Grace is a lovely young actress who I met a few years ago when we shared the stage in Beauty and the Beast at Upper Darby Summer Stage.  I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage with her twice since – she is now studying at the Boston Conservatory.

We had a wonderful day at Rose Tree Park when we met in August.  Working with old castmates is always fun – lots of goofing around and laughter, and amazing pictures in between.

We caught some great light towards the end of the shoot, and Grace gave me one of my favorite series of photos this year.  None of these are finals for her, but I think they capture the fun we had!

Youna contacted me in the summer, looking to get some updated photos for upcoming auditions.  We met outside of Philadelphia at one of my favorite locations, Rose Tree Park.

Youna is studying to be an opera singer at Temple University.  She has already been seen on stage in several productions.  She was lovely to meet with, and I know that she’s going to go far!

I spent some time in early May with my friend Lauren, who is an up-and-coming actress here in the Philadelphia area.  Lauren needed some updated headshots, so we decided to meet at Rose Tree Park on a sunny day back in mid-March to see what we could do!

Lauren surprised me by showing up right after a haircut – I had just spent time with her, so I noticed right away – and LOVED the new look.

The session went well; we wandered a bit around the park, finding different locations to shoot in, and having a lot of fun.  It ended up being a great day, and I can’t wait to hear about the next show she books with her new headshots!

Ok, so one thing I always enjoy seeing is how people bring their photos from SOOC (straight out of camera) to the final product. Typically, the most awesome end photos are awesome already SOOC, but I’ve seen amazing artists do amazing thing with ill-lit or otherwise flawed material.

I haven’t reached the point where I can save a badly lit photo, but I thought I would share with you my current process for editing a photo.

The first photo is “SOOC” – I shoot in RAW so technically this is straight from RAW… but close enough. RAW allows for more flexibility in editing, so I try to always shoot in RAW; however, there is some altering of the photo in the processing to JPG that is inherent in RAW. At least, I think there is.

Top left photo is the SOOC+crop – this step comes first, typically, and then tweaked before export. For headshots, I grab every photo in lightroom and adjust the aspect ratio to 8×10 before I do anything else. Then, I’ll go through and individually edit each photo’s crop and straightning.

Top right photo is SOOC+crop+lightroom adjustments. This varys wildly depending on the photo. I either use my own tweaking or I’ll use a preset and go from there. For this photo I used a preset and tweaked from there.

The bottom two photos are after final photoshop tweaking. Sharpening the eyes, dodge the eye whites, brush out stray hairs, tweak the levels, and then convert to b/w for a b/w version (I use a setting for this, because I am lazy and the person who made the setting is amazingly talented and really, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel).

So, that’s kind of how I go through processing a photo. Not every photo makes it to the photoshop step; not every photo even makes it to the cropping step. But for all my final photos, this is pretty much the process.

Today after work I had the privilege of re-shooting headshots for a friend of mine. I took an original set on Friday, but the late afternoon light was not working in my favor – I think it was me working against the light rather than working with it.

Here is an edited version of one of the photos from today. I’m really happy with how the shoot went – this was taken at around 5:30, with some lovely light, under trees. I never considered shooting in the shade before I read about how the light is easier to work with – now I really have to say, it’s the way to go.

One of the hardest things to learn, for me, is how to get people to pose, and relax in front of the camera. I’ve been shooting people I know up to this point, which allows for some fun banter back and forth. When the subject is comfortable in the pose, the expressions are much more natural – a lesson I learned today.

In other news, the Phillies are in the World Series for the first time since I was 9. I was born in December of 1983 – the last time a Philadelphia team won a championship I was not yet born. So, let’s go Phils!