Friday, May 15, 2015

photo editing workshop on 5/21 + behind the scenes

You have seen Kirsten Kapur's Shawl Book One, haven't you? I'm super proud to be the photographer.  Since I need to also let you know about the upcoming LIVE Interweave webinar I'm doing Thursday May 21st on PHOTO EDITING, I'll use an image from the book to show exactly why Photo Editing is so crucial.
register for the webinar in advance
 The Before is an idea gone bad. Too much blue sky distracting from the model and more importantly, the Cladonia Shawl. Shadows in the wrong places. Dirt (or maybe that's a bird flying by, in the sky). Phone lines, bad cropping,...you get it. It's not a successful image out of the camera.  The shawl is not the star of the visual story.  But it is, in the After photo.

Photo editing can't make a bad picture good, but it can make a promising picture pretty wonderful. Join me and see how easy it is using a free/inexpensive online software --no PhotoShop needed. Register here. It's about an hour long, and you can listen to it again, recorded, later on.
We shot the whole book in one day, although many days of prep work went into it. That calls for another BTS post, I think, or this one will go on for too long!  Kirsten wanted to shoot in my neighborhood in March. I live in an old beach neighborhood with lots of character. We dress super casually, it's a running joke that you can wander around the neighborhood in paint splattered shirts and mismatched ripped shorts and look amazing, but if you forget to pull yourself together before wandering into town, or go to work or---horrors- travel the 100 miles to New York City--you look raggedy. If not deranged.  My brain apparently couldn't process that I was doing my real job for a client, yet staying the the 'hood. Hence, it turns out this is what I looked like  as the book photo shoot got underway. Thanks to Kirsten for catching the styling, it cracks me up.
and here's me in action. You can tell it was still chilly out by all the crew's layers. Shawls, of course.
 I'll leave you with something nice from the book, the shot we were actually working on.  The Ulmus shawl, modeled by wonderful Katrina. More views in the shawl link.