Vancouver Wedding Photographer: Lyndsay London

Today’s blog post is all about my editing in Lightroom 3 and showing the before and after as requested by Kayla on my Facebook Page. Thanks Kayla! I always love these posts, hope you do too! Remember this is just my approach. It doesn’t make it right or wrong. It just makes it mine. If you like my style and want to give this a whirl, then totally try it out.

If you read my blog, you know that I like poppy and fresh photos. I like the colours to really stand out. And I also like my images warm. Most folks ask about my colours and how I boost them. The answer is simple. I don’t. I do however invest in wonderful Canon L series lenses almost exclusively and these are just great at grabbing the colour in the scene. You might also want to know about Phootshop. I don’t actually use it for anything but putting a watermark on my images. I have used Magic Sharp in the past, but it’s sooo sharp. Not for me. If I sharpen now, I will just use the unsharp mask function and move the sliders to taste.

Here we go: The first image is from Terrence & Val’s Hycroft wedding. This was shot at Granville Island using my 5d Mark II and my 35mm f1.4 (as were all other images seen here). It was shot in RAW. The exposure was pretty good SOC so I left this at “0”. I do find it’s too dark for my poppy style. So I added some fill light to brighten it up. I slid the fill light scale up to 13 to be exact. I also like a contrasty image, so I moved the contrast scale from 0 to the right to 49.  Finally, I like a warm image. This one was shot at 4800. Brr! So I moved the warming scale (the blue to yellow one) up to 5400. Ahh much better.

This shot is from Jeff & Winnie’s Steveston and Morgan Creek wedding. I’ve included it because I processed it originally in black and white. So I can walk you through my black and white processing. Again, this is a little dark for my liking (normally this is the case even though I actually “over-expose” in camera, it’s still not quite what I like when it’s SOC. 

So first up, I moved my exposure up to +.31 in Lightroom. Next I added a bit of fill light (+13). And finally I added the contrast (+49). I did find it a little chilly, so finally, I moved the white balance warmer from 5000 to 5300.For black and white images, I just click the “black & white” color converter in Lightroom 3. I find black and white actually makes the image look darker so I have to add more when it comes to exposure – usually about +.50 will do. I found that bringing up the exposure really blew out the dress. I don’t worry about blowing out the highlights overall, but I used the recovery and moved it up to +18. I then added some fill light for the shadows (+13), moved the contrast up to +49. I added a little to the blacks too +13. Voila. This image is from Chelsey and Rob’s Langley Golf Center wedding. It was taken in Fort Langley in full sun. Hello bright! This is SOC and I exposed for Chelsey’s bouquet. I was satisfied with the exposure out of camera. But you can see the highlights of her dress are quite blown out. I try not to stress that when shooting since the focus is on the flowers (or faces).
You can probably guess what I did here. First up, I moved the recovery scale to +50. I also brought the blacks up from 5 to 11. I noticed moving up the blacks helped keep the flowers looking nice and rich and not too faded. I moved the contrast scale to +49 and then warmed the image wayyyy up from 4800 to 6100. Great now the girls don’t look like they need sandwiches and some blankets. As a side note, my camera’s white balance is set to auto. Usually it’s pretty good. Just a little cold outside and a little hot inside.
Another image from Chelsey & Rob! The exposure was pretty good SOC so I left this at “0”. But you know I like it nice and bright! So I added some fill light to brighten it up. I slid the fill light scale up to 13 (my magic number that I have a preset made for). Next up was the contrast. I moved this scale from 0 to the right to 49.  Obviously, this is too cold for me. This one was shot at 4800 and I moved the warmth bar up to 5600.Here are the results: Pretty easy, right?
Hello overexposure. I almost NEVER overexpose this much. But I did. So there. Overexposing washes the image out and burns the highlights. Not great, but salvageable when shooting in RAW. 
Here’s how I saved the image. I brought down the exposure to -.35. I moved the recovery up to +35. I moved the blacks up to +14 to get some of the richness back into the image. Then I moved the contrast to +49. Finally I warmed the image up. Shot at a chilly 4200 I cooked this bad boy up to 5600!This image is from Rebecca & Patrick’s Vancouver Club wedding. This one image had lots of face shadows. Not a great lighting situation, but a great location.

I did the exact same thing I did with the above images but I added a lot of fill light. I moved the slider up to +25!

Then I warmed it up from 5500 to 6600.

Finally, here is an image using my on and off camera flash. Editing these are so easy.

I just added contrast (+49) and fill light (+13). That made me happy and I felt it was warm enough. You can learn about my flash set-up on my Facebook discussion board.

Have more questions? Awesome! Fire away. You can ask me anything on the discussion page that can be found here.

Once you have a style hammered out, make a preset and save yourself some time! I created two presets. These two do the trick for almost all of my images. But some need a little more love, and most need some amount of warming.