When Photographers Suck

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

First the disclaimer; I am not a professional, I'm a moderately serious amateur hack. I did my second corporate headshot shoot for the State of Minnesota several weeks back and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

First of all, when I got there the space they gave me to set up a backdrop and two flash units was incredibly small, not to mention I had to stand somewhere myself and take the picture.

I had my wife sit for a few test exposures holding a gray card for white balance and shooting a few frames so I could meter the light. And that's when it all went from bad to worse. My fill light flash unit crapped out. It wouldn't fire. So now I've got a subject > background distance WAY too close, I'm half laying on top of a table to take the shot because a wide angle lens is no good for portraits and the flash shits the bed.

I start readjusting everything in the limited space I have, chimping as I go. The results are just f'n horrible and I know I'm in for a long session of post work. Thank goodness there were only 14 people in this particular department.

Any way, here the before photo and after. The before is 100 unretouched. The after was multiple attempts trying various methods to fix these photos.

[73sbVert]

Thomas, do you use Lightroom? I've found that's probably THE best post-processing program on the market today. Lots of tutorials online as well.

(on a side note, your subject is gorgeous, before AND after!)

[Giraffe (He/Him)]

Originally Posted by 73sbVert

Thomas, do you use Lightroom? I've found that's probably THE best post-processing program on the market today. Lots of tutorials online as well.

(on a side note, your subject is gorgeous, before AND after!)

Yup. I love LR.

On this set I used both Photoshop CC and Lightroom. Detailed masking is kinda hard in LR and to be honest I don't know of it's possible.

And yes, she's a looker.