Emily + Patrick | Engagement Session

I don’t want to say too much, because I honestly think these photos have a breathtaking quality to them, and they don’t need many words to set the scene for you. I love the quiet and calm feeling they give me, and I hope that you get that same vibe too.

Editing an entire session to be monotone has really helped me to calm my mind along with quieting all of the overwhelming variations and tonality options that come with color.

I had always imagined it would be a lot of work to edit an entire session in monotone as well as color, I mean it’s literally double the work. And no, it’s not as simple as turning on a black and white filter either. Vibe and emotion are important in my images and the look controls that feeling. So you can imagine how that changes once you remove the color. It requires tweaking each image to hold the feeling that you want to portray. Often times, moodier black and white images were actually what I was struggling for all along.

I told myself it wasn’t worth it to take that extra time for converting the entire set. I told myself making a smaller selection would take less time than the entire set, that only makes sense. So, I did that. Turns out; making the decision on which ones to convert was actually more difficult for me than just doing all of them. It was more stressful and I never really loved the choices I made anyway.

Editing the entire set is way more meditative for me and I feel better afterward. And the best part is that now if clients want black and white images, they can print the monotone vision that I have in my head without having to reach out to me asking for more work. It also keeps my images within my vision by avoiding application of cheap filters in Instagram or letting low-quality printers covert it for them.

So, thank you, friends who inspired me to edit more in black and white, you know who you are!

With love,

Always.

Dana