There is so much I didn’t know I didn’t know.

That’s not a typo. I’ve recently learned that there was so much I didn’t understand about editing and post-processing. I thought I knew what it takes to make a photo look great. But I’m both embarrassed and thankful to admit that I have learned more in the last four months than I probably have in the last four years (other than the life-altering realization that I needed to be shooting in RAW).

In November I started Katelyn James’ Consistency Course, which is designed to help photographers edit faster and learn to define their unique style. At first I wondered if this would be a good investment of my time and money. I’d learned how to use the program Lightroom when I worked at a professional photography studio in Meridian, Idaho years ago. I thought, “How much more could I learn?” If only I’d known what I didn’t know sooner! I reluctantly decided to jump in, thinking there would be something new to me in 12 hours of video training.

Oh. My. Goodness. Just the first week’s lessons blew me away. Everything I thought I knew about editing was wrong or incomplete. I had no idea I was missing so much, no idea it was possible to blog a wedding 48 hours after shooting it (and truly, no idea how important my blog is). Sure, I’d been using Lightroom all along instead of the life-draining Photoshop, but I wasn’t using Lightroom to its fullest.

I immediately restarted Justin and Annie’s wedding pictures, which I’d been working on. It took a while to adapt to doing everything differently. Then once I thought I had something figured out a little bit, the next lesson would stretch me again. As a perfectionist, it was hard to curb my desire to fix everything I’d ever photographed before. But the more I’ve practiced–I had a pretty busy fall, so that helped a lot!–the more it’s become second nature AND the more I’ve been able to identify my style and what I like.

Not only is my editing improving, my blogging is improving! My goal this year for my blog is to post something every week! Although I missed one week, there was a different week with four posts within eight days, so I think that makes up for it, don’t you? 😀

If you’d like to see how far I’ve come, here are some before (left) and after (right) comparisons.

 

This first one goes way back, but I’ve been partial to it since it was a spontaneous moment.

I’m pretty certain the left image below is straight out of camera, without any processing at all. Still, the right is so much better.

I like this silly little moment between these two, but I like it a whole lot more without the telephone poles in the background!

Skin tones look much more natural in this photo on the right.

Here the couple is brighter and the grass isn’t so yellowy.

I’ve learned that I can have crisp blacks without the rest of the image looking dark or murky.

I love feeling more confident with my skin color accuracy.

This church sanctuary makes accurate skin tones extremely difficult. Everything has an orange cast (even though they don’t use tungsten light bulbs, which we typically associate with orangey photos, and they switched out the orange upholstery!). You should’ve seen this shot straight out of camera.

This one is pretty subtle, but I think the right image is a little more bright and airy, and their skin tones look much better.

I’ve learned how to add warmth to my images without giving my subjects yellowy skin.

Plants should look green. Not yellow.

Cropping effectively is just as important as other elements of post-processing. Before I was too committed to keeping the butte in the photo, but now I don’t feel guilty cropping it out because the focus can be on Annie and Justin.

The sunlight reflecting off the white wall behind me gave Justin and Annie an orange glow. Originally when I corrected that, it made the rest of the image look overly blue. Now I know how to fix that issue more effectively.
Look at that carpet. It’s waaay too vibrant. On the right it’s less obtrusive and the whole color balance is more accurate.

Did I mention skin tones?

Again, that whole sun-setting-and-making-everything-look-appallingly-orange issue, fixed!