Eyes on the back of my head.

People ask me all the time what the advantages are of hiring a second photographer for your wedding. Someone to not just assist the main photographer, but to actually shoot and capture images from a second vantage point. I could go into a lengthy explanation about why it's worth the investment to have a second point of view, or about how one person can't possibly be in every spot at once, but I think I'll just let this set of images, of the same part of a ceremony, speak for themselves.

First gorgeous image by my friend, the always incredible Kym of Kym Vitar Photography, second shooting for Intuitive Images Photography. Second image by yours truly.

The trouble with muses....

... is that they never stop inspiring you. 

Okay, I guess that's not necessarily trouble. 

Overlays 101

By popular demand, here's a little tutorial on overlays- what they do, and a couple of free ones from me to you.

Overlays are basically just images with abstract shapes and colors that you can apply to an image to create a certain effect. In Photoshop CS, Elements, or whatever layering software you use, just select and copy the overlay, paste it on top of the photo you want to apply it to, and change that layer to 'overlay', 'soft light', or 'multiply'. You can change that layer to anything you want, actually, but the best effects are generally achieved through those three layer types. Then just drop the opacity to your desired look, and erase, smudge, or mask it off the sections you don't want it on. Easy peasy! You can use overlays with lots of texture, with warm colors, with different light patterns to achieve different lighting effects. Some of my favorites are by Florabella and Kaleidescope, but you can certainly make your own!

Here's a little subtle before and after using the Sunburst overlay:

and here's the overlay image itself: (feel free to download this image from this link, or you can get three free overlays from the link below)

My 3 free bokeh overlays are here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?n9c4e2tc79zwe 

rock em out, and show me what you come up with!

xoxo,

Stephanie

B and A Day!

One of the more dramatic Before and Afters. Not because of the subjects- they were amazing, and looked fantastic. But because the weather conditions were not on my side.

On the morning of this family session, there was a thick moody layer of fog blanketing the marina area. Well, blanketing most of Southern California, really. And, while it's great for diffusing light on your subject's face, it's terrible for getting attractive surroundings.

This image was the very first shot of the session, and I knew a little punch was all it needed. This was edited using nothing but level layers and sharpening.

http://intuitiveimagesphotography.com/

Here's a little peek at the rest of their session:

B and A Day

From a recent boudoir session:

All manual editing: skin smoothing, airbrushing, eye pop adjustment, sharpening, lip color adjustment, add wallpaper texture and vignette.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.