My son is a Poser

If you have been reading my iPhoneography posts for the past few weeks, then you know that my son has become a poser. He has always done well in front of the camera, but these last few weeks? He’s a TOTAL poser. He loves to do things with his hands and smile and make funny faces.

For this weeks before and after with Monica, I thought I’d share one of those shots that I’ve had on my camera for a few weeks and just haven’t gotten around to editing. I took these one random day, and never processed them. Little man was happy and in a good mood, so he posed for me.

I knew I wanted this to be a soft edit, because of the color of his shirt and the color of his eyes.

My very first step (as with all underexposed photos) was to duplicate my original image, then apply the image copy in the SCREEN mode. This instantly made my photo brighter, so I didn’t have to adjust any levels. Indoor lighting is so tricky here, and the natural light from the sun isn’t always the best either. So, do get rid of the orangey tone I had, I applied The Pioneer Woman’s Cooling Filter to give me the perfect coloring to work with.

Then, I cloned out the bar that was in the upper left corner of the original shot. It was an eyesore, but I didn’t want to crop it because I like the original composition. (By the way…the cloning tool is uh-mazing.) Then, I ran MCP’s Mini-Fusion Action, and adjusted the opacity of the Blue Filter Layer.

After that, I simply burned the dark area behind his left shoulder to give it a little bit more depth. I used the Magic Selection to touch up his eyes, and the Eyes & Teeth action from Everyday Elements.

Lastly, I ran a high pass filter and added my watermark.

Hope you all have a great Saturday!

Don’t forget to head over to Monica’s and see more Before and After shots!