Look what comes out of my camera. Yuck! [befores & afters]

My clients say it all the time…  I make it look simple. I enter a room, I eye the space, move some things here and there and I snap away. Different angles, different corners, get in close, move back… “I’m dooooone!” I sing out to the owner and my client. Pack up. And I’m off.

But that’s only half the battle. Because at the end of every shoot I always leave in a cold sweat hoping that I got what I needed and that the light doesn’t throw off my images too much. What comes out of my camera is usually horrendous compared to what gets delivered.

I am an ambient light photographer. And it’s so stressful going into a space and it doesn’t have enough ambient light or the shadows within the space over power whatever light I do have or it’s raining and cloudy and the plants outside have no green. The stress mostly comes because once you do an AMAZING job on one job, you have to do an AMAZING job on every job even when the spaces aren’t equal. And that sucks.

So, I wanted to show a before and after of what actually comes out of my camera, in all it’s ugliness, and the product of the editing that is done to get it to where the client says “Chastity, I LOVE You!”

These are the befores of a freshly renovated kitchen in a newly acquired Connecticut home. The house was huge and when the final renovations are done, it’s going to be dreamy. The owner [rightfully] started with the kitchen first. And it was a beautiful job done.

So many things wrong with these images. For starters I purposely shoot a little dark so that I can pull some of the shadows when I process. I love shadows. They help to warm up a space. The rooms are also very blueish and cool. Then we have the issue of the unfinished walls. While the kitchen was done, the area was still undergoing other renovations.

After a few hours of nitpicking, editing, previewing,  straightening, pulling, and sending out final picks to my editor, we have this:

We lightened up the space, warmed up the coloring, and most importantly painted the walls in post processing. Like a properly created webpage requires a knowledgable professional web designer, properly photographed spaces requires the knowledge and skill set of a professional photographer. And it’s not just about the camera. It’s about what to do with the photos when they are taken out of the camera.  These skill sets don’t come cheap! So be kind to your photographer, or your web designer, or your gardener. These are skill sets that we all invest in and the really good ones not only LOVE what we do, but we want you to love it too. Otherwise, what’s the point.

Huge thanks to my very loyal client IRP Kitchen Designs, the designer of this space, for choosing ME to capture their beautifully designed spaces.