I’ve been looking for a makeup bag for months now but if you’ve ever met me, you know how picky and OCD I am about what I buy.  To say the least I’ve never found one that “calls” to me.  Until last week!  I was in Hobby Lobby (a dangerous place for a photographer haha) and saw this adorable little black pouch.  I then started walking around and found gorgeous mint green ribbon and a dark peach rose/flower.  Voila!  For less than 5 dollars and 30 minutes – I have a bag I love and can retire the old DS bag I’ve been using since I was 17!

First – I cut a much longer piece of ribbon than I’d need so I could attach it and wrap it all the way around the bag.  Attached with a dab of hot glue which surprisingly attached to the black material much better than I anticipated!

I cut a small slit into the fabric to insert the flower stem so it’s hidden under the ribbon.

Here you can see the stem and the glue required for it to attach.

After attaching the ribbon, I noticed that there were “oil” spots from the glue…

So I attached another piece of ribbon on top (under the flower and sealing it to the edge like the first picture).  This time, less glue was needed because the ribbon attaches to itself well – I used a zigzag pattern so it’d be less noticible.

The back.

And there we go!  It honestly may become an emergency kit to take to weddings – full of bobby pins, gum, mints, Kleenex, safety pins…etc – you never know when someone’s going to need one and the photographer better be prepared!  It would also make a super cute bridesmaid gift!

I got all of this at Hobby Lobby:
- Black bag: 4.99 (used a 40% off coupon)
- Ribbon: 1.99 (on sale half off)
- Flower: 0.99 (on sale half off)

The twin’s mother asked me to shoot their party and I came a little earlier to do a few pictures of the birthday kids before the party started.

Epic fail.  Okay – not so much a fail but a lack of interest in their part.  It was nap time.  And bright.  And the grass was MUCH more interesting that I was…

Last October – little G was the trooper, she didn’t act up at all while JT gave me some issues.  That completely switched this time.

What a diva   : )

Their sister was great for me this time – she really wanted to help – by giving them leaves…

…which of course went STRAIGHT into the mouth…

Maybe we’ll save the portraits for another time – haha

I don’t know what it is about this pose/game but all children love it!

It was then cake time for these two sleepy kids.  However, they perked up at the sight of sugar!!

Little G then decided that HER cake wasn’t enough – she wanted JT’s too!

Look at all that frosting on her   : )

The before and afters…

After cake the twins CRASHED and the rest of the kids were left to enjoy the party – which they did!

Afterwards – their mom told me she was so glad that I was there because she didn’t even have time to pick up a camera let alone take pictures!  I’m glad I was able to help document this special time in their lives!   : )

I’ve wanted to show everyone this process for a while now – going on at LEAST six months – but I couldn’t bring myself to pick any one client’s photos to use as my “raw” image so when my husband and I were in downtown Savannah taking pictures for my updated “About Us” section (coming soon ) I saw my golden opportunity!

The above picture shows a side-by-side comparison of all three types of images one may see, Straight out of Camera (Called SOOC), Processed and Edited.  I want to show you a little of what I do and walk you through part of the “behind the scenes” action that goes on after your session.

First – as soon as I get home from a session, I run to my computer – seriously folks, I don’t even stop to say hi to the husband sometimes, ask him, he’ll tell you   I’m always so excited to see the previews on a screen bigger than a business card!  Once the pictures are finished uploading and converting to a workable file, I go through them and weed out the “bad” ones.  I guess I shouldn’t say bad…by this I mean I pick out the ones where eyes are closed, people are moving, talking, I shot out of focus (yes it happens to everyone and this is why I take several pictures of the same ‘set’)…etc.  I look through all of these images in a RAW format – which is exactly what it sounds like, no processing, editing…nothing to make the photo pop.

When I look at this SOOC image – I see a messed up white balance (see how the dress is blown out?), a SLIGHT softness to the image and places where I need color contrast.

I then open the image in Adobe Bridge to manually adjust the exposure limits, do a simple color correction, bring back some of the details in the dress.

You can see in this image that the colors are more bold, the dress is more of a cream color (which it truly is cream, not white), the eyes are now fully focused, and the highlights are tamed down a little bit.  I call this processed and I do this will all of my post production images.  I don’t let anyone see any files in RAW format, most of the time even my husband has to wait til I process them!  This takes me anywhere from 30 seconds an image up to two minutes – depending on the length I need to go to to correct as I see fit (and what I’m doing in the background cause let’s admit it, I’m so ADD that it’s not funny) I then can save it as a JPEG or open it up in Photoshop.

My final step is when the real editing magic happens – to me anyways.  I take the processed image from Bridge into Photoshop where I can run a number of actions to improve tone, do more of a color correction if needed, edit blemishes and remove annoying background spots…basically anything I see fixable can be done.

For this image – I color corrected again but this time on three levels, midtones, highlights and shadows.  I changed the white balance with more precision using curves and levels.  I then focused on the face which was extremely awkward…editing your own face?  I brought out the eyes a little, removed some of the red blemishes (Hey no judgement, we all get them! ), removed some of the stray wisps of hair around my face and my favorite part was removing the 6 inch long scar I have on my left leg.  (Go ahead, I know you’re scrolling back up to look at it now…)  After that I edited out a few attention grabbing spots in the background, gave the whole image a soft vignette and ran an action to make the midtones pop a little more which draws the eye to the center of the photo where the subject is.  All of this took around 5 minutes which is about average for an image I decide to open into Photoshop.  Some subjects require less blemish fixing, namely little children so these photos can usually be done in about 3 minutes.  It all really just depends on what I’m going for with the finished process.

