In early January, we were able to meet up with Kevin and Nicole to capture their love story. Upon receiving Nicole’s story, I knew right away that this shoot was going to be classic. Kevin is in the military. Twice in the past two years, he has been away for an extended period of time, reducing their communication to handwritten letters.
More about this couple later!!
I’ve been waiting to share this session for some time now. Before the cold set in, we met up with Jordan and Lisa for an engagement shoot in the woods. I had an idea for an engagement shoot involving a fire with s’mores, so we included it in this session of much variety. From sports to (pretending to be) playing music, to hiking, to flannels. . .Jordan and Lisa share many interests. It was very easy to identity with them on this issue! They were so very lovely to work! Aneila and I are excited to be filming their wedding within the next few years! Enjoy!
I couldn’t resist sharing this image from today’s engagement shoot with Jordan and Lisa. They were so lovely to work with and I can’t wait to share the rest!
Before the cooler weather started moving in, we met up with Michael and Gracie to shoot some engagement photos. I really didn’t have much of a vision for a theme as the time approached, however, about thirty minutes before Michael and Gracie arrived I decided there at least needed to be lemonade. Aneila and I then walked outside and noticed an orchard across the field from our house. We never even knew it existed!! That was it. Everything else just fell into place.
aneila and i have reached our first anniversary. self timers are the eighth wonder of the world.
When post processing the hot cocoa engagement photos for Katy and Colin, I noticed that something was missing. Most of what I remember about their session was the cold, Cold, COLD, FREEZING wind. The cocoa was hot. Where was the steam?? It turns out that by the time I made the image shown below, more than half of the cocoa had been consumed by the subjects! I don’t blame them, taking the weather into account! In order to provoke a further sense of “being cold, but keeping warm with hot cocoa” for the viewers, I decided to create a steam asset in our apartment. The simple, 15 minute process follows:
1. Boil water.
2. DIY miniature spotlight. Made by simply placing an energy saver lightbulb and lamp assembly into an old tomato sauce can and sealing the back end with aluminum foil. I used an energy saver bulb because they don’t burn as hot. I tried a normal incandescent bulb before, and it sounded like it was going to explode from being in such a tight space. The heat was not able to escape.
3. Turn out the lights and Close the Blinds. In other words, make the room dark.
4. Position the mug from the e-session at a slight angle in front of the light. Pour the hot water into the mug.
5. With virtually any lens, take several shots of the beautiful, backlit mug with rising steam. I made sure to shoot at an angle that included the darkest background possible. Once in Lightroom, the images were processed as black and white with high contrast.
6. Open the image in photoshop that needs steam. Open the image of steam as well.
7. With the rectangle marquee tool, make a selection from the rim of the mug to the top of the steam.
8. Copy the steam, then paste it into the cocoa image. Resize and rotate the steam as needed to line up the mug rims.
9. With the steam layer selected, change the blending mode to “screen”. This cuts out any black, leaving the steam. I used the soft eraser tool to dress up any remaining edges that “screen” didn’t take care of. A layer mask with a soft black brush would also do the job very well.
10. Lower the opacity of the steam layer to a percent around 20 or below. Since the steam wasn’t in the original image, the effect needs to be subtle, or else it won’t sell to the viewer.
The finished image.
This effect turned out to be very, very easy to do. I believe anyone with basic photoshop knowledge could accomplish this in less than an hour. Follow this link to view the complete session: http://www.jordanbakerphoto.com/blog/2012/02/katelyn/
