Engagment Photos

Last Friday I photographed my first engagement photo session at Wildwood Park in Marshfield. I am photographing Tim and Jill's July wedding in Duluth, it should be beautiful! The session went great and they were really fun to photograph. I'm looking forward to their wedding!

I have always been drawn to this hill at the park, but never been able to get photos on it. Lucky me, I got to pose people on the hill and finally got some photos that I really love! Hence there are so many on the blog of Jill and Tim on the hill.

I experimented using actions and vignetting with a lot of these photos, which was kind of fun! The light, sky and green grass were working in my favor!

Actions on Wedding Photos

UPDATE: Shutter Sisters blogged about actions today too! AND the best thing about their blog about actions is that if  you comment on it, you get a chance to win a set of presets from Totally Rad Actions! Click HERE to enter.

 Since my last post was about actions, I thought I would share some wedding photos that I have used actions on. I only used actions on a few photos from last year, but I did a couple extra from previous weddings that I thought would look good with some actions.  I use Aly's Vintage actions. You can download them on HERE. I don't have all the before pics right now, but here are some examples.

I used Aly's color boost action on this photo

Aly's Vintage: Simple Vintage

This photo I just used a vignetting action. I think I shot the photo a bit askew, but there was enough room to work with, so I went and tilted it more.

Before

After

Aly's Vintage: Memory Lane Hi Res (but not converted to B/W) and then Simple Vintage

Aly's Vintage: Memory Lane Hi Res

Aly's Vintage: Memory Lane Hi Res

Some more Photoshop actions can be found HERE.

You can see more of my wedding photos at my website, http://www.lauraschmittphoto.com/weddings1.html

And... Action!

And.... action!

I downloaded some actions from Actions and Textures by Michelle and was waiting for the right neutral-ish, yet not snowy, photo to experiment with, something that had color and details. Finally, the snow melted and the first flowering tree/bush that I saw, I photographed for that purpose.

I don't use actions for my work photos, and don't normally use them for day-to-day personal photos, but I do occassionaly use them for post-processing wedding photos. I tend to stick with a mild vignetting action and some vintage-type black and white actions. Many professional photography studios and start-ups use actions and I feel like they are pretty trendy right now. I think it is important to experiment (and I am not a huge Photoshop guro and not sure if I want to put the time into developing my own actions) so I wanted to check these out for that potential use. I am not sure about how I feel about actions in general, it seems like a lot of times, actions are used to disguise a bad exposure, or every photo has a ton of post-processing that diminish details in the highlights/shadows of the photo.

Original toned photo

Basic Pop

Warm Cinnamon

Breeze

Mint

Barely Vintage

Lovely B/W

Memories

Antique Vintage

I think these are nice actions and the Lovely B/W, Basic Pop and antique actions would work well for  wedding photos. The mint is a bit too green and manipulative for my liking.

If you are interested in downloading these free actions, HERE  is the website. The blog, http://actionsbymichellenicole.blogspot.com/, also has a ton of other actions and textures for photo post-processing.