RAW Knowledge: What I was missing

Ok so what can I say except that the first workshop was amazing! The topic was lighting and posing and the theme was “Flattering and Interesting”. I seriously love doing portraiture but I hate not having time to plan out a shoot, gather ideas, collaborate with the client, etc. Of course none of that was possible so it was a serious fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kinda night. On top of that I was also recently busted by Raven for not shooting in RAW so this was my first experience with that as well. As I scrolled through my shots I could tell from one frame to the next where I hit my stride.

 

These were done in a traditional studio setting with constant lighting (not flashed). I don’t usually hold back (at all…ever…) but getting warmed up took some time. I still like the simplicity of these first three and of course the model was gorgeous with some AMAZING eyes so flattering wasn’t all that tough but, while technically decent, these are super boring (which I’m pretty sure is the exact opposite of interesting)!!

Then we were switched out to another station where the lighting was totally different (off camera flash set up). The hallway was painted in super busy designs, and the model had a totally different, more exotic, type look to her. The main challenge for me here was getting the right settings (which I never fully accomplished). I usually do everything in my power to shy away from blow-outs in an image (hot, bright, white areas) but I just couldn’t do it. In order to avoid the blow-outs I was coming out very under exposed. Luckily shooting in RAW did allow me to correct the exposure in post without losing the integrity of the color. These images made me much happier.

 

 

 

I have also discovered that I actually don’t mind the occasional blow-out!!! It definitely ads interesting points to the overall effect of the image. So hopefully next time exposure won’t be near the issue it was this time. I have seen rim and hair lights used and always loved the effect. By having the off camera flashes I was able to try my hand at this and was INSANELY happy with the result.

I am also a sucker for black and white and against most others recommendations I will shoot in black and white. I have heard from others that it’s much better to shoot in color then covert in post. Unfortunately, I’ve never had much success at converting to black and white while keeping the grey scale true hence the reason for shooting in B&W to begin with. On my way home I started to second guess that decision. The set I used B&W on included a really cool blue hat/scarf thing that looked great on the model. I was kicking myself for not grabbing at least a few color shots. When I uploaded into Lightroom I discovered that I had nothing to worry about because LR automatically converted everything to color for me! This excited me (because it will not do that to a JPEG B&W image). I tested it out by converting back to B&W and the grey scale was BEAUTIFUL! So I guess now I truly have the best of both worlds.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!!!

Until Next Time-

Molly