Editing – on your terms

For as long as I’ve been shooting, every client I work with gets every photo taken of them. Be that an online gallery years ago or more recently on an SD data card the split second we finish the session.

Additionally my clients have the opportunity to decide for themselves which images they love best. And it is those I edit for them. Not only for them, but to their specification.

Industry standards work like this for the vast majority of studios you could choose from: You book a session, pay for the session, shoot, wait some number of days until you get to see the photos the studio decided to share with you and likely edited for you.

Where in that process do you get to ask “can you tidy up my hair” or “can you smooth this wrinkle in my skirt”?  Sure you hope they will do this as a standard practice but what if you’re extra sensitive about some of your features? How can they predict what is most important to you on photos you’ve never seen?

If choosing edits is overwhelming to you, or you really want someone else’s opinion on it… I will gladly choose them for you. But for the vast majority of people I work with, they want to see them all and choose their favorites for themselves. And because you get to do that you can also make specific requests for your edits.

I decided to share two examples with permission of the subjects.

First up is a face you’ll see pretty much anytime you visit the studio. It’s Nicole of Making faces Professional. The in-house resident makeup artist at Devilbliss Studios. Nicole gets in front of the camera plenty herself, mine and other artists we work with. She knows first-hand what it’s like to do a session. Be concerned about things. She’s just like you. There are angles she likes about herself and there’s other things she’s aware of that she would like shown in the best light. These examples are from a recent session and show the general editing I perform on an image along with some mild body contouring and airbrushing to re-align shadows. Click for a larger view as small these are hard to tell apart.Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 1.00.55 PM

Here’s a crop of her face to show some airbrushing work.Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 1.02.48 PM

Getting every photo, you also have a wealth of images that capture you in motion. Sometimes the difference of a split second can show a slightly different pose that you love vs. one you like a lot.

Sometimes you’ll find a face that will be your favorite ever but it’s attached to a body position that you don’t like as much, or perhaps a photo 3 frames away has you posed perfectly. With this style of shooting I also have the capability to make composite images where several elements can be brought together for a “best of” shot.

Recently a client had this very request. She found an image where she loved her face, and while the pose of that photo wasn’t bad in the least, she preferred the pose of a another shot.

karen2

She loved the face on the left but the arm position on the right. She asked me if they could be brought together. At first noticing that her torso shifted, her shoulders back in one, more vertical in the other had me reply “I don’t know but I will attempt it for you”.

I was pretty pleased with the effort, she was thrilled:karen

So in a nutshell, sessions with Devilbliss Studios are about YOU.

I am an artist. But the first art I practice is working for YOU.