Day 13 - My Aha Easter Moment

Easter has never been a big deal for me growing up. It's not a day where we got tons of presents, but we focused more on Christ.Yes, we did do the egg hunt, but the "Easter Bunny" was never a big deal. It was more like a leprechaun - kind of mythical in a way.

So we went to Clint's parents for an egg hunt.  But before that, Clint and I were trying to decide what we really wanted to do for our Easter tradition. We decided to do an Easter bucket in the morning, and not do an egg hunt ourselves, because there are so many around, and both grandparents do one.

Now, before the pictures, I want to explain my "aha" moment. The past little bit I've been researching different ways to edit photos. All I have done in the past was add some contrast, change the exposure, crop (if needed) then sharpen the image and save it. Well, I found some really good tutorials to create different styles and looks in photoshop - these are called actions. I then recorded me doing these actions, so all I have to do is press a play button, and that style (action) will be applied to the photo, while I do nothing. I do adjust very minimal things after the action has been applied. It's cool.  Every photographer (not that I consider myself professional by any means) has a style. And my "aha" moment is that I found part of my style for outdoor pictures, and one for indoor pictures. I love it! Let me know if you like it. I'll show you the before, then the after.


First are some pictures of indoor, and how I edit them to make them look better.

Before

After

Before

After

Notice, they are very subtle, but I feel like there is more depth in the picture, and the colors are more vivid. I like that look, personally for me, for my indoor pictures.



Now for the outdoor pictures:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Again, it's a subtle look for an outdoor picture, but I like how it makes the pictures feel more sunny, creamy, and a dreamy-type look. I won't do it for all outdoor pictures, but I find myself using it a lot.

And this is just a fun one that I took and edited. I love their brief silhouette against the white sky.

 I'm pretty sure that my favorite part of taking pictures, is the editing part. I love making a picture look better and more vivid or creamy, or fixing blemishes or smoothing the skin, or whatever. I love learning new things to create/do in photoshop. It's so fun!


And just in case anyone is thinking that I'm crazy for putting myself through manual mode, and having to think about all those settings and such, below is a perfect example. Jonas woke up, and we had his Easter basket lying in our room - it never made it to the kitchen or front room. So we gave it to him then. Well, I wanted pictures, of course, but the lighting in our room was awful, and I had to raise my ISO so high that the picture would be grainy, and I didn't want that, so I just tried the flash (the whole point of using manual mode is so you don't have to use the flash) and this is the picture I got. Granted, it's not the best picture of Jonas, but look at it! He has a fake shadow behind him! And the edge of our bed does too! So that is why I use manual mode, because it doesn't create fake shadows, and it doesn't make your skin blown out (really white, you know those type of pictures). So I decided to wait, and take pictures after we were all dolled up. And they turned out much better! I deleted all the ones from the morning because they were awful. Happy Easter!