When you look at photographs across many differens forms of media I am pretty sure that you will not find many that have not been edited to some degree or another. This may be very light editing that will lighten the photo or even just a small crop to make it fit the article. This means that as a wedding photographer in Cardiff I am no different. I do not, as you can see from the example below, just ‘lighten’ and ‘crop’ but I do make some massive changes to the look and feel.
Why? Well I, like many other photographers, want to deliver images that have punch and interest. I do not feel that very basic imaging is the best way to show off what I have captured on your wedding day. The editing that went into the image below has changed the look completely and although it may seem extreme – it looks far less obvious when it is in the set with the other photos that have the same style of treatment. I know that some people might find it too much and I understand that but I like it and I tend to find that my clients do too.
So what did I do to the image? The most important layer of work is the ‘preset’ I put over the whole image. This is a colour treatment that I designed and have used over the last few years. I could not tell you 100% what goes into it as does many things with just one click in my programme – ‘Lightroom’. I know that it changes the tone curve, adds some extra colour in split toning and then changes all of the colours to some degree in colour saturation mode. I also deepen the highlights, lighten the shadows and add to the whites and blacks. I also lighten the photograph and change the white balance. This image needed slightly warming up for the evening sunset to show.
The other main changes were to darken the sky down slightly and lighten the couple up so you can see more of them and their expressions. This is done using brushes and graduated filters to those areas. It helps to be able to do this to just these areas and not affect the whole photograph. I think that this photograph would look great on the wall in a big frame. What do you think?
This image was taken from a recent wedding on a farm near Thornbury. It was a great day and I had photographed her sister’s wedding 3 years ago so knew it was going to be a good one. Her sister’s wedding can be seen here.
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