Although your proofing album will contain these lightly-edited images, I carefully retouch all purchased images. When your proofing album is ready, I hope you'll gather your family so you can all relive the fun before settling in to select your favorite images. While rarely special requests may warrant an additional charge, each image that you choose from your proofing album will receive 100% of my time, attention, and expertise before it is added to your final gallery for printing and downloading. I am highly-skilled at intricate editing to remove imperfections that might distract your eye from the emotion desired flow in an image. I want each picture to tell a story as I direct your attention to the beginning, middle, and endless love and laughter.

Unwanted imperfections like scratches, bruises, flyaways, lint, smudged makeup, eye boogers, nose crust, etc. interfere with the energy and emotion within. While I can ideally get as much as possible perfect in camera, I've discovered that nitpicking these details disrupts the flow of the photo session and can easily cause me to miss a brief window of toddler happiness. I'd rather capture those priceless moments than worry about the details of a short fuse. I carefully soften skin imperfections, whiten teeth, smoothen chapped lips, lighten undereye circles, and enhance desired sharpness and color vibrancy. Distracting shadows can be lifted, frizzy hair contained, and I sometimes even lengthen clothing if skin is exposed in an unwanted way while someone is playing happily with their kids. The liquify tool can be used to make small adjustments to someone’s body or clothing that might have been corrected with a pose if I didn’t care more about stepping back and allowing more natural interactions. I may not take a minimal approach to editing, but it is important to me that your images look natural. Other than any obvious skin editing, my clients cannot typically tell what I have done; they just know these are suddenly their very favorite pictures of themselves and their family.

Occasionally, I will have a session where one or more little ones just aren’t having it.
Don't worry! I am an expert at composite images. While I will always work hard to connect with each member of the family, sometimes the magic has to be done after you’ve corralled your kids, fed them their bribe, and tucked them into bed.

My session fee includes far more than the planning of and completion of your photo session. You are getting my smile guarantee and my unmatched energy to make sure your photo session itself is fun for everyone. Think of it like insurance. Regardless of how ornery your kids are that day, you are going to get genuine and beautifully-edited photos to cherish and share with your loved ones.

When it comes to post processing of images, this is what sets me apart from most photographers.

Many photographers exclusively work with software that allows the quick editing of similar images in batches. The colors, brightness, highlights, shadows, and other details can be quickly adjusted, but that software isn't designed for fine-tuned editing like can best be done in Photoshop. And most photographers don't spend their time correcting details that might be considered the client's responsibility to fix beforehand.
Easier said than done, especially when chasing your littles around!

Professional Editing

Include your Angel

Make it shareable

Creative Edits

Flyaways

When they don't cooperate

Skin editing

Check out a few of the ways I've gone above and beyonD!

The details that take the longest to edit always come from my newborn sessions. Even if I've told you your baby has the most beautiful skin, without fail, when I get home and put your cutie on my enormous professional photo editing monitor, I find I've got my work cut out for me. I know it's difficult to see how much I've actually done even with the examples here. Unless you are looking at them on a tv, I'm betting your screen is tiny compared to mine. But, I want you to be able to show off these works of art on large products and still look perfect. While most photographers use special actions to smooth skin imperfections quickly, I've found even the best actions remove the natural skin texture. You'll either get an airbrushed baby or fake texture added back in. When I do skin retouching, I first remove the redness, then very carefully clone out every scratch and pimple.