Maternity, Silhouettes, and Photoshop... oh my! | Virginia Maternity Photographer

Happy Wednesday, Lovelies!

In addition to a slammin’ maternity session, I have some info for you on silhouettes and Photoshopping.

First, I love-love-love silhouettes!  Above my maternal grandmother’s couch, she hung silhouettes of her four girls.  I loved them!  I’ll have a craft project up on the blog soon about the same cameo-style silhouettes I made of our girls.

Kath is a lover of silhouettes, too, and booked me after seeing a silhouette I shot at the Lincoln a few years ago.  Want to shoot a silhouette too? 

Here’s how:

• Place subject against a strong, neutral background that has significantly more light than the foreground.  Sky or a full-length window are great.
• Expose for the **background.**  Exposing for the background will make your foreground and subject dark.
• In Lightroom, make your silhouette pop by darkening the shadows, increasing the blacks, increasing the contrast, and converting to black-and-white.  You can use your paintbrush tool as well to limit these changes to your subject.

Here are two of my silhouettes from Kath’s maternity session.

Secondly, Photoshop.  I love me some Photoshop.  You won’t know it, but I sometimes, often or never, take a few pounds off, remove wrinkles and pimples, pop eye color… but I’d never tell.

Kath is like a stinking model.  Super gorg mom of her second child, and she’s a sweetheart.  She didn’t need a lick of Photoshopping, and I couldn’t touch her eyes because they are already slammin’.

But… Kath wanted a less cluttered silhouette, and I love the results.  What do you think?

I love Photoshop!

Here are some more from our session.

I have a few more maternity shoots coming up this summer.  If you’re interested in a maternity shoot, please let me know!  I offer $100 off if you book a maternity and newborn package—the total is only $500 including the edited digital images!