Aloha!
It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post last, but this is a great topic to go over so here we go. What’s behind the word “Editing” and why I take such a long time? I hope this blog post will answer your questions.
First off, I want you to know that ALL of my shoots are edited by me. There are many companies who outsource their editing to a third party. It’s definitely time efficient and cost effective. So why I don’t choose that way? The answer is simply because I CARE MY WORK & CLIENTS SO MUCH :)
I take pride in good work. Quality shoot, quality edit, thus quality final products. I belive and I have been told that I edit so much of the details that others wouldn’t necessarily care. Sure, that’s true. If the photos become much nicer by me taking a bit more time to clean up the background and taking out blemishes away - would I do it? Why not!
Do I do photoshop to make something unreal? This is typically a no. I believe photography is a mean of capturing the memory. I often say that I am not an artist. I know how to work with my gear and lighting, and I love creating the best out of the situation and what’s given. I clean up the background, like unwanted buildings or people, to make clean shot - yes. Do I take out blemisses, wrinkles, double chin, etc. - Yes! However, I don’t like making things unnatural. Therefore, you might not even notice that I edited something heavily because I try to keep the outcome as natural as possible.
The recent new technologies of AI fill has been saving a lot of work for me. They can fill pretty amazing so I don’t have to do many things manually anymore. However, it doen’t cut the time from editing because I do it one by one to make sure the details are still natural, no flows showing, and go above and beyond much more than before.
Aside my long explanation, here are sample lists of what my editing consists:
Exposure and color correction
Lens correction
Taking out blemisses on people, taking out microphone on groom’s suits, erasing unwatnted objects
Straightening the lines
Swapping faces when combining multiple images make one photo look better
Smoothing skin
Marging a few layers together to make dynamic images ….. and more!
Below are some of the samples of before-and-after photos from a recent wedding of Aleks and Hailey, shot in Appleton Wisconsin. It was an amazing wedding throughout the day, and I hope this before/after comparisons are informative for you! I made some notes about what I did below each set.
The image was croocked so I strained the lines, and made the color correction for the warmer tone to match up to the room’s vibe (loved the fireplace!), and eraced the vent on the ceiling in the yellow circle.
Color correction, straighting the lines, cleaned the window, and took out blemishes from the groom’s face
Typically, I notice and move unwanted objects when I am shooting as much as possible, but I totally didn’t see the tissue box on the floor. So I eraced it. Color correction and straighing the lines as well.
I loved how the bridal parties are placed in this area, but since the left side had more people, the background became not symmetrical. I created the window wider without changing the ratio of the people to make it symmetrical enough. Also took out the line on the asphalt.
It was fun to run with them!
Since it was back-lit, the texture of the sky was faint. I brought it back so see the cloud better. Also took away unwanted objects in the yellow circles.
This was shot with backlight with OCF to create a rim light. Strighten the lines, and took out the refrection of my light stand leg, took care of her hair flip, and some pointy fablic from bastling the dress on her back.
The color was nice as is, but I wanted to make it more romantic, so changed the background color into pink shade. It was at a corner of the building and has an AC unit and pipes on the background, so I removed them. We got hit by a storm cloud after our cocktail hour (even had a flood warning!) so it was drizzling. Thank you for Hailey and Aleks for agreeing to come out to take this quick shot - which took us a few minutes. It was so worth it. I love this “diamond in the sky” effect when I get to shoot in the rain!
Dance floor is one of my most favorite moments of a wedding day! So much energy and characters :)
I mix different lighting on the dance floor - bounch flash, direct flash using my Profoto flash, or continuous LED lighting for the moody shots. This one was shot using an LED. I wanted to make a “spotlight effect” yet keep the moody light on the background, so shot it lower exposure and corrected it later. Also made the background color into orange-pink tint to match the feel from the previous image.
Dance floor group shots are always fun!!
One of the groomsmen was looking away from the camera, so I combined his face from another shot so all of them are looking at my camera.
They had an amazing support from their friends and families to do this sparkler exit in the RAIN! Typically, sparkler exit has very limited lighting so their experience is nice in the darkness… So in the editing, I adjusted the exposure and colors :)
Here are some of the samples from a wedding day! I do different kind of editing for other type of shoots, so I will introduce those in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Thank you & love you all!