How It's Made....Photography Style! My workflow as a Photographer
My job all begins with capturing the moments, the expressions, the beauty, the feeling of a moment, of an individual.
When Krispy Kreme donuts shop opened here in Denver, saying it was a fiasco to get in was an understatement. Of course the main attraction was the donut itself, but a totally exciting bonus bit was, the customer gets to experience what goes into mass production of a donut! We watched the dough plop into the hot oil, roll along the trolly going up and down and around, and eventually be sorted into different toppings and into the box that we greedily put into our cars! My fascination with how things come to be, and all the back story to a product can be super fascinating because usually there is way more than meets the eye! This blog is to share what has to take place in my world, to be able to deliver to you, portraits and images that you will cherish forever!!
Finding a connection with you, is of course where it all starts. When those digital captures are all safely tucked into my memory cards in my camera, we wrap up our time together and head to our vehicles. Now, I get down to the nitty gritty of what must be done to get YOU, what you ultimately came for!
I love it when my clients are up for fun different things! Here I was doing something different with Chaney's hair!
MY WORK SPACE!!
It's nothing fancy but I adore my little corner of the dining room that I call my own, my "office", my space!
My computer, hard drives and inspiration surround me in my little piece of heaven that I call my space. After a shoot I come home and immediately download the memory cards to my hard drive to get them off the camera and into safe storage! If any photogs are interested, I work from my external drive exclusively now.
Once I am ready to edit, I do 95% of my work in a program called Adobe Lightroom. There I can adjust color, exposure, white balance, contrast, etc...and ALL KINDS of other physical attributes of your images to make them look their very best! This is totally a part of my job that I love! This is the time for me to really make a picture look its very best and let my creative juices flow!
LIghtroom (above) allows me to see all the images that I chose to edit in one place, and work through each image one by one!
BEFORE AND AFTERS!
These are two images that made the final cut of all the images shot, and needed some adjustments to really look their best for my wall!
As you can see, when we are out shooting, images that are just straight out of the camera (before shots) CAN look very different from the final product you will have in your gallery! Photographers all shoot a little differently to get the RAW file that they want, to help them get the final look they had in mind. Not all images need a lot of adjustments either!
These two images were a good example of how I shoot and needed to have the exposure adjusted as well as the color and contrast! This is the prime reason why I don't show clients the images during our session because what you see on the back of the camera is typically not as amazing as what you will see in the final product! When I used to shoot film, there was not as much ability to play with your final look as we have now. With film, we were only able to minor color adjustments,exposure and contrast (all done in the lab out of your control) since the main look was determined by the type of film you chose, but with digital, we have a ton of creative control!! I LOVE being able to create a really unique look if I choose to, away from the "real" colors and textures of the scene!
Some images look beautiful in black and white! It is better for me to do the conversion for you, than just having an image printed without the color!
I will export my images from Lightroom and into Photoshop if there are any further adjustments I need to make that I can't perform in the first program! One thing that I will do mostly in Photoshop is a conversion to a black and white image or skin touch ups! It's not necessary to do this this way, but it's just how I roll ;-). This process is the most time consuming of all the steps, but one that I thoroughly enjoy!! The final product brings such satisfaction to a creative spirit!!
Once images are fully edited and ready to send off to you, my client, I will load them into a beautiful gallery that will let you see the entire session at a glance, in addition to scrolling through one by one! You will be able to download your entire session to your computer and print from the downloaded images!
You will receive an online gallery from me in your email! Your images will be displayed and available for download!
You may eventually see select images from your session show up on my web site or my blog!
A snippet from my web site!
A snippet from my blog! I share tips, tricks, sessions and adventures there! I hope that you find the information and content valuable, inspiring and helpful!!
I also have a resource for my clients set up through my Pinterest account where you can get ideas for clothing, hair styles, photo display and places to shoot, as well as follow along my personal adventures, hiking trails and photo sharing of special events, like my Hawaii trip! I even have a "baby/toddler" board that I am gaga over!!! lol I wish I had access to this stuff when my babies were tiny!!!
I have definitely streamlined and modified my workflow over the years and will probably continue to do so as things change in the universe!! I love it, keeps me reaching, learning, adjusting and finding a new flow! The entire process is SO fun and inspiring for me, and I value so much being able to provide something to families/individuals that they will not only have forever, but is one of those special keepsakes that you will always be happy to have!
I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE to connect through my social media (facebook, instagram links above) or via email!! I can be reached at suz@suzannelopezphotography.com and LOVE to hear from you and throw around ideas!!
Until next week!!!