The Importance of Editing Family Photos

You’ve probably heard me say this before: editing is more than changing a photo’s appearance. Throwing away photos (or at the very least, not publishing them online) is also an important part of the editing process.

If my subject isn’t in focus, there’s nothing that can be done to save the shot. Even if I love it, it’s automatically trash. Sometimes things are only slightly out of focus so I’ll hold onto the photo for sentimental purposes in my digital “shoe box”, but I won’t publish it or print it in an album.

This wasn’t always the case and if you look through my Flickr stream over the years, you can see how I’ve grown as an editor, both with post processing tools and selection of published photos. I’d like to think I’m more consistent at taking better photos and that is probably the case, but I still don’t publish most of what I shoot.

I’m far less selective with family photos because I’m trying to tell a story and document our history more than I’m trying to create art. Of course I want to do both of these things with all my photography, but when I’m shooting people (haha, I love saying that) I take a photojournalistic approach and try to capture life as it’s being lived.

Getting it Right Straight Out of the Camera!

This past weekend, my brother-in-law and his wife hosted a Mother’s Day Lunch Saturday afternoon. Our kids always have a blast playing with their much older cousins and it was a beautiful day outside so we spent a lot of time out there.

I shot on manual mode and for the first time I’m happy with the way most of the shots came out exposure-wise! Here are some photos I barely needed to change at all. Mostly, I clean-edited them, boosting the contrast and clarity slightly and then sharpened them. Mouseover the photo or click the “View SOOC” link for each description to view the straight-out-of-camera version.

Above: My Boa-baby fell asleep about 3 minutes into the car ride as his nap was cut short to get ready.
(View SOOC.)

Above Right: I didn’t like that the sky was blown out, so I used the sky from a similar shot and also used the recovery tool in ACR quite a bit. I don’t hate the SOOC version though. (View SOOC.)

Below: Mr. Serious uses his cousin Whitney’s legs as a tunnel. It’s hard to tell the difference between the edited and SOOC here! (View SOOC)

Above Left: Boa looking off into the distance. (View SOOC.)

Above Right: Mr. Serious and his cousin Whitney playing in the field. (View SOOC.)

Both of these needed a bit more correction than the others, but I still like the SOOCs!

The Throw Away Shot Restored

When it comes to photos of my family, I’m much more willing to take a technically bad shot and try to turn it into something presentable because I’ll never get another chance to take those photos again. If I screw up a shot of a flower, no big deal. I’ll wait until another one blooms or go buy some more. My heart has no attachment to such shots. When I see the smiling faces of my children looking back at me through a greatly underexposed photo, as long as it’s in focus I need to try to save it.

For the shot below, I made the mistake of metering against the sky instead of against the faces. (Lesson learned: metering against the sky works well if the subject is being bathed in light, but not so well in the shadows.) It was underexposed for what I was trying to do, perhaps because I was still using spot-metering. As usual, mouseover it (or view the link below) to view the badly exposed straight out of the camera version!

(View SOOC.)

This captures a fun and unique moment shared between Mr. Serious and his cousin Faith. I want to keep it and probably print it out at some point. If it was anything I could re-shoot I would throw the photo away entirely. I shoot in RAW, which has a higher dynamic range and therefore can withstand more exposure correction without degrading the image. Situations like this are exactly why I put up with gigantic files!

Here’s what I did:

1. Corrected the exposure in ACR by about a full stop. Upped the brightness and fill.
2. Brought it into Photoshop and clean edited it. The levels needed to be corrected quite a bit.
3. Used a non-destructive dodge/burn layer to lighten up their faces.
4. Used Pioneer Woman’s Warmer action at 16%. On retrospect, I probably could’ve just used a Photo Filter adjustment layer and selected one of the preset warming filters!
5. Used Pioneer Woman’s Quick Edge Burn action at low opacity and fill to distract just a bit from the busy background.
6. Used MCP Actions’ High Definition Sharpening and masked out the background.

Check out Monica’s Before and After blog hop for more before and after editing examples!

The Artistic Edit

In this week’s Shoot and Edit, Ashley talks all about using gradients to add interesting effects to your shots. It’s a brilliant idea, especially when you adjust the opacity and blending mode of the layers!

I took my favorite shot of the day and decided to try to artistically edit it using gradients. I tried two different gradient layers for this edit:

1. I applied a gradient map adjustment layer and lowered the opacity so I could get a better idea of how it would work with the photo. To play around, I created a custom gradient with white, yellow, blue and green. Then I played around with the opacity and blending modes to discover I liked it in Overlay at 20% opacity.
   
2. I then applied a gradient (or gradient fill) adjustment layer using a Yellow, Violet, Orange, Blue preset. In Soft Light Blending mode at 30% opacity, I like the warmness it gives the shot and the depth of color it adds to the background. I erased some of the effect from Boa’s eyes as it made them look a little hollow.
   

The shot on the left is the clean-edited version. Mouseover it to view the SOOC. The one on the right has both the gradient map and gradient fill layers applied. Mouseover it to view it compared to the clean edit.

Which do you like better?

Make sure to check out some great Shoot and Edit entries from the talented photographers linking up with Ashley this week!

How Do You Edit Your Family Photos?

• What approach do you take with editing your family photos? Photojournalist or posed? Clean edited or artistically edited?
• At what point do you trash sentimental shots if they’re technically bad?
• How have you noticed your photography and editing skills improving over time?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!