The Family Table - November, 2012

Samantha - September, 2012

I’ll always have a passion for making new things look old.

josephbrotherton asked: Hey Ryan, I like that picture of the lady looking into the mirror, if you don't mind me asking how did you get the great light into her eyes. Really like your stuff, cheers Joe

Thanks man! That’s my fiance actually :) 

When it comes down to editing my photos I rely a lot on using photoshop to manually go in there and bend the ‘curves’ for the best image. This requires a lot of manual effort. For this specific image of Samantha looking in the mirror I had her facing out my window so the natural light would be hitting her face; I used a heavy duty portable light you could find at a hardware store inside my room as well pointing at my ceiling (this sort of bounces the light off into different places). 

So simply put, that picture used: natural light (Samantha facing natural light), synthetic light (portable heavy duty lamp), & last but definitely not least manual light manipulation using photoshop (specifically the ‘curves’ option). Oh! and using the ‘dodge’ and ‘burn’ brushes on specific areas you either want darkened or highlighted. Hope that helps!

- Ryan