I like to do my post production as soon after the sessions as possible. That way I can look at the images while remembering exactly what I was doing in the moment. If I've made any mistakes this quick "after action" review helps me learn from them. If I tried something new and it worked the happiness of seeing it quickly reinforces the lesson.
I pulled the images into Lightroom, tossed the ones that weren't flattering, tossed a bunch of frames that were nearly identical (keeping the best examples) and then output the remaining images as Jpegs and uploaded them to an online gallery.
In post I decided to fine tune the background colors and the foreground colors (and densities) separately so I made a selection for my subject and inverted the selection back and forth to work on the different zones. I brought up the saturation in the background with an emphasis on the cyan, blue and green channels. I also used a tilt-shift blur on the background via PhotoShop's filter gallery. The final step for the background was to use PhotoShop's transform tool (skew) to straighten up the verticals. I think that makes a difference...
For my subject I pulled down the saturation on her skin and then did the usual enhancements to create an image that would work well for this firm's continuing look. But I didn't have to do much. A little color blending on her skin, a slight darkening of the tones under her chin (for added lighting contrast) and a mellowing of some specular highlights on her face.
I just wanted to have some photographic context for you, gentle reader, so you wouldn't get bogged down in my endless writing to understand the look I was going for.
Yes. We're still working.
Sigma fp + 85mm f1.4
