Here comes the bride!

I have only had one photoshop class so far but it has vastly improved my understanding of how PS works and what it can do for my pictures. As I said yesterday, I didn't have much time to take hundreds of pictures as I wanted to of Chris and Tif's big day so I had to get the most out of the few shots that I did get. I finally understand why my teacher has been preaching to me about shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG. I shot some in RAW and was actually able to salvage a few shots that I would have had to throw away in JPEG.

I spent the bulk of the day focused on Tif and making sure her needs were met so that is why most of my pictures are of her. The top shot is the first picture I took of her after she had been completely made up and dressed. I was close to deleting it since the exposure was off, when I went ahead and opened it in PS to see if there was any way to save it. Because I had shot it in RAW, which means that the camera doesn't make any of the final decisions about the exposure, I was able to fix the White Balance and and I lowered the clarity to get that cool hazy effect.

The next shot was one of the last I took and it captures the festive mood of the reception. It actually looked under exposed but I was able to fix that in PS and I think it makes a nice compliment to the first more serene shot at the very beginning of the day.

Now for an example of how I was able to use PS to create multiple images from one exposure. The first is the full image with just a few adjustments in color and saturation. It's kind of busy with the trees, boat and flowers at her feet but I like how it reflects the beach theme of the day.

In the next image I cropped everything but part of the tree which helps to frame her. I also flipped the rotation since I think it read better that way. I think it makes a nice, traditional bridal portrait.


In this final image I really put my meager PS skills to work. I cropped it down to a head shot, turned it into black and white with a lot of contrast, and then added a filter which gave it a watercolor effect. It is one of my favorites but without my new experience with PS it would have never been created.

I can't wait to learn more about layers in my class and how to get the most out of my images. I can now say that I'm a RAW convert and will never go back to shooting in JPEG after this experience.