I thought I’d give you a little “Before and After” shot for today! Anne, the talented floral artist at Stems, needed a shot of her building to use on her new website. I wanted to do an Edward Hopper style shot, photographing during civil twilight to get a rich blue sky.

I took the photos on a Sunday evening so there would be little traffic and did a bit of bracketing to see what exposure would look best. When I got back into the studio, I cringed a little at my initial capture. The flourescant street lights cast an unflattering green glow and if I got the exposure for the sky right, the windows in the shop were blown out and so on.

So… I called upon my Photoshop skills and a little inspiration from Attic Fire, whose work I have seen a lot in the South Magazine. I decided I could layer various images, do some retouching, dodging and burning, etc. and come up with the shot I’d envisioned.

I really like the “after” version, even if it’s obviously not straight out of the camera. What do you think?

Before:

After: