been a little taste of what it will be like when they've all flown the nest. Lots of time to do what I want, but at what cost? I will have a bad case of "empty nest syndrome" for sure...In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "Oh I can't think about this now! I'll go crazy if I do! I'll think about it tomorrow."

Here are a few shots of the one at home in the last rain, with another to follow on Wednesday's Before and After.

Wenatchee senior portrait: Before and After

Well, the best laid plans...I said I would really try to do a Before and After every Wednesday and then managed a whole...one. The problem was honestly that I forgot, plain and simple. It isn't a habit yet, so never occured to me again until I saw my old post that included the first one and realized I'd fallen off the wagon, so to speak. This is why New Year's resolutions never work for me. I literally forget I made them until, like April. So while I'm thinking about it, I'm doing one now (Monday night) and setting it to publish Wednesday a.m. Ha ha, I feel like I'm talking to the future.

In this photo you can see the RAW SOOC version, exactly as it was captured. Below it is the RAW file with it's basic adjustments set in Camera RAW. I shoot everything in RAW with Auto white balance (except sports, where I shoot JPG with a custom white balance) because the beauty of RAW is being able to choose the best white balance in processing, fine-tuning as desired. So you really see the light's color difference between the two shots. Once opened in Photoshop, I really did very little. I added contrast to the different values in her hair (making some of the lights lighter and darks darker for contrast.) I also lightened what I'll call the "bags" under her eyes - although they aren't really bags, like dark circles or anything. It's common in a lot of young people, that fresh little pad of fat that defines the eye. I actually love it in real life, but when you photograph someone with dark eyes, like she has, it tends to close up the eye area making them appear like dark holes in the head. I lighten them (don't remove alltogether or it looks fake) and brighten up the eyes a bit for emphasis. I also added a subtle vignette and some selective bluring in the lower part of the photo to put more emphasis on her beautiful face. A couple small blemishes were sampled out and the whole process took just a couple minutes.

Travel photography

Jay Reilly,an amazing lifestyle photographer, is having a travel photo contest with pretty fantastic prizes and the voting has begun. The best part about his contest is the entries are prescreened so only the really good stuff is entered. I entered one and was thrilled to have it accepted, so thought I'd pass on the link so you can check out all the amazing entries yourself. Travel photos make me want to GO SOMEWHERE so bad!

This was the one I entered, one of my favorite images from Challis, ID, where my dad and his family are from. In fact, I will get a chance to be there in about 3 weeks when I head over to pick up my daughter who is visiting my dad and mom there. Can't wait!