Post Editing Photos – (Happy Birthday Riley!)

I love to shoot photos. Its nothing new around all of my friends that candid photos are my thing. I’ve been doing it for years and I love to get peoples expression when they are not posed. They really put emotion to photos and it creates a scene that is not acted out, because we all know that people dont know how to act naturally when they are being shot. Actors and models are exceptions, yes. So this past weekend I went to Infected Mushroom, which I will talk about in my next post, and my baby girls friend’s first birthday. I took a ton of photos and for the first time, I wanted to take some time with them, go through them all, pick the 4 and 5 star photos and edit the pictures.

I use Aperture, (amazing piece of software!) to import and color correct all my photos. As of this weekend that is. The color tools are really powerful. Especially if you are shooting RAW. The ability to to adjust everything, I mean everything. Within the RAW Fine Tuning tools you adjust the “Boost” (exposure) “Hue Boost” (Color Saturation), Sharpening, Edges, Moire and Radius. Thats only if you are shooting RAW. Going past that you have you White Balance, Exposure, “Enhance”, Levels, Highlights & Shadows, and Color. Those are the categories and then all the adjustments within those really give you some incredible fine tuning. And to add to all of that you have various effects that you can add, such as Vignetting. Ill say this now, if you are someone who wants to really step up your level of photos in post, get this piece of software. Photoshop is great too, but much more processor intensive when you are trying to edit hundreds of photos at a time. Yeah, Hundreds!

So back to the photos… On a normal day, I take a ton of photos, import them and then just upload them to my Flickr account. Since these photos were for a first birthday, super special event, I wanted to give them a great gift of some really great looking photos so I decided to edit them. I must have spent well over 6 hours going through the roll of film, rating the photos, SO easy with Aperture, just press 0-5 over a photo that you are viewing. Once they were sorted it was time to edit!! I was actually really excited to get through them and really spend sometime making each chosen photo shine. I think that I used every single option that was available to me so that I could create vibrant photos for Riley’s first birthday.

After 5-8 hours, I didnt keep track, I finally posted all the photos online, on my flickr account, and I could not be more proud. I’m really happy that eye has progressed to be as detailed as it is and would actually love to show people what I do, if you are interested, in post to make the various photos shine. Let me first post a few that are edited and on my flickr account, and then I will upload the enhanced photos.

Hayden