Earth Day - Inspired portraits: Before & After

| Grey-Bruce Photographer |

I typically don’t do too much to the majority of my work in terms of using Photoshop. I prefer mainly “Clean Edits” - a few small, general tweaks to exposure, white balance, and then I often add in few other creative enhancements so that my images reflect my personal style. However, there are times when a great deal of Photoshop work takes place, and it’s fun to see the transformation that occurs during the initial shot to the creation of the final image.

Last month, my business was forced to close indefinitely due to the government orders related to the Covid-19 pandemic. To be honest, a few weeks went by before I picked up my camera. With the abrupt changes in our everyday home life and routines, as well as the implementation of social distancing, I was overwhelmed with so many different emotions. Stress, fear, worry, anxiety, and sadness. I had little motivation and felt zero inspiration to create with my camera. Much of my inspiration in my business comes from you! - My clients!! And without these interactions and sessions to plan, I felt like I was stuck in a rut.

I decided that I needed to pull myself out of my funk, and planned a simple creative shoot using my own little muses. With the global state of affairs , and with Earth Day approaching, I decided to incorporate “the earth” into my images. As you can see … much of the image was created in Photoshop. You may laugh at my “before” images, but I didn’t have much to work with in terms of “props.” I needed something to mimic the world, and so I used what I had on hand (which ended up being my daughter’s bounce-on ball and ….a turnip! LOL) … And then I used the magic of Photoshop to bring my vision to life!

That “Before” photo is looking pretty ghetto, am I right?! LOL. This image didn’t turn out exactly as I had hoped, but it’s good to acknowledge that not everything works! I ended up editing it anyways because it was the only decent one that I had captured of my three kids together.

Besides filling in the background, including some adjustment layers and adding a subtle texture, I transformed the large ball into the Earth, using a free PNG that I found on the web.

I decided pretty early on in my editing process that I wanted to crop this image differently. What do you think - did I make the right choice?

I was in a pinch for this one. I knew I wanted the world to fit into her hands, but literally could not find anything on-hand that was the right size. That is, until I opened my fridge - lol. Makenzie hates turnip and was not keen on holding it, but, it worked!

“The way we choose to see the world
Creates the world we see.”
- Barry Neil Kaufman

This image was fun to make! I used another free PNG and replaced my son’s iris with the earth image. It’s subtle, but the crop helps to bring attention to his eye.

I’d love to know: Would you like to see more “Before-After” transformations in future blog posts?