Black and White Wednesday - "The Save"

I thought I would change things up a little today and give you a behind the scenes look and show you the transformation of a photo from Camera to finished product!! Actually, I am going to show you how I fix mistakes and in the end salvage a photo that at first glance would have landed itself in the trash bin on my desktop.

Anyone who has taken any kind of photography classes or lessons knows that you should always strive to get the best picture you can straight out of the camera, but let's face it, when you are dealing with little ones, it is just not that easy. They move WAY TOO FAST and there is so much to think about when shooting. In addition to your camera settings {Aperture, ISO, and Shutter Speed} you need to look at the way the natural light is illuminating your subject, and last but not least, you need to figure out how you are going to compose the shot. That is an awful lot to be running through your mind at once when you usually have a matter of seconds to capture the moment. As a result, sometimes you end up with a few mistakes.

Then you download your photos to your computer and you fall in love with a particular photo......but you see those mistakes or errors and want to hit the delete button. Well, maybe you don't, but I do. The perfectionist in me wants well, perfection, but if I see an expression or a very cute photo, I have a hard timing trashing it. When this happens, I turn to my good friend, PHOTOSHOP:)

Let me show you what I mean........

Keep in mind that I shoot in RAW format, not JPEG, which means that nothing is compressed. In My Opinion, everything looks like it has a haze on it until you run them through lightroom or photoshop. If you are not familiar with the difference or you want to learn more about RAW vs JPEG click HERE.

If you saw my post from Monday, you know this cute little guy is my nephew, Aidan. The kids were playing in Sarah's room and they were watching a video. In order to get a better view, Aidan was leaning over the footboard. Of course, I saw the perfect picture as I saw him sitting there so contently so I did what any one of us camera lovin mommas would do.......got right in his face for the shot:)

Sarah's room has nice sized windows that provide lots of natural light......you can see that coming in on the right side of Aidan's face, but the left side of his face is pretty dark and shadowy. If the kids were not playing and I was really setting up the shot, I would have used a reflector to bounce a little light back onto him to help lighten up his face, but again, we are dealing with a spur of the moment kind of shot and sometimes you don't have all the extra tools at your disposal. Plus, it was me and three kids.... no help and not much time to fuss. I am lucky I got to take the few photos that I did that afternoon.

In addition to the shadows, there are a couple of other things that I would fix up too, but we will get to that soon enough.

Okay, so let's move to the next photo.........




What a difference!!
Can see how much brighter his face looks?
The darker side of his face was lightened, but I still left a little shadowing because I wanted it to look somewhat natural. I removed the cut from his chin and a few other trace evidents of food from his face:) His eyes were sharpened and brightened. Wouldn't you kill to have those beautiful eyelashes?? Why is it that the boys always get those long eyelashes. I also enhanced his left eye a tad. Go back to the first picture and look at the catchlights. See the difference? A little cloning was all that was needed there. I also took care of that overexposed section of his shirt near his right shoulder. After a few tweaks, he pretty much just pops off the page and I am thrilled that I did not hit that delete button.

Now, do I go to all this trouble with every single photo??? NO WAY!!!
I just wanted to show you that you can "Save" a photo if you really love it and have made a few errors when you are behind the camera.

Last step.......




Here he is in black and white!! After I made all the "fixes" to the color version, the only thing I needed to do, was a simple conversion.

So there you have it........ From "Straigh out of the Camera" to Finished Product.




I couldn't post a black and white of Aidan, without converting one of my other adorable nephew, Ashton. I caught this moment as he was patiently waiting for his snack at the kitchen table. Not the best composed shot, but that face, those curls, and those big beautiful eyes get me every time. He is such a little sweetie!

You will be seeing much more of these two cute little guys on the blog. They are moving into our neighborhood and will only be two doors down!! What a fun spring and summer it is going to be around here!