Category Archives: Session Secrets

An inside look into your photography session…

The difference between ‘taking pictures’ and ‘creating images’

Many people think that the art of photography ends when you snap the shutter button on the camera.  Taking pictures is just that: point and shoot and hope that you get something good.  Creating images is something completely different.  Images tell a story and capture a moment that a simple picture might not be capable of. There can be a lot that goes into an image from the moment it is captured to the moment is it delivered to a client.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a wedding, headshot, or promotional photo, I believe creating a truly fantastic image takes some sort of retouching.

I personally love the time I get to spend in Photoshop perfecting an image.  It’s a chance to express my artistic vision of the subject matter.

Check out the before and after images to see examples of what comes directly out of the camera and what becomes the final image.

Some of the ‘retouching’ includes:

• Enhancing lighting
• Enhancing eyes
• Skin smoothing
• Removing stray hairs
• Combining elements of different photos for the perfect family portrait (check out the smiling baby below)
• Enhancing environment to tell a story

An inside look into your photography session…

What are similars?

One thing about the beauty of digital photography that didn’t exist in the world of film is the ability to take LOTS of pictures. Before the more pictures you took, the more rolls of film you used, and the more expensive the session became to develop.  Now with memory cards, there are very few limits as to how many times a photographer can snap the shutter button.  This can lead to A LOT of similar photos!  The great thing about having similars from which to choose is that it allows the photographer and the client to have choices.  First the photographer will spend time narrowing down the batch of photos, eliminating photos with blinking eyes or strange expressions.  And, let’s face it, photographers don’t always create every image perfect.  There are likely many times that the focus of a photo will be off, the exposure might be wrong, or the last image will be just too close to many others.

So what does the photographer look for?

The first thing a photographer will look for when deciding between similars is the nuance of a subject’s expression.  Clicking back and forth between two images, a slight change in the direction the eye is looking, or even how wide the eyes are open will make a huge difference in the feel of the photo.  The second thing will be composition.  I personally like to adjust where I place the subject within the camera frame, playing with balance, the rule of thirds, and negative space.  When I go to edit and I’m faced between to almost identical photos, but they have a different balance, I go with the photos that I feel sits well in the frame.

Why the client should know about similars…

Different sessions create different amounts of photos. Weddings tend to be in the thousands, while family portraits and head shots are in the hundreds. The final images delivered to the client are almost always a portion of the total photos taken.  This is normal.  When selecting a photographer, ask him or her how many pictures will be taken and how many will be delivered.  Hire a photographer whose style and artistic vision is what you’re looking for, and then trust them to make the nit-picky decisions between similar images. Even though it might seem presumptuous on the part of the photographer, chances are that they have gotten a chance to know you, and understand which photos put you in the best light.