Phew – it seems like a lot more work when I’m typing it up!  Honestly now, I just fly through this process, I don’t even give it a second thought anymore.  However, when I first started out, editing was something I despised!  It took me forever to process my images, let alone edit them!  Slowly, and with hours and hours…and days…of practice, I’ve found a work flow that works for me and I love editing almost as much as I love shooting now!  It helps me make my images come alive!

I get to work with and talk to a lot of couples and I can honestly say, Liz and Caleb are two of the happiest people I’ve ever met!  They shared jokes, private whispers and kept me laughing through the entire two hours we were out shooting!

I can’t wait to be a part of their special day, March 24th 2012!

Did I mention that Caleb is about 1 1/2 taller than Liz?  Super cute!

Pete and I worked together YEARS ago at Carowinds, and when he came to me looking for a photographer for him and his wife, I was psyched! Luckily we got this session done right before Christmas because Kellen wasted no time in the new year getting here!  I’m so glad we were able to meet – another good reason to keeping my schedule pretty open after the 20th of December… emergency pregnancy photos!  Haha – I kid.

Not only was the timing perfect, but we are experiencing a GORGEOUS winter. It was 60 and sunny, which was perfect!  It had rained every day that week so the ground was a little wet, but that’s why people invented plastic sheets right?

Enjoy!

As Kelly best put it, taking pictures of Pete is worse than photographing a three-year-old!  Haha, he was all over the place, and if this kid has that much energy, Kelly is in serious trouble!

Best idea for a prop shot EVER!!  Pete was/still is a hockey player and, obviously, Kellen will be too!  (P.S. These are Pete’s skates from when he was a kid!!)

As corny as this may sound, I love the playground in the background; it has a nice shadow effect!

For those who have asked, yes, my stock images are for sale!  An 8×10 is $20.00 which includes printing fees, taxes and shipping.  If you want to buy more, each additional print is $15.00.  Please send all print requests to heather@hmkphotography.com.  These can also be done in canvas with an easel, which looks very nice on a mantle   If you’d like to see one in black and white, that can be done too; just let me know!

After making a complete fool of ourselves trying to coax a smile out of him, here’s what we ended up with

So we moved to a caboose over in downtown Rock Hill, hoping that we could make him a little happier.

It was a little more successful!  No worries, at this age, its all about character and less about posed pictures and I love how they all turned out!

I’m a little late one this but I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

The first day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - -  Leah Long!!
Congrats Leah, you win $75.00 off your Boudoir session!

The second day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Ashley Campbell Cole!!
Congrats Ashley, you win 3 8x10s and 2 5x7s free when you book your next session!

The third day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - -Carla Gilchrist!!
Congrats Carla, you win a free mini session – a 30 minute shoot with your 5 favorite images on CD!
Your extra share vote definitely helped you out, it was the number drawn!

The fourth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Ashley Kay Roseberry!
Congrats Ashley, you win waived portrait sitting fees on your next session plus 5 additional images on your CD!

The fifth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Staci Jones Bright!
Congrats Staci, you win one 10×20 collage print and five 5x7s from your next session!

The sixth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - -  Tracy Croft Williams!
Congrats Tracy, you win  a $60.00 print credit after your next session!  (Isn’t Wyatt one soon? )

The seventh day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Kristen Carol Hill!
Congrats Kristen, you win $100.00 off an engagement session!

The eighth day of Christma giveaway winner is – - -  Abby Lincoln!
Congrats Abby, you win a 5×5 metal print and easel to display it on!

The ninth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - -  Deborah Blood!
Congrats Deborah, you win 3 8x10s and an additonal 10 digital images with your next session!

The tenth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Lindsay Roddey!
Congrats Lindsay, you win $75.00 credit towards a boudoir session!

The eleventh day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - -  Jill Monroe Fitzgerald!!
Congrats Jill, you win a free mini session consisting of a 30 minute session and 5 images on CD!  (It was the extra share you did that won it!)

And finally – The twelfth day of Christmas giveaway winner is – - – Chelsea Rae Sane!
Congrats Chelsea, you win a free session which includes 15 images on CD.  You also get a disk of ALL of your images sized for web display!

Please email me at heather@hmkphotography.com or contact me through Facebook to set up your appointment!

That’s it folks!  Thank you so much for taking the time to enter our giveaway!  You guys all rock!

I had a blast setting up some of these pictures and definitely want to do more staged/prop themed engagement/couples sessions in 2012!  Thanks guys for being such awesome models!

I’m also super excited that I finally found this wall I’ve been looking for!  I’ve seen it in a couple of other photogs blogs and fell in love with it!  Now I know where to find it!

I love the back lighting in this one!  It gives the image such a different feel!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thanks for being such awesome clients/customers/supporters!  Come back on Monday to kick off my “12 Days of Christmas” giveaway!  Watch my facebook page for more details!

They’re such a fun couple and we laughed almost the entire session!

I had them try to practice a dip….we still need a little work on that one but you can see how much fun it was trying!

Congrats again Rae and James and I’m looking forward to shooting your wedding in September!