It’s no surprise that I like bright and airy images around here. Slightly over exposed images are my jam but I’ve learned a little trick that helps push them. Since I’m wedding photographer, I’m typically working with a white wedding dress. Which can make getting those bright and airy images a little more tricky because you can loose detail in the dress so easily. 

& what’s a tutorial post without images so here we go.. 

On the left hand side is the image straight out of camera! The one on the right side is after my normal exposure boost.. You can see that the dress has lost detail and their skin tones are thrown off. 

BUT when you pull down the highlight slider it brings back detail in all those over exposed bits that lost their detail. If you compare the upper right image to this one and take note of the building, her dress, and the detail in her train! It also helps bring skin tones back down to the ideal (but usually adds a slight more gray undertone).  Sometimes after I pull the highlights down I will go and boost the exposure a tad bit more! I told you I was obsessed with bright images! 🙂 

& then the final product after my normal editing completed! 

So why don’t you just overexpose your images while you’re shooting? Well, if you overexpose an image in camera, the camera can’t record the data in those hot spots (so like her train, or the bit of the building behind them).. So say you totally overexpose a dress.. No amount of lightroom work can build data where it wasn’t recorded. So properly exposing (or slightly underexposing) is super beneficial. You can always lighten an image but pulling down a overexposed image doesn’t always work!