J's First Day at Work / Post-Processing/ Artistic Vision

Many of you have recently been asking me about the post-processing I do. For those of you who may not know what post-processing is, it's all the work that I do to an image on the computer once it comes out of my camera. Since this is not really a "bloggy" blog I won't go into a treatise here but I did want to show you an example. Pay attention, because you probably won't see this again!


Today was J's first day of work at his new job in Seattle! Yay! So, I made him pose first-day-of-school-style for me this morning.

On the left:
How the digital image looks RAW - straight out of the camera with absolutely nothing done to it.

On the right (about 5 seconds of work):
Here is how I would post-process it to be just a nice looking snapshot (you know, not artsy at all so it's parent friendly).



Can't see the difference??? Well, it may be your screen. Not all computer screens show things in the same way and the changes here may be too subtle for yours to pick up on. (Also, if you are completely convinced that all my photos look like crap and you're not sure why I choose such ugly colors - that may be your screen too).

But, you'll see that I:
1) Warmed it up a bit on the right. I made it look a little "sunnier" if you will - not so much like Seattle in January.
2) I darkened the blacks slightly (his pants, shoes, and hair).
3) I added a little more contrast (look at the shingles on the right and the fence on the left).
4) I added a little more saturation (look at his blue shirt and the green trees in the top left corner)