Sierra is a Senior

It must be tradition to let the older sister take the younger siblings senior portraits. I was lucky enough to have Tina who took mine, and now I get to take Sierras! Sierra wanted the old building look for her portraits so we took a stroll down Old Town Pocatello. We didn't have to go far. I was delighted with every crumbling wall and building we came upon! Old town is full of potential or (depending how you look at it) junk and creepy alley ways. Regardless of your preferred jargon, the quick shoot was a successful trip.

For those of you who are interested, there is a quick explanation of my edits underneath each photo.

In Photoshop I adjusted the contrast, saturation, light, brightness, and clarity, but I wanted the focus to be more on Sierra. The image had nice composition but was a little flat. I really wanted to give it a circular feel, with the first thing you look at is Sierra, then the graffiti, and then back to Sierra. To accomplish this I decided to paint a fairly heavy vignette with the brush tool using a low opacity.

For this photo I did a few basic edits in Camera Raw. (Namely contrast, saturation, clarity, lighting) I then opened the image in Photoshop where I placed another image on top. It's just a shot of dry grass, but it gives a nice texture when you lower the opacity. I then used the brush tool with 100 percent opacity to make Sierra sharp.

Basic edits in Camera Raw. (Mostly contrast and saturation) In Photoshop I gave the photo a few more touches with lighting, and contrast, but I also gave it a very soft vignette using the brush tool. The last thing I did was bring down the Saturation to give the photo a little older but classic look.

I brought the saturation up in Camera Raw but the blue walls were not popping as much as I wanted them too. On the other hand Sierra's jeans were turning way to blue. So to fix the problem I selected her jeans in Photoshop, inversed my selection which then allowed me to adjust the saturation of just the blue walls.


For this image, I simply made it black and white under Images-Adjustments- Black and White. From there I was able to adjust with the selection of colored sliders.