I have never published any of my photos straight out of camera (SOOC) and unedited. Until now! I thought it would be fun to show some of the before and after magic that editing programs enable. Like most photographers, I use Lightroom to edit my photos. Since I find myself making some of the same basic edits in every photo, I have created a base preset that gets automatically applied when I first open up my pictures. Therefore, they all start with a certain amount of brightening, contrast, temperature/white balance adjustment, highlights, shadows, midtones, whites, blacks and lens correction. Then, I hand edit from there for each specific photo!
Below you'll find 5 of my favourite indoor photos from my 365 project so far: edited and unedited!
1. Getting ready for Passover dinner
My hubby made a delicious brisket dinner for Passover this year and he had both kids help with the preparation. Here, my son is washing rosemary from our garden. I love this photo because it includes all 3 of them and because of the different vantage point. It was my first time shooting from the other side of the cut out "window" above our kitchen sink.
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2. Looking out the window
I actually remember being kind of stuck for a creative idea for my 365 project on this day, so I just had my daughter look out our living room window. I ended up liking this photo because of the detail of her pony tail, the soft light on her face and the leading lines of the blinds, which by the way are crooked and need fixing!
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3. Teddy Bear Party!
This was actually taken on a day when both kids were home sick from school. The rest of the day I had them take it easy to get better, but they quite liked the idea of throwing their teddy bears up over and over again until I got the "shot"! It honestly took quite a few tries to get both teddy bears in frame and up in the air at the same time. It was totally worth it though!
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4. Playing with Lego
I love colour! You'd be able to tell if you walked into our living room or this playroom. I really like this "rainbow rug", as we call it, so when I saw my son playing with his Lego car, I knew I wanted to feature it with some foreground bokeh/blurriness. So I got down low (after decluttering because hello, it's the playroom!), and this is what I shot!
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5. Reflections on New Year's Day
We visited my in laws this past December and were there for New Year's Day. I knew that I wanted to start a daily 365 photography project this year, so that meant January 1st was going to be my official starting day. The front door at the house has beautiful stained glass and when I saw the light coming through that morning, I wondered how it would look with my daughter looking through it. It worked out way better than I predicted, in my opinion. I love the reflection and also the light on her fingers.
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What do you think? Were they pretty predictable leaps from unedited to edited? Have you tried using the Lightroom Mobile app to edit your phone photos? If not, what is your favourite editing app?
As you see, as long as the starting picture is framed and composed how you like, editing can reveal its potential and take it from an everyday shot to maybe one that you'd like to look at again and again. :)
Check out some more photos from my 365 daily photo project HERE.