A New Approach

When I first decided that I seriously wanted to pursue photography, I discovered Photoshop & Lightroom Actions. For those who don’t know, actions are one-click photo adjustments… They can do anything from make a photo look vintage, sharpen, add contrast, turn the photo black & white, etc. Some of my favorites are Totally Rad! Actions, Jesh de Rox’s Colorshift Actions, and Kubota Image Tools. They’re really cool and are HUGE time savers, BUT I realized recently that I wanted to take a step back from all the action craziness and only use them a very minimal amount. It can be so easy to get wrapped up in trying a million new combinations and effects, and before I know it, my photos can end up looking insanely different than I first envisioned. Also, I’ve noticed the more I allow myself to play around with actions, the more my photos end up looking inconsistent. So here’s to taking a more minimal approach to find simplicity and consistency. Cheers!… With my glass of Coke Zero, obvi.

With all that being said, I’ve realized that I can’t NOT be friends with Totally Rad!’s RadLab because it is just so awesome. I just have to be super careful to remind myself of my new minimalist approach. :)

Here’s a picture I snapped last week during my maternity session with David & Rachel. I think it’s a cross between The Notebook and The Little Mermaid. You gotta kiss de girllll! I made very minimal adjustments to give it a little more of a pop, but honestly, the photo didn’t need much! (Oh! And I edited out Baxter, the adorable little dachshund that just decided to crash our shoot.) And this photo WILL be blown up and hung in my office one day. LOVE IT! Here’s the recipe I used to achieve this look in RadLab…

Grainstorm – 30%
Claire-ify – 30%
Divine Light – 20% (Warmth – 40%)
Vanilla Kiss – 50%
Boutwell Magic Glasses 40%
Be looking for a full post of all of their pictures to be hitting the blog this week! Happy Monday! :)