I post before and afters occasionally, but I really wanted to go in depth and show every step I do to take my images to art! For this shot, the sun was nearly gone, and we were racing against the clock to get in a few more shots of Kelsey over the bluff. It's definitely not a "technically" perfect image, but it's a fun, candid shot. Ok, here we go!

Here's with what we're starting with.

Then I pull it up in Adobe Camera Raw.

Then I adjust the blue-yellow slider towards the yellow side to warm it up.

So now I wanted to have a little fun with the bouquet and change the color to match the tones of the image and to match the season a little better. I selected my paint brush, changed the color to orange, and set the opacity to 20%ish. I created a background duplicate, painted onto the bouquet, set the opacity of the layer to 58% or so and that was it! Easy!

And then I run an action from Oh So Posh (http://ohsoposhphotography.com/artstore/). It was freebie called "Little Miss Muffet" and I use it on 99.999% of all my images! Best freebie ever! (Oh, and action only run to 11%. It's a STRONG action!)

I wanted a softer, slightly hazy edit for this shot so I ran "Country Vintage" from Pure Actions for Photographers (http://purephotoshopactions.com/) from their Pure Vintage Set. I ran this at 31% for more subtle edit.

To finish nearly all my edits, I sharpen the eyes and smooth out the skin just a tad! Ran Pure's "Soft and Sparkly Baby." Sparkly on the eyes at 70%ish and soft on the cheeks and forehead at 50%. I used the healing tool to banish just a couple of tiny blemishes. Finally ran "It's All About the Bling" from Pure for just a little all-over sharpening. (Only ran at like 5%! Don't over-sharpen your pictures. I once heard if the hair looks crunchy to the touch, it's too sharp!)

And that's it! Easy! Here's what it looks like finished!

Thanks so much for reading. I hope this helpful to someone! Oh, and guess what?! It's Friday! Happy Weekend!

As I sit in my pajamas just having finished reading Jasmine Star's "Exposed," I can't help but smile while counting my blessings. For starters, I celebrated Christmas with some of the most fabulous people on this earth. No lie. :)

I guess the next greatest part of Christmas was adding an iPad to the list of photo biz tools! (Oh, yeah, in-person orders are going to rock some socks off! Boom!)

Back to Jasmine Star, she talked about determining your assets so you can stand out in the crowd of photographers. While I'm trying to determine what exactly my strengths are (and then use those to market up a storm!), I want you to do the same. Whoever you are and whatever you have are your assets. Here's to discovering a way to use a little writing talent, a little music talent, and my optimistic personality to make me as a person desired as a photographer. Not even the love for my work will make me successful if I don't show people who I am without a camera in front of my face.

This is who I am. Here I am.