Custom photography is more of a luxury product than your entry level cookie cutter photography chain store experience. Custom photography is about art, professionalism and client service. When you decide to invest with Sereia Photography, you’re investing in a lifetime experience. In order to achieve beautiful final images, we carefully photograph and edit your photos. You will see the BEFORE images, which are the RAW images taken straight out of the camera and the AFTER images, which are the final images edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Preparing for the photo session, photographing our clients and editing the photos, combined with coordinating outfits and a beautiful location create amazing Custom photography.

On this BLOG post, I will post a photo before and after editing so you can see my style. Just as a side note, Sereia Photography does not sell or present Raw/unedited images. Your images will be carefully chosen so you will have a beautiful gallery of photos to choose from!

Photographing clients in locations that are not super crowded is key because it allows more freedom in finding perfect angles without having people or running pets in your scenario. That is why weekdays are preferred. San Diego is a destination city and weekends are crowded no matter where we go.

Examples of photo before and after editing

Depending on the intensity of the sun, or the absence of sun, like overcast days, the look and feel of an image will vary tremendously. Location is a another huge factor that will change the whole look and feel of an image. That is why I always discuss preferred location with my clients before the scheduled day. I will post below each photo before and after editing so you can see my style. Take a look:

Cloudy Days – San Diego June Gloom

Cloudy Days can be perfect for a beach photo session! This photo was taken in Mission Beach at 5PM during June gloom. One may think that because of the lack of sun the images will come out dull. In fact the image straight out of camera will, but the final images will not. Here is why: Because the clouds act like a giant soft box, distributing the light evenly, and no shadows are created on peoples skin. Also I can bring out the details from the sky and make it more even in Photoshop. In this case I created a mood adding that feeling the sun was just setting in the horizon, which in reality, sunset was scheduled for 7:30PM that day.

Golden Hour

In photography, the golden hour (sometimes known as magic hour) is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer than when the Sun is higher in the sky.

The photo above was done at Anza Borrego Desert, during the flower super bloom we experienced this spring, just as the sun was about to hide behind the mountain.

Bright Sun in Shaded Area

This photo session was done right after noon. The reason for photographing at this hour is because of baby’s sleeping and feeding schedule. Babies may be too tired and cranky to photograph later in the day, so coming up with shaded areas is key. To achieve the result here on this photo, I had Mom help me hold a Collapsible Lighting Reflector, the Translucent part of it for “Shoot Through” position photograph. This helped me to trail off the sharp light to make the light more soft and reduce the light and shade contrast on the baby. This approach would not work with a running toddler. It would make it really hard to keep up the shaded part on the toddler as he/she runs/walks everywhere.