What To Wear?

I get asked this question A LOT as a photographer. The biggest problem is colors and what ones go together best. I always tell my clients to pick 4 to 5 colors and have 1-2 of them tie them all together.

A friend of mine introduced me to a wonderful website and I want to share it with you all. It's called Design Seeds. She takes pictures and then pulls out 5 colors from that picture that all coordinate and look amazing together. You can get so many color combo ideas for your photo shoot or even your wedding.

Here are a few that I love...

Isn't she brilliant? Saves me so much time now when my clients ask me, "What do we wear?" It's also a great reference for brides not knowing what colors they should use for their wedding.

In case you didn't see where to click on the link above, here it is again:
http://www.design-seeds.com/

Lookie Loo Lightroom Editing Tips - Eyes

Here is the first of many Lookie Loo editing tips. A long time ago I did a post on how I edit eyes. Since then, my eye edits have dramatically changed and here is how I do it.
Before

After

I created a brush in Lightroom I call "eyes".
Here are all the settings:

If I want to boost the color of the eyes more, I will change the "color" option to a light blue or green or yellow (for brown eyes). I then just take this brush and go over the colored part of the eye ONLY. I don't go over the white areas.
Then I'll take a brush with just clarity and go over the eyelashes and around the edges of the eyes. For men and boys this step can be too much so I usually just do it for women and girls.
If the whites of their eyes look yellow, I have a brush to desaturate and brightens a little and it usually fixes the yellow problem.
That's all I do.

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

I haven't given a tip in a while so here is one for my new blog.

Every once in a while I capture a moment like this:

I love the little flower girl in this but there is so much going on around her the picture seems chaotic and loses the emotion of the girl. I tried getting closer to recreate the perfect shot, but the moment was gone and her expression was never the same.

Since the above picture was what I wanted, I played around with the cropping and edits and came up with these....

I love the soft, muted version above but I still wanted more drama so I added a texture and love the final effect. All the emotion I was hoping for when I took the picture.

I think it's important to capture the moment even if you can't get it perfect in camera. With a little editing, you can make the ordinary extraordinary.