Less is more

And the award for “cliché of the year” goes to….

 

Lol. No… I mean this. Let me explain.

 

I have this desire to yet again… change the way I edit. See, I used to (and still do) like the dark and moody feel. It’s fantasy-like and really eye-catching on that Instagram explore page. If you want someone to have a second look, this is almost a sure way to get that. 

 

However, these days, I’ve been leaning more and more toward the clean, natural tones in my post processing. Why can’t I have both, right? I’m not married to these things mos.  

 

I want to adopt the “less is more” attitude when it comes to my work. It will however require many baby steps for me to get to where guys who inspire me are. Togs that inspire me with the way they’re loyal to true tones and colors are Jessica Kobeissi, Craig Anderson and Gigi Umbrasaite. If you want to have an idea of what I’m talking about, check out their amazing work. Like them, I want to subdue the craziness in Lightroom a bit and focus more on true tones, while still maintaining a healthy bit of creativity in editing.

 

So, out of pure inspiration, I started editing a shoot I did recently with my friend, Devonia, having this natural looking tones in mind. I added my own spin of course, by still lifting those shadows and taking that contrast up a notch. I also brought the hue of the greens waaaay down to lean more toward brown. 

I added more orange in the skin tones and brought the saturation on the yellow slider lower by a tiny bit and also underexposed the image in post. A few more tweaks here and there and I found myself with a new preset. 

 

To test the versatility of it, I applied it to older photos and liked what I ended up with. Here’s a few before & after examples :

 

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I noticed you get different results with different skin tones and I kinda like that. Let me know what you think of this one. If you like it, consider subscribing to my YouTube page where I’ll be giving it away.

 

Until then… let me know what you think of this one in the comments below. 🙂