Fourth of July session

Photographers, I'm sure it's happened to us all. You get home from an amazing session, pop the SD card into your computer, and the dreaded letters fill the screen. Files upon files ending in .JPG. You blink a few times, the world around you going hazy. You take a deep breath; these files are not uneditable. It's not the end of your career. After steadying yourself for a moment, you open your culling software and get right to work.

That's what happened to me with my Fourth of July shoot. Now, it's a great rule of thumb to keep your camera in RAW. However, I use my camera for more than just portraits. As someone who also takes photos for a summer camp, shooting those photos RAW is not ideal. I barely do any post-production work on those photos, so shooting in JPG greatly helps my work flow. Usually, I switch from RAW to JPG to RAW again. . . Only I didn't this time.

Fortunately, the sky was overcast, which produced even lighting. No highlights blown out, and no incredibly deep blacks. Even though I did not have all of the image's data to work with, the final images still came out beautifully. Works of art.

Photographers, let this be a lesson to you, always always always double--no, triple--check that you are shooting in RAW.

Now, a little about the session.

At Big Boyd's Tree Preserve in Harrisburg, PA, I met with the beautiful @wildcardcait from Instagram. She is a very sweet person and a wonderful model; I hope I get to do more shoots with her in the future. She dressed in red, white, and blue: perfect for America's birthday. I had brought an American flag. For a few minutes, she walked around the mowed part of the field, holding the flag, draping it over her shoulders, while I snapped photo after photo. She then laid out the picnic blanket she had brought. I picked some flowers in the field, and positioned them and the flag on the blanket. After a few minutes, I had her walk parallel to the tall grass and run her hand through it. Yes, I thought about that scene from Gladiator the whole time. Because I don't have eyes on the back of my head, I ended up walking through the uncut grass. That turned out to be a fantastic idea: I had some great foreground that added such depth to the images. I remembered from an earlier shoot there is a tree stump not far from the parking lot. I had her lean against that. This was semi in the forest. The lighting here wasn't even like in the field; the slight change in scenery created more dramatic lighting. It's so interesting to me how moving just a few feet can change the entire vibe of the photoshoot.

Hearkening back to color theory, the brown from the uncut grass complimented the red of her sweater, fulfilling the analogous color harmony. Of course, the green of the mowed grass and the trees in the background were a compliment to the red.

Overall, aside from the mishap of me shooting in JPG, I am really happy with the results of this shoot. My compositions are well done, and my editing is solid. I believe it is a great start to my photography career.

Until the next post,

Liv Marsteller Photography