Kiss & Tell: Golden Hour....

Ok, so I promised you another Kiss & Tell and this time it was on one of my FAVORITE images I've done yet!  As you may recall, I posted a senior session a little while back and indicated that I had a ton of fun playing with a certain image.  Well, here it is.  If you guessed the sunglow one, either you are ingeniously smart, or you know me too well, haha :D

This is my FAV FAV FAV for several reasons!  I have been after that elusive "golden hour" glow/sun flare for two years now (I started photoging in 2009).  Gorgeous light and sunflare were some of the primary qualities I have been yearning for and have cried tears over.  Often wondering if I really could do this whole photography thing because I just couldn't seem to grab hold of that gorgeous glow like others had.  When you are self-taught, sometimes you are blessed to find a tutorial on some technique, and if you are REALLY blessed you may find another photoger willing to share their "secrets".  In the area of sunflare and glorious glow, I haven't been so lucky.  It's been try, try again, CRY, try, try again, CRY.... you get the picture, (haha, I love puns!)  This time, I got to cry for joy!  :D

We LITERALLY went out as the sun was going down.  The Rebel would have NEVER let me get this image.  The ISO range is lousy and my shutter would have had to compensate.  Not good when there is wind or people that breath, lol!  The 5D however.... :D gave me what I needed.  SO!  When people tell you that you don't need "better gear" they are only telling you part of the story.  The photographer makes the image, yes.... BUT you can be severally handicapped by limited means.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news peeps.  I'm bummered and sorry but it's the truth.

When we got the shot I was jumping up and down (literally, just ask Alyssa.... she wasn't sure who was more excited, she or me!)!!!  I couldn't believe I caught flare and SUN GLOW!!!!!  Fast forward to uploading and I was saddened to see that it wasn't quite to my standards... yet.  I knew I had good bones to work with though and was thrilled beyond belief when I got the final result!

I can't list out my exact steps (sorry, didn't even think about writing it all down, I was just sooo excited to play, lol!) but I'll give a sorta, kinda overview.

First things first, I had to deal with the lighting issue... she was WAY underexposed!  Adjusting contrast, lighting, basic stuff then the fun began.  I hated the road beside her :(  And that dad-gum power line!!!!  That HAD to go.  So OFF with it's head :)  Content aware, as always.... I LOVE YOU!!!!!!  Fantastic on cleaning up those temporary blemishes and unsightlys ;)  Little skin smoothing, then the BAM factor!  I copied the image as a layer.  Flipped it horizontally, did a layer mask and took off where she was.  This took some time to get the right opacity on brushes, etc but eventually I got it to work.  I didn't want it to be tell-tale so I took some of the extra leaves off the right side, took a reed out on the lower left (content aware!) and adjusted a few other spots accordingly.  NOW, yes.... I didn't fix the top of the image.  I know that you can see the "duplicity" of the image but I loved the "ray" affect it had and decided to leave it.  Who knows, I may look back on this and think, "good grief!!!" but for now, I LOVE it and that's what matters, lol!  I used an action to increase the vibrancy of the color around her, and then tried several different "sunlight" actions.  I played for HOURS!  The sun glow was my favorite so that's the one I posted :)  Maybe I'll post the others at another time so you can see the difference actions can make.

Hope you enjoyed seeing the fun that goes on behind the scenes :)

XOXOXO