I just want to start out by saying this has become my favorite photo I have taken of Delilah.

So the reason for this Blog and skipping Texas Part 02 is because recently I have started playing around with Lightroom Mobile more, and exporting photos adding borders.

I am not exactly sure what it is about the borders that does it for me, but seeing my photos inside the borders just makes the photo “TO ME” look so amazing. I don’t know if maybe I am seeing it and it’s like this is what it would look like printed, or if it’s the isolation “framing” that separates it from the background or dark edges of views. I don’t know, I just know I love it.

It has influenced some of my recent shots, instead of raising shadows in most of my photos and creating a softness to separate the photos from the native dark background in digital viewing. I have started leaving shadows alone or actually decreasing them (make the dark darker) and it’s turning out pretty amazing I think. Again I think this is honestly just me visualizing the photos as if they are printed and it’s tickling that spot in my brain.

Now I still keep my normal full resolution exports, but this allows me to have a 3MB export with borders compared to the 60+ normal; exports or having to export at less than 20MB for the website, so I am losing a little quality but until it seems an issue I might keep doing the borders and just continue this trend for the website. It also helps with sharing them with people through text because I won’t have 100GB text threads.

Even as I am adding the photos in and typing, I am taking my time and looking at these photos and really getting to appreciate them and what I captured. I spend more time looking at these photos overall and even trying to do that with most of my photos I find more things I don’t like and I think I could do better. These photos make me just happy, and I feel like I am finally seeing my work the way my wife sees them.

100% I always have room for improvement and strive to learn and challenge myself more and more, but having this ‘‘new’’ way of looking at my own work I am finally taking more time shooting, I am taking less photos in a good way, and I am slowing way down in my color grading process. It seems silly typing that out, but it is working for me.

I say shooting less and rack off 4 photos taken back to back to back to back. I love writing these out with just an idea and no plan.

Again I am just amazed at how beautiful these photos are.

Changing things up, and never sticking to a style has constantly improved my ‘‘skills’’ but I think this small thing has impacted the most with recent changes in helping me do better.

I think I will come back in a week or two and update on this. This has been for about a week, so I think updating in another week just to see how editing is going and how I am feeling still with my work.