Lately I’ve been trying to find some inspiration and improve my skill sets both behind the lens and in postproduction… and it hasn’t been as easy as I imagined.

Correction- the learning has been pretty successful… I’ve found a few photographers online that have been awesome enough to put up regular tutorials on some pretty advanced Photoshop techniques. I can’t believe some of the things I didn’t know! Some of the tools I’ve been bypassing for the past 10 years because I thought they were useless… Turns out I just didn’t know how to apply them properly. To quote my friend whom I told about my new discovery, “Everything is stupid until you know how to use it…” So, I’ve been absorbing as much as possible to improve my airbrushing and enhancements on my pictures.

One of my new favorite tutorials is by Aaron Nace, an incredibly talented photographer, about making a basic image look whimsical, entirely done with Photoshop. I can’t wait to shoot my next wedding, and use some of my new skillz. I also really really really want a smoke machine… portable… that I can take on shoots. If anyone has one laying around… SEND IT!

It’s the inspiration I’ve been finding challenging. I think it’s a classic case of ‘trying too hard.’ I want nothing more than to be influenced by the world around me… Recently I was over at a friend’s house, an artist, talking about this problem I’ve been having. I told her I was incredibly jealous of this remarkable 17-year-old photographer that blows most tenured photographers I know out of the water. Anyhow, my artist friend told me to think of it as inspiration. Maybe that’s the case… I’m going around looking for inspiration and it’s right under my nose, disguised as envy.

Here are a couple shots from a recent quick shoot with friends, Sallie and Sean Brosnan. I’m sort of obsessed with solar flares and light leaks… so I played around. Some aspects of these effects are filters,  some are done by hand, and some are from the actual shoot.

Embracing the modern editing

Oddly enough, I have had an aversion to overly enhanced images for many years- but have been using Photoshop for over a decade. Most of the time I minimally enhance my images in post-production, adjusting the lighting and doing some light air brushing. I think the reason I’ve turned my nose up at highly enhanced images might be because I learned to take pictures with a 35mm FILM camera, where you had to send off for prints. This was (and still can be) and expensive way to take pictures, and can certainly encourage you to get the hang of things very quickly. Also, while I was never trained in a darkroom, I have a great appreciation for the development of film. There are very few places you can even get darkroom materials anymore, and it is (unfortunately) impractical to shoot in 35mm today.

Maybe I’m just holding on too tightly to the past? A week spent on photography tutorial blogs and YouTube have proved to me that it is time to embrace these extreme enhancements in my professional shots for clients. Specifically- I watched about 3 hours of wedding photography editing, and my mind was blown.

Hypocritically, I love-love-love the fun filters I have at my fingertips in several applications in my phone. A quick glance through my Instagram feed and you’ll find some rather surreal representations of some rather ordinary snapshots. I particularly will cross this line when it comes to pictures of the sky. Maybe I’m OK with this because when I actually look at the sky I feel it is the same feeling as looking at a super-enhanced picture later. I’m enhancing the image to mimic the feeling.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is that I am diving head first into big new(ish) world and I can’t wait to learn all the things! 

Check out my Instagram from the other day when it stormed, it's on my homepage down at the bottom, the hydrangeas. I had no power so I wandered around my neighborhood shooting random things. I applied a couple light leak filters- I sure do love a good light leak! 

Our phones are pretty incredible devices. I cannot remember the last time I went even 24 hours without using my cell phone for something other than making calls. I would even venture to say that out of everything that I do on my phone, making calls is what I do the least with the device.

I barely remember when I learned to love taking pictures… I do know that it happened at summer camp, with a disposable camera. I grew up on an island, so the rolling hills captivated me. I took more pictures of the scenery than anything. When I was 13 or 14 I got my first 35mm SLR camera, and as they say- the rest is history. While I love the convenience of digital photography, I am very thankful to have had to learn without getting my results instantly.

Now, I take pictures all the time with the device that fits in my pocket. Furthermore, my iPhone 5 has more pixels- almost double actually- what my first point-and-shoot had over 10 years ago. While that alone is pretty incredible, what’s more impressive are the applications- the endless applications- available to smartphone users.

In less than 5 minutes I can take a picture, apply filters, enhance it, and share it on social media- all in the palm of my hand. Part of the phenomenon of our phones being miniature computers in our pockets is of course social media.

When I was a freshman in high school blogging was pretty popular, and I certainly had one (or two) to bellow out my angsty teenage soul… but that was then. Before MySpace. Before Facebook. Before Twitter. The way I like to ‘blog’ now? Instagram. I have it liked to my other accounts (Facebook, twitter, foursquare, and my home page), so that I only have to really keep up with one account to have a ‘presence.’ But really, I do Instagram for me. Because I like it. It’s just a bonus if other people like what I post too.

Some amazing apps that I use regularly are Snapseed, Tiny Planets, and Phoster. Another app I recently found that’s pretty incredible (I didn’t even believe it when I read the description on iTunes) is cycloramic.