Getting professional Photos At Home

Our 2012 Spring show will be bringing some really FUN new vendors. One of them will be Katie with her new book "The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer". Since photos come before the Scrapbook Page I asked Katie to share a few tips that we can all start using today to get professional looking photos. Her Tutorial on turning a color photo into an impressive black & white shot is coming up here and next week she will be back with a 2nd tip! Thanks Katie!!

Hi there! I'm Katie Evans, professional photographer and author of The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer. I'm thrilled to be attending The Scrapbook Expo for the very first time this Spring! I'm excited to have the chance and opportunity of meeting and talking with many of you.

Let's face it, photography is such an important part of scrapbooking. Knowing how to create a beautiful picture will only enhance our layouts. Am I right? So I'm here to to give you a couple photography tutorials to do just that---help you create stunning pictures.

The first tutorial is:

How to Create Beautiful Black and White photos. 

Turning a picture into a good black and white is fairly simple but there are a few basic rules you need to follow. First and foremost is to make the blacks very black and the whites very white. I like to see a lot of contrast in black and whites. That's when they really seem to pop. 

Let's take it step by step (in Lightroom) using a picture of sweet Stella:

This is the shot I took straight out of my camera. She looks slightly greenish because she was sitting under a green umbrella. (good time to turn it black and white, right? :) )

Next, simply convert your image to black and white using the black and white converter in whatever editing software you are using. 

Almost all basic black and white conversions in will give you a very basic black and white but I like to call it grey and greyer. So that means you need to bring in some contrast. Instead of just increasing the "Contrast" slider I like to first increase the brightness. (Here I increased it to +63 but it will vary depending on your image.)

And finally, just increase your blacks. That will make your details and features pop. (Here I increased the black to 38)

And there you have it... a stunning black and white.

on a side note: if your editing program does not have the capability of adjusting brightness and blacks you can still achieve this same look by adjusting the contrast and by slightly increasing the exposure.

If you will be attending the Scrapbook Expo make sure you stop by and say hello! In the mean time feel free to stop by my blog for even more helpful photography tips, tricks and tutorials and check out my photography book written specifically for you! 

The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer Book
Katie Evans Photography