Style Haus by SH

Whoodley woot woot! I just finished putting together my fall look book for sessions! (You can see all the magic here.) I’m so excited about the little micro collections I built. Each one has its own particular style and palette. It’s difficult to describe the ways that color, texture and pattern interact well, so showing is perfect. I’m so thankful to have an Amazon Influencer account that lets me create this amazing resource.

The most important concept to me while I was building these little family collections was sprezzatura–a certain effortlessness of style. I tried to to include an unexpected element in each to make them as utterly unique as each family I meet. I’m not aiming to have someone buy these collections as they are and wear them, although anyone certainly may do. What I really want to do is inspire creativity in a way that introduces some fresh perspective and authentic personality to the family wardrobe game.

Let’s be totally transparent here. Amazon’s Influencer program is all about sales, right? I do get a few pennies in the jar each time someone uses my shop. Some day I might make enough off of this to buy an extra battery for my camera. But I’m not a merchant, I’m a photographer. I’m not doing this to make money on clothing sales. It’s just a phenomenal tool to communicate ideas, and to help my clients plan and get excited for their sessions. It’s like Pinterest, only it’s on Amazon, so if you love something you can just add it to your cart. And most of it is inexpensive. What could be more awesome?!

Anyway, I digress. Here are a few thoughts about dressing your family for your fall session.

First of all, it’s ok to let each individual personality shine through. If everyone has a different style, you can unify the look through color or texture. Don’t worry about your teenager’s eccentricity too much. If one of your kids is a book worm and the other is an athlete, go with it. Everyone doesn’t have to be wearing cookie cutter Sunday Best for the pictures to be fantastic. I tried to show in these little collections how different aesthetics can mix well in the same group. Because every family is a little eclectic, right?

If you’re not formal in your everyday life, there’s no reason to “dress up” for your session. The images will be much more authentic if you dress in a way that’s comfortable to you. Make your look special by adding a bold accessory or two rather than stepping up the level of formality in the clothing itself.

The best way to make a sure-fire success of your family’s look is to choose either a warm or cool neutral palette, and then include a pop or two of one color (bonus if it’s subtle or timely). When I say a pop or two, I don’t mean per person. I mean per group. Only one or two people should have the color on, and the rest should be all in neutrals.

Use pattern with extreme caution. If there will be more than one pattern (even if it’s the “same” pattern, like two plaids), then only one of the patterns should have non-neutral color, and the neutrals need to coordinate.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and these aren’t even rules to begin with. The whole point is really to say, “yes, you can use color!” and, “yes, you can use pattern!” as long as you use them in a way that supports rather than detracts from the impact of the people themselves.

So, dive in, enjoy, and share your thoughts with me about the whole process! What do you think of the pattern mixing? What do you think of the style mixing? Would you do it?

https://www.amazon.com/shop/relishphotography?listId=GDUADBD442ZK&ref=cm_sw_em_r_inf_list_own_relishphotography_dp_QpL7X5z7T7S1W

Style Haus by SH: Gold Country Fall Look Book

Black And White: Actually a Grey Area.

Sometimes I include black and white images in my client galleries, and they are often duplicate edits of shots I’ve shown in color. Since most printing services give an automatic black and white conversion option, it may seem unnecessary for me to include these alternate edits. But this is far from the case, and I want to show you how that’s so.

Left: Automatic conversion to black and white from color
Right: hand-process of a black and white conversion

Black and white filters don’t know what you want the image to be about. There are a lot of neat looking effects readily available through Instagram, VSCO, and other plugin sources; but those one-and-done tools don’t understand what is important in the image, and what can be downplayed or augmented to make the subject really pop.

If you desaturate an image and make no other changes, certain details that stood out because of their color will be diminished or lost in your black and white image. Although the colors may have been in great contrast, they may also be very similar in tone. Converting an image like that to black and white can make it all a muddle of similar shades of gray.

A successful, eye-catching black and white image needs to have bright whites and rich darks. It needs to have its subject clearly defined so that even if it’s printed the size of a postage stamp, the subject matter is clear and readable.

Automatic conversion by desaturation–the subjects blend with the background for lack of contrast.

The images I’ve included show the progression an image can take from color to black and white. In the color version, the pink and blue clothing easily sets the family apart from the beautiful greenery in the background. But when I automatically convert the image to black and white (by desaturation), the family seem to merge with the background. Their prominence in the frame is really diminished. Alternately, in my hand edit, I’ve manipulated the light and shadow values to bring the family back out of the background and make them the stars of the show again.

Color spoils easily. The vibrant, on-trend color that makes you love an image today can also make it look dated in 7 or 8 (or 20?) years. Color is very susceptible to the changing tides of fashion, so if there’s a lot of bold color in a shot, that can be a really good reason to also have a black and white edit. Without the element of color, images can transcend time more freely and endure more without the connotation of any particular era. On the other hand, there’s a valid and joyous place in the world for all that is of this very moment and will no longer make sense to us 6 months or a year from now. “Now” and “Always” are equally precious.

Custom hand-conversion from color to black and white–a dark background contrasts strongly with well-lit subjects, and the tones in the clothing are varied.

So, automatic black and white conversion is not available in my product line. I encourage my clients to reach out to me personally for their black and white conversions so they can get a black and white image that is every bit as thoughtfully created as the color version.

Understanding Image Quality: Exposure

What is the recipe for great image quality? How do you know it when you see it? I’ll be writing a series of posts over time to delve into this in a way anyone can understand. The short answer? Great images are made by leveraging adept knowledge on powerful equipment to uplift free-spirited creativity.

I want to take a little time to explain some different aspects of image quality in a way that’s not too technical for non-photographers to follow.

The low-quality samples in my proofing don’t show the depth of detail in the final images. That’s part of the reason I’m writing this post! The image quality I explain here is the image quality you can expect from every one of my galleries. I work in accordance with the standards established for commercial photography by Adobe Stock and Getty Images, and branch out artistically from that starting point. If for some reason I ever couldn’t deliver that on a session, I would offer a complimentary reshoot rather than deliver those images.

Poor Quality: Background
Exposure Issues

There are many factors that make up the prevailing assessment of image quality. In portraits, focus should be sharp on both eyes. Exposure should be correct. The image should be free of excessive artifacts like noise, dust, chromatic aberrations, and color separation. There are times to break the rules, and I’m happy to do it for good reason. But quality standards exist to help us create the most rich, real, and beautiful images the state of our art will allow.

To put it more plainly, here’s a poor quality image. The highlights are clipped–see how the side of the building is white where it seems like it should probably be yellow? Those parts of the image are so overexposed that the camera’s sensor recorded no detailed data. The same thing happened in the shadows here. There are no details in the blacks.

It’s kind of like when you walk into the sun from a dark room and you can’t see anything until your eyes adjust. You’re not capable of seeing both the extreme dark and the extreme light at the same time–you have to adjust for one or the other. In the same way, this scene went outside the range of what my camera could capture.

The next image shows what the same shot looks like to me when I’m processing. The red is Lightroom’s highlight clipping indicator, and the blue is the shadow clipping indicator. I don’t turn these indicators off when I’m working. A quality image should look identical whether they are on or off.

I’ve also shared an example of a successful image side by side with the clipping indicators on and off. There’s no difference between the with and without indicator images. Even though this image was also shot in dramatic light, there is no clipping anywhere–detail was captured throughout the entire frame.

The takeaway is that protecting the quality of the entire frame is essential to making the most beautiful image possible.

Professional photographers not only recognize image quality issues, but they also have in-depth technical knowledge of the equipment they use, and are able to push its capabilities to the limits–or even beyond, with a measure of ingenuity and strong post-processing skills.

Why I Don’t Use Presets

*One of my images with a popular preset applied. The white patch on the right is burning my eyes! that highlight was not blown out in the original image.*

My feed’s always flooded with ads for photography presets, also known in the social media world as filters. These pre-made sets of editing actions can be mass-applied to a whole photoshoot at once. Some photographers use presets as a tool to save time and give all their work a consistent look.

When a stylized preset is applied, the image can become more about the preset than the actual image itself. For this reason, presets can help increase the impact of images that are lacking in interest or quality. But they fall far short of hand editing when they meet with great image quality and attention to detail.

Clients and colleagues have complimented my processing and asked if presets are a part of my workflow. So, I wanted to take a few minutes to write about my approach to processing, and explain why I don’t use presets.

If you’ve ever followed a photography feed or even talked about photography near your phone, you’ve probably seen preset ads. Brixton film, Jake Olson, who else sells presets? There are so many out there. The example photos look dreamy–bright, rich, deep and intense, or soft, muted, and tranquil. Surreal in a really good way. It’s easy to think that mood was created by the preset alone.

But, no. A professional photographer shot those images, and although the preset was applied, many other actions were also taken to create that final product. When presets are simply applied wholesale, one-and-done style, the effect is not always so dreamy.

Left: My hand edit; Right: a popular preset with no other edits

When I began studying as a photographer, I was incredibly fortunate to have a very patient and technically-minded mentor who taught me in depth how to shoot and edit for the best possible image quality. It was a major milestone for me in my path to begin shooting professionally when I was accepted as a contributor for Adobe Stock and Getty Images–two separate commercial image sources, each with a strict insistence on impeccable image quality. My artistic editing springs from that foundation of technical excellence. I start with a clean image, and branch out to create a little fantasy in my editing without losing that integrity.

Consider the images above. On the left, in my hand edit, I kept the blacks dark and the whites bright, making space for the midtones. I clipped the blacks gently to give a soft matte look. I softened the green but left it a natural hue. I augmented the direction of the light. I removed some distractions from the background and minimized the prominence of the textures in the road and grass. I pumped up her hair and subtly straightened her posture, and I processed her skin first by hand and then by applying my custom look with a sophisticated skin texture algorithm.

Left: My hand edit; Right: the same popular preset as above.

In this detail crop of the same image, you can really see the difference in the level of detail between the hand edit and the image with the preset applied. The preset made her white shirt look blue and her face look orange. Her hair is not flattered, and her eyes are darkened so much that the light in them is almost totally lost. The preset brought out unwanted detail in the background and flattened her face, making it appear more broad. The same broadening and flattening effect can be seen in the preset-applied image below right. The skin tone is unnatural, and popped details in the gate steal attention from her face.

Left: My hand edit; Right: another popular preset–her face is flattened and broadened by detail loss.

I love an artistic, stylized edit, but presets don’t give me that. For my workflow, they remove detail and rob the processing experience of its intention and artistry. There’s nothing a preset can do that I can’t create by hand, which gives me so much more freedom to create.

Left: My hand edit; Right: original image straight out of camera with no edits

Presets do serve as a great reflection of popular culture. In 10 years, we may look back on them with nostalgia the same way we look back now on Glamor Shots, In Living Color, and JNCO pants. SO cool at the time, right? So NOW. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the love may not last.

As much as I enjoy being gently swayed by the changing tides of style, it’s important to me that I stay rooted in classic beauty. I want to make sure the work I’m creating will still be relevant and just as enjoyable in 10, 20, or 50 years. And, above all else, I want my portraits to be about the person, not the processing.