I am a sucker for a good before and after, so i’ve put together a few from my recent sessions. Sometimes an image is almost perfect straight out of camera (us photographers call that SOOC) whereas some need a lot of post processing magic. In most cases, this is done purposely to make sure the exposure is correct and you don’t lose any detail in the final image.
Though sometimes us professionals just get the settings wrong too!
Especially when working with animals- you’ve just taken the image you wanted, the dog moves away and starts doing something adorable/amazing/photo worthy and you haven't had time to change your settings. So, I hope you enjoy these in all their un-edited glory, and a bit of an explanation of what I did to each one.
Erik and Evie. This was shot purposefully underexposed so we'd get that gorgeous colour in the sky. If I exposed for the dogs, that would have disappeared entirely. So I obviously then needed to brighten it back up in post. Then I removed the cyclists from the background, Erik's leash and did a head swap so both pups had the perfect expressions.
2. Mocha. In this case, I exposed for the sky to get a silhouette of Mocha.
3. The Iggies! Just a tad underexposed so the background wouldn't be blown out. Then a leash and human removal, a bit of colour correction to get the true to life colours the camera doesn't quite capture.
4. Elf. An obvious human removal, a bit of tidying of some eye goobies and blackening. A lot of black dogs will end up blue in photos, so I always remove the colour cast to make sure they are a true black.
5. Aston This one was tricky to shoot just because of it's location and the size of the buildling, and took a bit more editing than I typically need to do. I was laying in a gutter trying to frame it without getting any of the giant fence in the shot that was at about Aston's level. So clearly it's not straight. Leash removal, pole removal and a few other distracting elements on the building and path were removed. Essentially anything that draws your eye away from the star of the show- Aston! It was straightened, colour corrected and I enhanced the cream colours in the building just a smidge to match Aston. The straightening took a bit of work- stealing some parts of the building from one side and moving them to the other but without getting any sort of 'mirror image' effect. In the end- it turned out to be one of my favourite shots. Definitely worth the extra effort.