We’re currently staying on a horse ranch near Portland, nearly a month into our giant road trip. We didn’t know what to expect when we booked the place, but it’s absolutely incredible.
The boys have really enjoyed exploring the place, and we’ve really enjoyed photographing them!
Today I wanted to share a few of the shots I’ve taken here, with a bit of a twist. Many of them will be straight out of camera – no editing done. I don’t usually do that, since unedited photos often don’t look great. But one reason we’ve switched over to the Fujifilm system of cameras recently was for the look of the out-of-camera files. So I figured sharing a few would be helpful to anyone looking into Fujifilm cameras!
In the past we shot Canon. The color from Canon cameras in combination with great lenses (like the 24-70mm II f/2.8 ) came close to shareable straight out of camera – but I always felt things seemed a tiny bit too dark/ muddy. And shots from our Sony cameras always seemed a bit pink/magenta.
And I know there are tons of things you can do to correct or adjust color with cameras – but honestly it’s just better when it works straight out of the box (along with all the other virtues of Fujifilm cameras).
Anyways, while the colour out of the camera is great, there is almost always the opportunity to improve each photo (fine tuning brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, etc). I still shoot in raw for this reason.
I’m loving having the best of both worlds (straight out of camera shots that look beautiful, with the option to play around if I want to really spend some time bringing the best out of a shot.
Here is a before/after example of a photo I spent a bit of time editing.
Above: Before – straight out of camera.
Above: After editing in Lightroom. My main goal editing this photo was getting the correct exposure on his face, while at the same time recovering the highlights in the bokeh (on the left). Most of the editing I do isn’t this drastic, and I actually find really obvious editing like this a bit trickier than more subtle adjustments (when the change between before and after becomes too great, it feels more difficult to know where the perfect amount of correction is). In retrospect I probably increased the shadows a bit too much, and it looks like the blacks could be increased a bit.
Above: This is another photo I edited (no before/after this time). This one has a radial filter to slightly darken the background, as well as a adjustment brush filter to slightly brighten their faces.
Below is another before / after editing comparison.
Above: Before – unedited, straight out of camera. I like this shot a lot, I feel like it really captures the experience of childhood wonder. From a critical point of view I wish that his hand was pushed out of his left sleeve – but that’s also childhood!
Above: After editing in Lightroom. For this one I focused on fine tuning highlights to bring back detail in his hair, in the bokeh in the background, and also on the leaf he’s holding. I also increased the vibrance (perhaps a tiny bit too much), and warmed up the image.
The remaining photos in this post are unedited, straight out of camera.
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