Sometimes SOOC Just Ain't Gonna Cut It!

I used to think that if I was a great photographer, I would just pick up a camera and magic would happen.  Sometimes it does.  That's always the goal - to get it right SOOC (Straight-Out-Of-Camera), but in reality, without any post-processing work at all, the photos are usually going to look rather ordinary - even if I did everything right!  And sometimes... sometimes you just can't create what you want without a little editing.  Here are a few of my favourite before-and-afters from the last month that just wouldn't have happened without extra love!

Gotta love the duck lips created by the backlighting here!

A quick trip to Photoshop, and a little warming up the image, and it looks a lot cozier (and less weird!):

This next shot was white-balanced properly, but there were two things I couldn't control:  1.  The fact that the inside of the chest was orange wood, and 2. the fact that I needed the back door open to let in more light from behind:

A nice conversion to black and white to kill the orange colour and Photoshop to remove the door:

 This shot Nick took of us.  If he had brightened us up, he couldn't have kept the nice blue sky in the background.  So he shot to retain the sky, and I fixed the rest afterwards in Lightroom:

Lastly, this parking lot shot.  I had to shoot dark to keep the sky from going completely white and also because I wanted a silhouette look.  There's simply no angle I could have shot this from that would have removed that big yellow post to the right and all the buildings in the shadows along the back.  But a LOT of patience in Photoshop gave me a result I'm finally mostly happy with!

Yes, these examples are a little bit dramatic, but the dramatic ones are more fun in my opinion!