Over the course of the month of April I met some amazing bloggers and artists, and created some beautiful images with them! Today I'm looking back on my favorite shoot locations in Seattle from the month and sharing them with you all.

Growing up, I became a dancer at age three and picked up a camera at age nine, so naturally those two passions combined as a I developed as an artist. I have always seen the influence of photography in my choreography, and the influence of dance in my photographs. While fashion and lifestyle work is my new artistic passion, lately I have had wonderful opportunities to revisit my roots in dance photography with some local dancers.

I love to do dance photography because of the artistic freedom I can take with the editing. Whenever I do a portrait session I take the opportunity to utilize post-processing manipulation. This allows me to unleash my creativity and replicate elements of the stage, such as lighting and set pieces, to create stories, theatrical drama, and surreal scenes.

When I am editing a set of dance photos, my main focus is always to draw attention to and highlight the figure, even if the image is an environmental portrait. To achieve this, I follow these three general keys:

1. Using desaturation and tinting to create color harmony.
2. Removing distracting elements.
3. Creating complimentary backgrounds.

Things I love about spring: the pastel colors, the soft light between the rain, and the delicate cherry blossoms all over the city! While my allergies might be insane this time of year, I still love to get out and shoot. This week and last I've been doing tons of blogger and Easter portraits trying to include the warm yellow, spring greens, and rosy cherry pinks into the images, so I'm going to share a bit of my process with you all for making gorgeous spring images.

A Warm Base
The first step I take in my spring editing workflow is to immediately add a warm base to the photo to emulate spring sunshine, even when it isn't shining on that shoot day (because Seattle is still Seattle). Usually I will bump up the temperature in Camera RAW, but will often also add a Photo Filter in Photoshop in a warming filter, either 85 or 81 depending on the amount of warmth I need, and adjust the opacity to my desired effect. The images immediately go from winter gloom to spring cheer.

Rosy Pink Hues
Everyone in Seattle has been obsessed with the cherry blossoms all over the city, including me. So I've wanted to incorporate those amazing pink tones into my images, even if there aren't cherry blossoms in them. I do so by adding a magenta Photo Filter layer, add a black mask, and paint through with a white brush at various opacities to either enhance the existing pink tones or add pink tones to light foliage areas to create the cherry blossom effect.

TIP: Also add some of the pink tones to your model's lips or cheeks to enhance the pastel pink effect, like I did below with this headshot of Natalie.

Bright Glow
The transition between winter and spring immediately signifies a change of light in my brain. In my spring shots, I've chosen to follow the popular bright and airy aesthetic trend, to create a cheery, bright atmosphere even on the cloudiest of days like when this Easter photoshoot was taken on. I achieved this through bringing up the dark tones in curves, dodging around on the grass, and adding a trusty warming filter as the final touch to give it a warm, golden glow.

I would love to hear how you all tweak your own workflow for spring themed shoots and shots, let me know about it in the comments!

The Portrait Perfection Collection includes 56 Photoshop actions ranging from simple exposure adjustment to complete skin retouching. Almost all of the actions are completely customizable to your own style, from natural to airbrushed looks. Many utilize layer masks and opacity for complete control over the effects. The actions are also labeled and categorized by type within the actions folder for easy identification and access.

I like to maintain a natural style to editing, with minimal retouching done to my portraits, so I have mainly been using the actions effecting exposure, temperature, and tones (although you will see how I had a little fun with the skin touching actions at the end!)

For this shot of Sarah from Sarah Maybe I wanted to riff off the vintage vibe of her jacket and went with a more stylized edit. I first processed in Camera RAW to adjust exposure and contrast, then opened in Photoshop for Sleeklens actions.

​Actions Used

1. First decided to remove some of the reflected orange tones from her face and even out her skin tone, and played the COLOR CORRECTION - Less Orange Juice (they also have the cutest action names). I then painted through the layer just on the face.
2. Next, played the Toned Vignettes action, chose the Dark Vignette layer, and adjusted opacity to 77%.
3. Finally, applied the ENHANCED TONES - Old Jeans action at 40% to get a soft vintage tones effect.

TIP: As someone who struggles with creating natural looking vignettes, the Dark Vignette layer is now officially my FAVORITE vignette creator.

I loved the colorful, spring tones in this shot of Jenn from Hello Rigby! However I had to underexpose the shot to maintain the background because of the lighting conditions, and decided to brighten her skin and outfit post-processing. To brighten skin, I usually start with bringing up the shadows in Camera RAW and then use dodging and the occasional desaturation layer in Photoshop. However I decided to see how Sleeklens handles skin retouching and brightening. While some of the actions were too strong for my personal taste, I found that the PORTRAIT RETOUCH - Honey Skin Brush did exactly what I needed.

​Actions Used

1. Played a PORTRAIT RETOUCH - Honey Skin Brush layer, adjusted to 60%, and painted through just on skin to brighten and even.
2. Added ENHANCED TONES - Romantic Dance at 70% to add brightness and glow over all.
3. Added ENHANCED TONES - Dark Island to make greens a lovely dark, pastel mint tone.
4. Next played the PORTRAIT RETOUCH - Bright Eyes action and gently applied to eyes by painting through layer mask.
5. Finally, added an EXPOSURE - Bright layer to add an extra touch of brightness.

TIP: What makes these actions especially useful in maintaining an efficient and smooth workflow is that most of the layers made with the actions without painted through masks can be copied over to other files without adjustment - they automatically adjusted to the new image!

I wasn't able to cover all of the actions included in the Sleeklens Portrait Perfection collection in just one post, but these are the actions I have found to help my workflow the most. I can say that the collection is definitely tailored best towards portraits needing heavy retouching and enhancement, however it is totally adjustable to those like me who like to maintain a more natural editing style! And once in awhile I do headshot sessions where my clients desire more in depth retouching so this collection will definitely help me there.

That's it for #filterfriday this week! Stay tuned for next week's post about more editing for Spring themed shoots.