How much editing do you guys usually do on a photo? As for me, quite a lot. But lately, I’ve been feeling a bit tired of editing, and I’ve come to realize that I can’t make everyone like the final result of an edited photo. In the end, a photo that people like becomes segmented. The more unique and different it is, the more the photo will have its own distinctive style. This is one of the goals I want to achieve. I want to create a unique color tone for each of my photos so that when people see it, they’ll know it’s my work.
When I do a photo session, I always think about the final result of the photo right away. For example, during my session with Andien. I had previously done a photo session with her as well, and you can see the results in my earlier posts. In the first session, I had difficulty finding the right color and style that suited Andien, but in this session, I finally found the right match. However, this is just my personal opinion, as not everyone may like the results of a photo like this.
In this photo, I wanted the final result to resemble Japanese photographers' works, with a soft and dreamy tone. However, to create photos like theirs, I also need to capture the same quality of sunlight. As you know, photography itself is the art of capturing light, so ultimately, every photo is shaped by the light.
In my opinion, I’ve achieved it—the soft and dreamy color character. And this is the result straight from the camera, also known as SOOC (straight out of camera). Since then, I've become more aware that to get a good photo, you don’t need to do extensive editing. What’s important is getting the right settings on the camera.
However, another issue arises: to achieve photos like this, I can't use the same camera settings that I used for Andien. I’ll share another post when I photograph a different model with the same camera settings. Despite my efforts to continuously experiment and find the settings that match my style, everything ultimately gets influenced by the light, location, and the model’s skin tone.
I admit that I’m not very skilled in color grading to maintain consistent colors every time I do a shoot. My only solution is to find the right settings on the camera. This isn’t easy to achieve, as my challenge is the skin tone—each model has a different skin color, which greatly affects the final result of my photos. At this stage, I’m still learning to achieve consistent colors. I really want people to recognize my work just by looking at the photos.
I’m sure some fellow photographers here share the same concerns, so let’s continue to work towards achieving the photo results we want according to our own standards. Because once again, people’s preferences for photos are segmented; we can’t force everyone to like our work.
Thank you to everyone who has visited my post. Next, I’ll share a photo session using the same camera settings but with a different model and location, on a different day, but taken at the same time.
Warm regards from me.
