I just added this post as a page to my  blog to show the difference between the stages a portrait goes through from start to finish.   Thought I’d also make it today’ post.  This may help explain the reason you wait for your proofs, why custom portraits cost more and why it is important to choose a photographer skilled in all aspects of digital photography.  I’m not going to get too technical here, but keep it straightforward and simple.  The easiest way to explain is to also show, so I have some examples below.

For my Senior, Engagement and Portrait Clients:

Every picture that will be presented to you in your proofs and your presentation in my studio will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED in color and some in black and white.  I wanted you to see the sometimes subtle, but powerful, changes that take place from start to finish.  Beautiful girl, right?  There’s really not much to do, but  brightening and smoothing her skin add a healthy, radiant BUT realistic finish.  My style is to not “over-do” this stage.  I don’t want you to glow like an angel or be  smoothed out so much that your nose disappears or your skin looks plastic.  I want you to look like YOU – the REAL you.  I won’t be applying make up to you; in my opinion, if you wanted make-up on, you would have worn it to your shoot.   I will, of course, remove any blemishes, under eye circles or bags, crazy stray hairs and brighten up your smile and add a twinkle to your eyes.  All the time, being careful to keep things true to you.

For my Wedding Clients:

Your wedding package with Thrive includes a flash drive loaded with hundreds of full-resolution, edited images that are ready to print.    These digital files are ready to go and I have great labs to recommend so you get amazing printed products.

During your wedding day, your two photographers will shoot thousands of shots.  Those shots will be downloaded and backed up (twice) immediately following your wedding.  Those shots are the RAW IMAGES or SOC (straight out of the camera).  You will never see these.

After your images are downloaded, Heidi will carefully go through every shot and eliminate duplicates, bad shots, unflattering shots, etc. and eventually get down to a very rich assortment of shots from the whole day.  Every single one of those hundreds of images will be EDITED.  They will be vigilantly perfected for exposure, sharpness, cropping and color-correction.   A percentage of these will also be converted into black and white.  They will be ready to print.  These will be the images on your on-line gallery and on your flash drive.

Any image from your day that Heidi blogs about (and that is usually close to 100) or puts on her website, will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED.  These will also be included in your online gallery and on your flash drive.   Each of these images will go from the EDITED stage and be brought into Photoshop to be completely perfected, and maybe some special effects added.   This is where skin is smoothed, stray hairs are removed, light is made flawless, and many other things done to create a true work of art.    ANY image from your online gallery that you or others ORDER from Thrive or that you pick for your album will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED.

In the example, you can see that it is a great picture in the edited stage.  In the Artistic stage, I gave the picture a bit of vintage color to it, the skin was smoothed, the bride’s arm was contoured and the groom’s chin was made a little more defined.