Cowbelly Pet Photography Seattle Blog

Some new ‘experiments’. Just for fun.

Several photographers have asked me how I do these. There is no one easy answer because there are about 100 different ways you can create these shots. No, ‘click here and bam!’, simple trick. What I can tell you is that they are all done exclusively using Lightroom 2, they are *not* designed using develop presets, and each image takes approximately 10 minutes to design, depending on how ornery it’s being. I only pick shots that I know will work well for the process- ideally those with a solid color background that is a color that doesn’t occur anywhere on the dog, a shot that will look great with high contrast. This takes being able to ‘see’ what the image will look like as a completed design before doing any editing. Without being able to visualize the completed image before starting I just waste my time working on image after image after image.

Once I find the perfect shots to work with, I just play with sliders and make changes until it looks cool, adding lots of black and contrast, keeping the color in the image and adjusting select colors. It’s all about experimenting, tweaking, adjusting, learning. I’m pretty sure that every image I’ve done this with has completely different editing settings, because the ‘raw material’ of the original image for each shot is different, and those differences determine the outcome. Oh, and the high-key images were all taken in my old studio using only natural light and were easy to make high-key as they were almost there already.