Kid’s Portraits – Pulling the Drama out of Natural Light

I photographed super cute and energetic Jude’s, Batman themed birthday this past weekend. Jude’s mom Virginia, really knocked herself out to make a great party that was fun for the kids and adults and a bumped up post processing seemed a very appropriate approach for the day.

I love photos that look other worldly and dreamy at the same time, and lean towards that approach for most of my work.

I’m often asked about how I get the photos to turn out the way they do. Two things that are vital to my work flow. Whether natural light photography or strobes, I (mostly) take all photos in “manual” mode (in Raw mode) so that I can manipulate the ISO, F-stop and speed to my liking and then I bring all of the photos into Adobe Lightroom for basic processing and cataloging and apply my custom presets for specific effects (punched color, black and white, sepia etc.). Switching to this process about two years ago has made all of the difference in the world.