I wanted to share an example of the post-production magic and decision making that goes into creating our final images.
First, you have to start with an awesome shot. Below is an image that Kim took moments before our bride Sarah went down the aisle. It is a wonderful example of the readiness and split second timing that is required to capture real moments and tell a successful story.
Look at how she has brought all the elements of the story together in this one image. The stained glass in the background sets the location – you know you’re in the church. There’s an arm fixing Sarah’s veil off to the side so you know it’s likely before she goes down the aisle. And that’s Sarah’s Dad in the background, checking his watch which helps to explain the palpable tension on Sarah’s face.
But can we extract even more from the moment in post-production?
The first frame shows the image as it comes out of the camera. In the second frame we see that by cross processing the image, we cool off the tones and give the image a little more zip. The processing provides a little additional separation for Dad and it brings both the aqua of the church foyer and the bluish highlights on Dad’s tux into a complementary tonality for the flowers in Sarah’s bouquet. Now it’s really singing.
Since the image was so timeless, I also wanted to see what it would look like in black and white (3rd frame). But in reality, my images are almost never b&w but are always slightly warmed up (4th frame). However, when we did the conversion to b&w, we lost a bit of the separation between Sarah’s Dad and the wall so we tried a bit of old school dodging and burning and added a contrast adjustment to see if we could heighten the dramatic tension and make him pop out again (frame 5). All of the treatments work well, so which do you choose?
We would make a selection based on the image’s intended usage. That’s why we do final production and retouching AFTER an album has been designed. As we’re doing an album design, we take into account how post-production can affect each image to be sure that they work in context with the other images around them. But if you start with wonderful images like this one of Kim’s, and you know how to work them to best effect, you have plenty of options to extract the most from each one for the album.
I personally am partial to these two depending on whether you needed b&w or color:
and
by bd
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