Awesome Photographer I met on the phone at work....

Quick update, I met this awesome new photographer from Texas. Her name is Cortney of Cortney Russell Photography. As a practical, techy person I'm pretty grounded and rational. But I also have my spiritual side being a Catholic. The reason why I bring this up is that sometimes things happen for a reason (more on this below). Other times its just a random convergence of events.

Well today was a reflection of the former rather than the latter. As a photographer running his own photography business, I've admired a certain style of photos that appear to become popular with photographers' and the masses. An example of this is one of favorite photography site Jay Reilly who has some of the most stunning, vibrant photos I've ever seen. Well I've been trying to figure out how he does it. If you look at his blog on his before and after shots, he obviously does some great post-processing, editing on his photos. I've seen the after results but could never quite figure out how he did it?! Well enter my phone conversation with Cortney at work today. I saw some of her awesome photos. They look really similar to Jay's style. Without getting into the details, Cortney showed me how she was to able to add that special "pop" in her photos. Using her tip, you can turn a "good" photo into a "great" photo! Here's the caveat: You still need to have a photo that is relatively well composed with good exposure/contrast. That's half of the formula. The rest of it is using this tip, and Bingo!, an award winning photo. I experimented with this technique and here is the result. I hope to bring this level of work to all photos in the future. Let me know what y'all think.

Oh here's the final photo with all the touchups & border of Mae a beautiful model I worked with back in August.


-JP