My Photos are Ruined!

Just kidding, but it's a very catchy title.

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As a professional photographer, I still make mistakes in my exposure from time to time. Although the time between these mistakes is growing, it is imperative that one learn from those mistakes, and correct it on the next go. Of course, another key part in this process is learning how to correct those mistakes in the first place.

It is very important to get your exposure as close to perfect as you can get it, before slappin out the 'ol rulers. When you shoot in RAW, you do have some wiggle room if your exposure is off, however this should not be used as a crutch for constantly messing things up. Never get the mentality of, "oh I can just fix it in post." Nailing down the right exposure the first time, will reduce the amount of time that you will spend in the digital darkroom.

With that being said, and I'll say this again, nobody is perfect. You will make mistakes. You will have absolutely blown out photos, and photos so underexposed that they couldn't record the light from the sun! It just happens, we're only human. The following shots are all real world examples of; strobes misfiring, underexposure/overexposure, or just plan accidents,and how they were fixed. (its that a run on sentence? I stared at it for like 5 minutes...English major anybody?)

This was actually my very first engagement shoot. Jenny and Walter. These guys were like the frikking poster models for Abercrombie and Fitch. Studed couple. On this particular shot, the ISO was accidentally bumped from 100 to 1600 (stupid Xti and its buttons). I got home, saw a series of about 10 shots like this, and thought I was toast. The exposure was cranked down about 3 stops, a ton of black clipping was pumped in, unsharpened mask, and now she's good as new with a heavenly twist. Today, this photo hands proudly in the office.






Ahhh, some of my star clients here, Ken and Sandy. These guys are like the older me. So much fun to be around! Just to let you in on a little secret, I spent some time on this one (which became their favorite photo). I would have to say that this piece was sort of difficult. The location was stunning (and still secret), and I wanted to expose for the beautiful sunset, as well as the color of the lagoon thingee. You need a Graduated Neutral Density filter for this type of stuff. Alternately, you can expose for the sky...snap...expose for the rocks...snap...then layer together in PSP. I stay out of PSP as much as possible. After all, my ultimate goal is to create a beautiful piece of work on the first go. Anyhew, I did neither of those. The photo was double processed, a technique I save for special occasions. One RAW file was exported with; the sky exposed, the rocks exposed. Both were then overlayed in PSP. Color saturation was added to the sky, and the color temp of the rocks was brought down way lower than the color temp I had set for the sky. Vignetting was also added using PSP. Bada-bing-bada-boom....a beautiful piece of work, thanks to really creative thinking.

Sigh...Phil and Nancy. Just picture your biggest fans ever, and thats who these guys are. They are soooo frikkin cute together! Phil, so what if Nancy is taller...Brandi is taller than me....so I feel you bro...we're in this together. This photo was in a series of 3-4 test fires from the strobe, continually chimping, and adjusting power. You see, I'll set the couple in their "magic arena," and I'll just let them play. Completely un-scripted, raw, never know what their gonna due. So while Chris was adjusting power on the flash, I was firing at will testing exposure for the sunset. I thought this shot still had potential, even though the flash wasnt aimed right, and it was underpowered. A blast of fill light was added, probably around 75...somewhere in there. Sunset filter was applied to boost the colors; sharpening, black clipping...but it was still missing something. I went one step further on this one, and applied my textures using a 2 minute technique in PSP. The end result, I was very pleased with. My wood texture actually boosted the color of the clouds on its own. Really amazing the power of textures if used right (like...always paint the texture OFF people....please).

Mr Ruger. This dog was amazing! I'm still waiting for this photo of him to be published somewhere....definitely a winner. The last three photos here were processed with Adobe Lightroom. I HIGHLY recommend the program, as it will literally shave hours off your workflow. In this shot, I had a 580EX set up on camera left shot into a 42" silver umbrella. A 430EX was set off on camera right to fill in the shadows. With the sun setting behind him, we needed to fill the shadows. Well, turns out we didnt fill enough on this particular shot. Isnt it funny how if a mistake is made, its always to one of the best photos? Anyhew, the sky was saturated with "Sky2" preset, and fill light was pumped (love that tool). Just a note on fill light, it will degrade image quality just a tad, so use it only if you have too. Other than those two adjustments, the rest was left untouched. Was a powerful photo to begin with, it just needed some lovin.

Lastly, we have R&B Artist Gabriel Antonio, formerly known as NeO. This dude is going to make it big, and we're going with 'em! We've already done 2 shoots, and plans are up for the 3rd. His song is due to hit the airwaves in oh...I don't know...like 4 days! Ok...techy stuff. The strobe actually misfired on this shot. For these types of shots, where everything is perfect but the strobe misfiring, I'll apply my special "hdr'ish" setting in Lightroom. The levels of this setting I will keep secret. Ok...maybe not...its...blast of fill light, and blast of black clipping, but it only works for perfectly exposed backgrounds, and under exposed foregrounds....sometimes. Very simple, highly effective. (Warning, will produce noise)

I did forget to mention that a specific setting is applied to all imported photos. I find that the saturation, sharpening, black clipping, and color saturation are all weak on the Rebel Xti, so I created a setting that I apply to all photos being imported into Lightroom. (Dont worry, these cameras are ending their life, maybe Santa will bring me some 5 D's). Also remember that these files are RAW, and need adjustments to begin with (remember, a JPEG had been "cooked" with these setting in camera.) JPEG vs RAW we'll save for a later post, and will probably be 2 parts. For those of you with this camera, here are my default settings.

Sharpen - 15
Noise - 25
Vibrance - 33
Black clipping - 8
Clarity - 35

You will apply this setting during the import process.

I hope this helps some of you who are thinking on deleting those photos because you think they are ruined. Most of the time, they can be fixed. Take a few minutes to browse through those "x's" before you remove them from Lightroom. You may find a special photo dying for attention, and a little loving. The most important thing is to not make the same mistake again. Learn from the first, improve on the second...and get it right the first time.